What did you learn from your marriage?
‘Never confuse your projection of someone else with what they are. What you think someone is isn’t necessarily what they are and no matter how much you want to be someone else, they are them. Whoever it is, you’re going to be with, you have to accept them with no conditions.’
‘It’s good to see local festivals and events pop up – the local scene gets encouraged and they look for local bands. It’s really great. The international bands have cornered the market a little bit and people need to see that there are still great bands in Australia and that they need to get out there.’
Pre-performance beer to calm the nerves.
the snowdroppers at today’s Smallworld Festival.
The ultimate, must-have festival accessory – noise cancelling headphones for babies.
Rock on dad.
‘The first practice we did without Jay was really difficult. We weren’t expecting that – just his non-presence there was tough.
‘Pat my brother was in town from Tasmania for the funeral. Pat will be filling in for Jay at this Saturday’s Smallworld Festival. We wanted to introduce Pat to the songs and that gave him two weeks to rehearse them and try to get them as close to the way that Jay used to play them.
‘It was the day after the funeral. We were all a bit exhausted. We’d all had the night out the night before at the pub that Jay used to drink at. We thought we’d jumped over this big hurdle in getting through the funeral and then all of a sudden, we had to go through a band practice without him being there.
‘This will be our first gig since his passing. If the gigs hadn’t been booked we probably wouldn’t have played for an extended period. It was Jay’s funeral we wanted to pay for.
‘We’ve also got a couple of gigs booked in Melbourne and my other brother will fill in on one of those plus another bass player who Jay taught how to play bass and he’s very close to us.
‘We’re not getting a replacement bass player. He’s not being replaced. People who are close to him are filling his shoes in remembrance. Once all these shows are done we’re going to take a long time off and who knows? For the time being I don’t even want to think about it.
‘On Saturday we are chucking in Acid Rain in the set because that was a song that Jay wrote. Just us being there and doing the gig is a tribute to Jay in itself. Same with the audience – he’s still fresh in everyone’s mind.
‘Every now and then you realise he’s not there. It comes in waves. Sometimes when you least expect it.’
Tumbleweed’s Lenny Curley about his brother Jay who passed away suddenly last month.
Tickets to Smallworld Festival are on sale at http://www.younghenrys.com/smallworld/.
Limited edition t-shirts to fundraise for Jay’s three year old son, Max, will be available for purchase on the day for $25.
What’s not to love about an impromptu Mariachi performance on a Sunday morning in Newtown?
Spotted in Newtown.
Getting ready to Reclaim the Streets.
Spotted in Newtown.
‘It’s awesome to have all these people that you’d never speak to unless you had some sort of facial hair. There are plenty of people in the group without facial hair – they like the idea of it but they can’t quite grow a good beard or moustache. We even have people try that probably shouldn’t! Quite wispy teenagey looking moustaches but we encourage it. We’ve got quite a few female followers as well that are just attracted to beards. I guess more from a social point it’s good to have a different group of people to be able to go out with or talk to – to separate yourself from your normal circle.
‘This Saturday (6th September) we are celebrating World Beard Day at Young Henry’s. We’re going to attempt to beat the record for the most bearded people in a human pyramid which stands at 15 people and we hope to get 21. I’m pretty small so I’m definitely going to be in the top somewhere.’
Free beer, live music and sunshine.
Sounds too good to be true but it’s not. Our friends at Young Henry’s are making dreams come true.
12.30 today (Sunday) at the bottom of Camperdown Park, three kegs of free beer (for over 18s) with Little Bastard playing on the back of the Young Henry’s truck.
Be there before the love runs out.
Humans of Newtown 