Alternative Indie

Award-winning singer Jess Hitchcock is an Indigenous performer, composer and singer-songwriter with family origins from Saibai in the Torres Straits and Papua New Guinea. Over the last 6 years Jess has been touring with Kate Miller-Heidke as her backing vocalist around Australia and in 2019 was with Kate at the Eurovision song contest in Israel. The end of 2019 saw Jess tour with Paul Kelly and Kate Miller-Hiedke on Paul’s Making Gravy Tour. Jess was a featured artist in Paul Kelly’s set, leading to the release of the track they sung together, ‘Everyday My Mother’s Voice’, and their collaboration on Channel 9 and Frontier Touring’s Music From The Home Front. Jess was part of MFTHF in 2021, singing a duet versions of ‘Sorrento Moon’ alongside Tina Arena.

For the last 10 years Jess has worked as a teacher, composer and artist with Australia’s Indigenous opera company Short Black Opera. The role of ‘Alice’ created in SBO’s Pecan Summer was Jess’s debut professional opera production. She received a Broadway World award for best supporting actress in an opera for her creation of this role at the Sydney Opera House, 2016. This role led to working on Opera Australia’s production of The Rabbits, for which she was awarded a prestigious Green Room Award for Best Female in a supporting role also in 2016. In 2021 Jess played the role Tjatjarang in Victorian Opera’s new commissioned work Parrwang Lifts the Sky composed by Deborah Cheetham.

Jess was the 2019 recipient of the Smuggler of Light, Indigenous Music and Media Award presented at the APRA Professional Development awards. Jess is currently working on a new album alongside some of Australia’s best producers.

Sasha McLeod, known professionally as Sycco, is an Australian singer-songwriter and producer from Brisbane. She was nominated for Triple J Unearthed Artist of the Year in 2020, having released the pop singles "Nicotine" and "Dribble" in the same year.

18-year-old Antonia Gwenyth has been forging her musical identity since she was in primary school, writing songs on ukulele, piano and guitar. Over the years she has created a plethora of songs across a variety of styles that speak to the wider human experience. Last year, Antonia won the encouragement award in the Tablelands Folk Festival songwriting competition for her song “Forgiveness”. On the stage Antonia Gwenyth is a positive, energetic force whose lyrics capture attention with their original perspective and poetry.

The Buoys were an American pop/rock band from the early 1970s. Its membership included Bill Kelly, Fran Brozena, Jerry Hludzik, Carl Siracuse and Chris Hanlon, based in the Wilkes-Barre-Scranton, Pennsylvania area. They are most famous for the banned song "Timothy", which was written for them by Rupert Holmes.

The Buoys are most famous for their recording of Rupert Holmes's "Timothy", a song deliberately written to get banned, based on the theme of cannibalism. Holmes himself selected the group to record the song.[1]

Recorded at Scepter Recording Studios in New York City and released by Scepter Records in December 1970, with whom the Buoys had been signed but previously ignored, the song hit No. 17 on US charts in 1971.

In 1963, there had been a mine cave-in in Sheppton, Pennsylvania, a small mining community outside of Hazleton, Pennsylvania. Rupert Holmes told rock journalist Maxim Furek, “I learned about the Sheppton Mine Disaster after Timothy was on the charts. If I had known about that at the time, I probably never would have written the song because I don’t want to make fun of something that’s tragic.”[2]

Scepter executives did not catch what the song was about until after it started climbing the charts, after which they claimed that Timothy was a mule. Holmes rejected this attempt to change the premise of his song; he had intended it to be offensive. Holmes, with D. Jordan, wrote a less-successful hit for them titled "Give Up Your Guns" (1972), an epic narrative dealing with an escaped bank robber.

Much more serious in tone than their previous hit, "Give Up Your Guns" reached only No. 84. By contrast, "Give Up Your Guns" was a massive hit twice in mainland Europe, when originally released, and when re-released in 1979.

Holmes wrote a number of other songs for the band, including "The Prince of Thieves", "Bloodknot", and "Tomorrow", most of which had much of the darkness but little of the humor of "Timothy". Like "Give Up Your Guns", they are complaints by criminals.

Holmes now writes Broadway musicals. Rock journalist Maxim Furek later wrote a book connecting Sheppton to what he called The Sheppton Mythology.