Bob and Laurel performing on the Bohemia Stage at the National Folk Festival in Canberra. Photo by Karina Red
Wow, can it really be three months since my last post? I did say I needed a break.
We’ve been immersed in music for the last few weeks – a road trip to Canberra for the National Folk Festival. We were invited to participate in a special concert to celebrate the Alistair Hulett award. Alistair was a well-known leftie songwriter who died in 2010. His family set up a trust to administer an award to encourage people to write songs of social justice award. The award has now ended, after 14 years and some 200 submissions by good songwriters, all adjudicated by incomparable judges.
Our entry was one of a record number in 2024, all of a very high standard, we were told. The awardee announced on Easter Sunday was Paddy McHugh for a brilliant song about Lismore’s floods called Hatchet in the Roof. I hope he gets it out there on music platforms real soon.
Meanwhile our producer Roger Ilott of Restless Music worked away on the spare demo we did to send in for the award late last year. It sounds pretty good and we think it encapsulates some (but not all) of the many social issues which tarnish our country. Have a listen on Bandcamp
.In the fullness of time I expect I’ll write an essay about the parlous state of affairs in the Middle East, Trump’s comeback, the end of Albanese’s honeymoon period.and other juicy topics.
We plan to shut down the Bobwords website by the end of April and migrate the blog archive to our music page, Goodwills Music. So any future blogs will arrive from thegoodwills,com.
.In the fullness of time I expect I’ll write an essay about the parlous state of affairs in the Middle East, Trump’s comeback, the end of Albanese’s honeymoon period.and other juicy topics.
We plan to shut down the Bobwords website by the end of April and migrate the blog archive to our music page, Goodwills Music. So any future blogs will arrive from thegoodwills,com. If you sometimes feel like reading a Friday on My Mind you’ll find nine years’ worth of weekly musiings on that website (once we close Bobwords.
I have been writing new songs and recording them at home but there are likely to be fewer fully produced efforts like Caring for the Dispossessed. We’ll hopefully be doing more gigs and tours this year, but I can’t tell you about them in case the festivals we applied for say no thanks.
I might add, if folk and alt-country music is your preference, great acts we saw at the NFF included Harry Manx, Monique Clare, Windborne, Josh Cunningham and Felicity Urquhart, John Craigie and our very own Spooky Men’s Chorale. Their leader Stephen Taberner was given the Lifetime Achievement Award at the festival.
While we are doing some digital (and actual) housework please note we are no longer using the PO Box in Warwick so if you have it on file please disregard.
As always, if you do not want to receive creative comment from the House of Goodwills, you can unsubscribe.
Regards, Bob.