Review – Banished Now From My Native Shore: The Verse of Frank the Poet @ The Wheatsheaf Hotel – Sat June 2

3/4 of ‘The Beastly Treated’: (L-R) Heath Cullen, Matt Walker and Chris Parkinson (Photograph by Lisa Sorgini).

Take a whole bunch of musicians from different States, backgrounds and genres (albeit all with a roots music connection), toss them a bunch of poems by a largely unknown, obscure Irish convict poet born a couple of hundred years ago, get them to individually compose their own musical interpretations of some and then chuck them all on a stage and have them perform.

Sounds like the perfect recipe for chaos and mayhem, but what I witnessed on Saturday night was far from that. Proceedings got under way with a few cool tunes from The Tea House Fire who set the bar pretty high to start the show, following which we got our first look at the deadly house band ‘The Beastly Treated’ (sic). Comprising Matt Walker, Heath Cullen, Chris Parkinson and B.J. Barker, these guys went on to back most of the following artists in one way or another.

The remaining quarter of  ’The Beastly Treated’:  B.J. Barker.

(Photograph by Lisa Sorgini)

Next up we had Todd Sibbin, a young Adelaide muso who, for me, was a standout performer not only for his great sound but also how he imposed his talent on those seasoned performers like a veteran. Big future, Todd.

Snooks La Vie’s polished performance was no surprise to any follower of local music, he’s an established legend – the same ain’t yet be said of the next act, Max Savage, but one senses we’ll hear a lot more of this confident, strutting performer, especially once he learns that with such prodigious talent you only need to project so hard.

Nick Kipridis showed us, once again, why he’s such an icon of the Adelaide music scene as did the Yearlings, for whom the whole concept could have been tailor made. Somewhere in the mix was young A.P. Antonio who enthralled us with his version of ‘Bold Jack Donohue’.

Then we moved into the ‘interstaters’, the talented Sean McMahon, the laconic Jimmy Dowling, and, frankly, I’ve run out of superlatives for Heath Cullen and Matt Walker but we were a lucky audience indeed!!

I’m sure there have been many painstakingly choreographed events that haven’t approached the seamless flow of this evening – if you weren’t there, fear not! Do yourself a favour and grab a copy of the album from Stobie Sounds – life’s far too short to let stuff like this pass you by!!!

John Mockford

A self imposed international man of mystery, John Mockford (his other real name) is Adelaide’s finest doer of the Odd Job. His lifelong love affair with music, lyrics and verse makes him particularly well placed to write this review – as does his complete disregard for all things Justin Bieber. John is locally renowned for playing late night harmonica, versifying and superior txtmanship and can be frequently hard to spot (due to cunning disguise) delivering his quick wit, dry sense of humour and stinging sarcasm at scenester hangs around Adelaide’s midwest.

Stobie Sounds would like to thank Odd Job John for his relentless support and enthusiasm for all our hair-brained schemes, album concepts and attempts to trash his places of dwelling.

Mat Rice

Stobie Sounds Chair