Since 1994 BABBA have performed all over Australia, Asia and New Zealand to sold out audiences and rave reviews. Benny, Bjorn, Agnetha and Frida have returned (with the help of a cryogenic freezer and some cosmetic surgery) to transport you back to the 70s with a show full of humor, great costumes, Swedish accents and fun-filled dance floor action.
With spine tingling harmonies and a band that will rock your socks off, BABBA is simply the best night out
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Multi platinum-selling recording artist Emily Williams announces ‘Woman Of Colour’ – a performance of empowerment and celebration like no other.
Williams is bringing this multidimensional show to Australia’s stages to shine a brighter spotlight on the incredible music and creativity that has endlessly inspired her. From the classic ballads of Whitney Houston to the pop presence of Lizzo, Emily pulls back the red curtain on incredible music, raw talent and sheer brilliance of her icons.
Throughout the show, Emily will share stories of these inspiring women. From discovering their talent to overcoming obstacles, their career highlights to her personal journey. Expect Aretha, Donna, Tina, Beyonce and so many more.
This passionate performance will turn heads, inspire hearts, and most of all – celebrate what it means to be a Woman of Colour.
Music lulls us into a meditative state. It allows us to relax, reflect, and, ultimately, recharge.
Sydney-born independent singer, songwriter, and producer grentperez unlocks this place—whether in the studio, on stage, or under the watchful eye of the computer camera in his childhood bedroom. Generating over 15 million YouTube views, amassing nearly half-a-million streams, and attracting an audience of 320K subscribers, his handcrafted D.I.Y. pop instantly soothes on a series of 2020 singles and more to come.
“On days where I don’t feel good, I’ll pick up a guitar, and it just makes me feel better,” he admits. “I heavily believe in everything I sing. Whatever it is, I try to put myself in a position to relate and fully immerse myself in all of the words.”
As if by fate, he immersed himself in music during his childhood in Sydney. Growing up as the youngest of three kids in a Filipino family, he listened to The Eagles, The Beatles, and Queen with his dad before moving on to the likes of Musiq Soulchild. A diligent YouTube search might even unearth videos of a six-year-old grentperez on the microphone! Eventually, he received his first nylon string acoustic and taught himself Jeremy Passion’s “Lemonade,” learning chords, shapes, and plucking patterns. At the end of 2013, he launched his YouTube channel. Under the influence of ASMR queen Alaina Castillo, he introduced his own “sing u to sleep” series highlighted by popular covers of Daniel Caesar (1.6 million views), Rex Orange County (1 million views), Plain White T’s (800K views), and many more.
At the top of 2020, he found himself at a crossroads as a freshman in college.
“It was either, ‘Finish Uni’ or ‘Do music’,” he recalls. “Guess what I chose?”
He served up his first original single “Wait For You” and racked up 175K Spotify streams as “Dreams” followed with another 270K Spotify streams. Along the way, he perfected his own “laidback chill sound with a lot of soul.” That style crystallizes on his 2020 single “In My Heart.” A showcase for his dynamic vocals, delicate guitar, and nuanced production (punctuated by a whistle), it reaches for a heightened level of intimacy.
“I’ve been writing a lot about various love interests,” he smiles. “I wanted to do something very sweet and straight-to-the-point here. Once you hear the title, you already know what it’s going to be about. The main premise, is no matter where you go or how far you’ll get from me, a piece of you will always be in my heart.”
As he releases more tunes, grentperez will ultimately find his way into your heart too.
“When you listen to me, I want you to feel relaxed,” he leaves off. “I hope this is something you can replay, fall asleep to, or drive to. Maybe you take a piece of how I am from it too. That would be pretty cool.”
“Everyone carries a shadow, and the less it is embodied in the individual’s conscious life, the blacker and denser it is.” – Carl Jung
There are singer-songwriters, and there are troubadours. Singer-songwriters are sensitive, polished souls, sharing their journal entries with the world… whereas troubadours do their best just to stay out of jail. In the wake of Ben de la Cour’s astonishing new record, Shadow Land, you can add his name to the top of the list of younger troubadours to whom this ever-so-occasionally poisoned chalice is being passed.
There are the titans of the form; artists who risked everything to have the grittiest, most authentically artistic life that manifested itself in songs that spoke with great passion and brutal honesty. Men and women who sang the truth: Townes Van Zandt, Robert Johnson, Warren Zevon, Gil Scott-Heron, Judee Sill, Dee Dee Ramone, Janis Joplin, Mickey Newbury, Nina Simone… and every other troubadour who has attacked convention riding on little more than guitar string and a song. Their influences shine on Shadow Land, but the sound and the stories here are all Ben’s.
Shadow Land shimmers. It’s both terrifying and soothing – suffused with honesty, craft and a rare soul-baring fearlessness but with enough surprises to keep the listener guessing. It gets down and dirty with electric guitar but also features Ben’s diffident fingerpicking in quieter moments. Ultimately, it is a darkly beautiful meditation on what it means to be human. Ben’s voice renders raw emotion with authority as he recounts tales of suspicious characters, lost love, murder, bank robbers, suicide and mental illness against a backdrop of a dark and haunted America. On the brilliant “From Now On” he sings “it’s hard to hold a candle / in a wind so wild and strong.” That one line sums up the troubadour’s life about as well as anything ever said about it before.
To say Ben de la Cour has lived an eventful life in the course of keeping that flame lit is to put it mildly. As young man he was a successful amateur boxer (taking in the lithe frame he sports today and his aquiline undamaged features, you’d never know that small-time pugilism was ever a feature of his life) which may have inspired the line “never trust any man / if he don’t have no scars”. After playing New York City dives like CBGBs with his brother a decade before he could legally drink, he had already stuffed himself into a bottle of bourbon and pulled the cork in tight over his head by the time he was twenty one. There were arrests, homes in tough neighborhoods all over the world, countless false starts as well as stays in psychiatric hospitals and rehabs as Ben battled with mental health and substance abuse issues. But in 2013 he finally found himself in East Nashville and 2020 saw the release of far and away the best of his four albums – Shadow Land.
“I’m kind of from all over.” Ben says, “I was born in London, I left when I was one and we ended up in Brooklyn. I left home when I was seventeen and spent almost a year in Havana, back when I was boxing. I never turned pro, but I had a handful of fights and was pretty serious about it. That’s how I ended up in Havana. I didn’t even know any Spanish when I arrived” he laughs. “That’s when I read On the Road for the first time. You know, when you read a book like that and you’re nineteen, completely alone in a foreign country… it makes an impression. After that I lived in London for a few years, playing in a metal band, living in a van, working shitty jobs. I lived in LA for about a year, I was in New Orleans for a few years, and I’ve been in East Nashville for the last seven.”
“When I got back from Havana,” he continues, “I had a ‘come to Jesus’ moment where I was thinking – you know, I’ve got a little bit of boxing talent, but I’m never going to be make it as a pro. I wasn’t tough enough. But I’d brought my acoustic guitar with me to Cuba and I’d spend my days getting my ass kicked and then go down to the Malecón at night to drink rum with my friends and play guitar for tourists. Try to make a little money, have a little fun.” Then, a self-realization hit Ben a couple of days before his twentieth birthday; boxing was over, and a budding troubadour was born, one with lyrics as sharp and surprising as an uppercut from the ropes.
Shadow Land comes in steaming with “God’s Only Son”, a gut-bucket western about a bank-robbing drifter who may or may not believe he is the messiah that sounds like Ennio Morricone being fed through a meat grinder. “High Heels Down the Holler” is Appalachian gothic at its finest; a twisted and unsettling tale featuring a threatening fiddle that weaves its way like a water moccasin through grimy, hypnotic slide guitar. On “In God We Trust… All Others Pay Cash” Ben’s scathing put-down of corporate crooks “putting candles on dog shit and calling it cake” seethes alongside a band channeling “Stop Breaking Down.” On the other side of the fence are the delicate, atmospheric “Amazing Grace (Slight Return)” and “The Last Chance Farm”, a heartbreaking tale about Ben’s first day in rehab.
Ben turns on a dime on “Basin Lounge”, all pure jittery New York Dolls vibe highlighted by a boogie-woogie piano that would make Jerry Lee proud and a snarling guitar that brings to mind Joe Strummer’s The 101ers. One of the album’s crowning moments arrives with “Swan Dive”, a gorgeous feat of narrative storytelling. A gentle waltz, it tells a shattering tale of lost love and suicide, questioning how close to the edge we really are. When he sings, “My heart does a swan dive, right out of my chest, into a river of sorrow,” the desolation is palpable. The final track on the album, “Valley of the Moon”, is a terrifying meditation on what Jack London referred to as the ‘white logic’ of alcohol-induced psychosis, while simultaneously contemplating Chuang Tzu’s meditation on material transformation in a voice as cold and dead as the man in the moon himself.
You would be forgiven for thinking that Shadow Land was an East Nashville record, but you would be wrong. Ben de la Cour, the drunk and unhinged miscreant, decided to write a grant proposal in hopes of receiving funding from the Canada Council for the Arts. “I locked myself away and wrote this fifty-page grant proposal without really sleeping. And then I went straight to rehab” he laughs. When he got out, Ben de la Cour caught a break – Manitoba Film and Music ponied up to cover the recording costs. So Shadow Land, which drips with swampy, deep south vibes, was actually recorded in Winnipeg with producer Scott Nolan in the middle of a polar vortex. “I figured everyone is making records in Nashville. For better or worse I don’t get that excited about doing what everyone else seems to be doing. Scott is a great artist in his own right and has produced several records that I really love, and we bonded over Nick Cave and the fact that we’re both recovering metalheads. So we holed ourselves up in his studio in Winnipeg and got to work. I flew my brother Alex out so he could play drums on it – we haven’t made a record together since I was twenty. They have some amazing pickers in Winnipeg. It’s like the Tulsa of Canada.”
“You know,” Ben continues, “you write songs because you want to connect with people, and so you don’t want to make a record that obscures those songs – that’s just as bad as making a record that sounds like everything else in an attempt to appeal to people in a calculated way. You need to make something that interests you. There’s a fine line between artistic expression and pointless self-indulgence, but you also want to have a good time making a record, otherwise what’s the point? I work really hard on songs. So I don’t want to paint over that. Everything has to be in the service of the song. That’s one of the reasons we recorded almost the whole thing live, vocals included. I wanted to have fun. In an evil way.”
Ben de la Cour’s music has been featured on SiriusXM Outlaw Country, BBC Radio, Paste Magazine and NPR while receiving high praise from American Songwriter, Maverick Magazine, No Depression, Twangville and Dusted Magazine amongst others. He is a former Kerrville New Folk Winner and currently spends over a hundred days a year on the road touring the U.S, Canada, Europe and Australia.
Emily Lubitz is the six-foot flame haired front woman for Melbourne folk/pop outfit and festival darlings Tinpan Orange. Her sweet, vivid voice a distinctive feature to accompany the virtuoso instrumental performances and pulsating rhythms, which come to form the wholly unique sound that Tinpan Orange are regarded for. They have toured throughout Canada, Europe and UK with The Cat Empire, and have been known to pack out venues at major Australian Folk Festivals.
Mi-Sex formed in 1977, led by Steve Gilpin (vocals), Kevin Stanton (guitar), Don Martin (bass), and Murray Burns (keys/synth), and Richard Hodgkinson (drums). Within months of releasing the debut single, ‘Straight Laddie’ (1978); an early punk parody that pays homage to Ian Dury, with a snatch of The Stranglers on keys; Mi-Sex were smashing house records right across their native New Zealand. Chasing new horizons, Mi-Sex jumped the ditch to bring their new-found sound, and highly energized theatrical shows, to Australian audiences.
Exploding upon the Sydney live music scene, Mi-Sex quickly caught the eye of record producer Peter Dawkins, who signed the group to CBS. The relationship proved to be a masterstroke, with the release of the group’s debut LP, Graffiti Crimes, and subsequent singles, ‘But You Don’t Care’ and ‘Computer Games’ racing to the top of the charts in Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Germany, Austria and South Africa. The LP became the catalyst for an entirely new era in music and fashion – new wave.
ABC’s Double J embraced new wave and Mi-Sex became regular guests on Countdown, which saw the group shoot to #1 with ‘Computer Games’, before Mi-Sex rounding-out the decade with its landmark performance at the Sydney Opera House – revered by those of the era as the ‘Concert of the Decade’. Early the following year, Mi-Sex Graffiti Crimes scooped the 1979 TV WEEK / COUNTDOWN MUSIC AWARDS with 4 gongs: Best New Single (Computer Games), Most Popular Single/Album (Computer Games/Graffiti Crimes), Best New Talent (Mi-Sex), and Best Production (Peter Dawkins/Graffiti Crimes).
Cross-pollinated from the get-go with the collective creativity of a cabaret crooner Steve Gilpin, alongside art-rocker Don Martin on bass, Richard Hodgkinson on drums, Kevin Stanton on guitar, and Murray Burns on keys ‘n’ synth, Stanton and Burns forged a song-writing partnership that anchored Mi-Sex four albums in the early years; Graffiti Crimes (1979), Space Race (1980), Shanghaied (1981), and Where Do They Go? (1983). Produced by Rolling Stones’ Bob Clearmountain, Where Do They Go? and the album’s hit singles – ‘Blue Day’ and ‘Castaway’ – were released to critical acclaim in the US and Canada, shortly before the group disbanded in pursuit of respite from years of almost endless touring, and various solo ventures.
Mi-Sex reformed in the late 1980’s for two more Australian tours, and in the summer of 1990 commenced work on material for a new album. However, the reformation was cut tragically short following a fatal car crash involving Steve Gilpin, who died at Southport Hospital on January 6, 1992. Shortly after Gilpin’s death, the cream of Australian music came together for consecutive concerts in Sydney and Melbourne, to honour the life, achievements and extraordinary contribution of Steve Gilpin to music.
After an almost twenty-year hiatus, Mi-Sex re-emerged yet again, to perform at the Christchurch Earthquake Relief Concert, on this occasion with Noiseworks and Electric Hippies’ bassist and producer, Steve Balbi, out front. Enamoured by the experience, Mi-Sex entered the studio for the first time in 33 years to record a new studio album, Not from Here, which was released in September 2016. One year later, founding member and guitarist, Kevin Stanton, also passed away. Yet the legacy of Mi-Sex lives on.
Now, altogether reimagined to honour and pay legacy to the group’s extraordinary socio-cultural narrative and history, Mi-Sex new wave features the founding member and songwriter Murray Burns (keys ‘n’ synth), Steve Balbi (vocals), James Van Cooper (guitar), Travis New (bass) and Jordan McDonald (drums).
The Hoodoo Men deliver powerhouse and soulful blues at its best.
Singer, songwriter & drummer, Tim Stout is backed by Leigh Vial on bass to complete a solid rhythm section, and Jim Laing on ripping blues guitar.
The Hoodoomen album – Found The Blues – reached top 10 on the 2020 Australian blues charts. Tim and the Hoodoomen have featured at many of Melbourne’s leading blues clubs and venues.
The Hoodoo Men have been reimagined by Tim Stout the singing drummer and songwriter driving the ship ,with an independent album Found the Blues and joined by Jim Laing on Guitar and Leigh Vial on bass , they have found a big powerful blues sound guaranteed to please , get feet and hips moving and they are not to be missed.
Somethings are just meant to be – and it was certainly that way for The Chantoozies. The dynamic female pop vocal group dominated the 1980s with their party anthems, adored by audiences for their vibrant live shows and their four female strong lead vocal line-up. Led by Eve von Bibra, Angie La Bozzetta, Tottie Goldsmith and Ally Fowler on vocals – with Brett Goldsmith (bass), David Reyne (drums), Frank McCoy (guitar) and Scott Griffiths (keys) – they played to packed houses, sold-out national tours and joined international headliners on the road, all while keeping true to their ethos of putting on a great party.
It was a party in fact, that was the catalyst for The Chantoozies coming together in the first place. It was Tottie’s birthday in 1986 and for a bit of fun, the friends decided to get a group together to play at reputed nightclub the Underground for the party. Little did they know the chain of events they would set in action. The ‘one-off’ gig spurned a six-week Thursday night residency that packed the house every week – and a flood of offers to play at other iconic venues around Melbourne.
The industry had already started to sit up and take notice of The Chantoozies – who named themselves after the French word chanteuse. There was something different about this group. Not only in their effortless ability to kick off the party – and keep it going – but also in the strong female lead singers and the musicians whose repertoire had music fans, and venues, wanting more. So, Mushroom Records backed the group to release their first single – a cover of the 1970s Redbone song Witch Queen of New Orleans.
The Chantoozies version of Witch Queen released in 1987 changed everything. Australian music fans suddenly found out what the local Melbourne music scene already knew, this group was something really special. The single smashed into the charts, reaching #4 and the video clip, directed by Peter Faiman (of Crocodile Dundee fame) made The Chantoozies a household name overnight and turned the group who ‘got together for a bit of fun’ into a solid recording act.
They were invited to perform on Countdown and the momentum just keep rolling. The Chantoozies second single, a version of He’s Gonna Step On You Again, went further to demonstrate their versatility as a group, sitting in the Top 20. They also headed into the studio to record their debut offering – the self-titled The Chantoozies – released in 1988, and their first original single Wanna Be Up.
Penned by Eve von Bibra and Brett Goldsmith, Wanna Be Up was the epitome of The Chantoozie’s sound. It embodied what their live shows were like, and it was embraced by music fans everywhere. It smashed into #5 and kept up a constant resurgence in and out of the Top 5. Their debut album went gold and platinum and held its position in the Top 10. The final single from the album, Kiss and Tell, also hit the Top 20, cementing The Chantoozies as one of the favourite groups of the decade.
Keeping up their party spirit, The Chantoozies were solidly touring everywhere. There were few venues on the East Coast they hadn’t played to packed houses, they did a host of crazy private and corporate events and a memorable New Year’s Eve performance in 1988 on the Tall Ships in Melbourne. They were regulars on TV shows such as Hey Its Saturday, Tonight Live and Countdown.
The Chantoozies sophomore release Gild The Lily was released in 1990, Tottie had left the band, Angie, Ally and Eve had more charting singles, including Come Back, Walk On and the Top 20 smash hit Love The One You’re With. They toured in support of Billy Joel’s We Didn’t Start The Fire Australian Tour in 1991, playing to massive arenas and packed houses before deciding to pull back from the big tours. They focused on smaller regional runs, undertaking several tours to Western Australia and the Northern Territory, playing to mining towns and small communities, before taking an indefinite hiatus to focus on their own families, and independent projects, in the mid-1990s.
Much like how The Chantoozies got together in the 1980s, the group’s reformation followed a similar storyline. In 2006, they joined the original Countdown tour for a string of dates and it ‘stirred the pot’. Not only was it fun – the original party feel that had got the group together in the first place was still there – and it was evident that it was still there for audiences as well. It was like putting on an old pair of stilettos – they fit and they felt fabulous. Fast forward a couple of decades, it was also more fun, if that could ever be possible!
After dipping their toes back in the water for a run of some shows here and there, The Chantoozies decided it felt right to be back together, back on stage and back on the road. The time was right in all their lives and the time was right in the lives of their fans. In true Chantoozies form, they came back officially with a smashing party, at the Clipsal 500 in Adelaide in 2011 and haven’t stopped since.
Their first new single, Baby It’s You in 2014, with its star-studded film clip featuring Hugh Jackman, Eric Bana and Anthony Lapaglia, garnered them a whole new generation of fans, and reminded those who knew them back in the day why they are so fantastic! With Angie taking leave of the group, the now seven-piece continued to work and released the original Black And Blue in 2015, a track penned by Tottie. They also continued to tour, supporting Rick Astley, Bananarama and Wang Chung, and performing at some massive winery shows featuring the likes of Go West, Paul Young and Cutting Crew to name a few.
2018 saw a new track from the band, a cover of Kim Weston's 'Take Me In Your Arms', produced by Rogue Traders Tim Henwood. They toured this song to a great audience response. In February of 2020, Tottie left the band.2020 WAS to be a big touring year.
Then Covid19 hit and everything was put on hold. During lockdown, Evie got busy writing songs for her own personal project and a song for the Chantoozies.(co written with Reggie Bowman from Southern Sons) This song was placed onto a Compilation CD as a bonus track, titled 'No F.O.O.L For You' with a pop/rock feel, the band look forward to touring this song and others through 2021!
Songs from a kitchen in Campbells Creek.
'Death Songs and Kitchen Spirituals' out now via Ragged Gum Records.
