The city is only a far away place. At least that’s how you start to feel from the moment you cross the railway track into the Riverboats Music Festival on the banks of the Murray River in Echuca Moama.
As you walk into the natural amphitheatre next to the mighty river, the rhythms of the punch clock and the traffic light fade away, replaced by those of the gigantic mottled river red gums swaying, the lazy splash-toot of the stately riverboats, and the soulful sounds of Talissa Jobe opening up an impressively varied bill of Australian-grown musical talent.
Capturing attention from the very outset with her impressively technical, harmonic hammering guitar style, Jobe wrings just about every last drop out of her guitar.
Fully utilising its percussive, rhythmic, and melodic qualities, it’s easy to see why she often doesn’t need a backing band.
This guitar carries her voice, which is full of honesty as it weaves its way through blues, rock, and soul. There is an edge to her vocals, which overflow with feeling. It’s almost as if she has to sing, like she would explode if she didn’t.
The second set sees Cash Savage And The Last Drinks take to the stage. As the light softens and fades, giving way to a string of hanging globe lanterns threaded around the grounds, the cockatoos join in with the chorus.
It may be an auditory illusion, but it seems that they’re cheering after each song. It could also be that they’re just trying to answer back to the very loud cockies on the stage in their midst.
Savage’s voice drawls and wails along with the band, aptly named as the backdrop to her whiskey-soaked offerings.
The psychedelic country tunes are by turns breezy and hard, evoking a feeling akin to swinging on an old Hills Hoist clothesline in fresh country air.
As you walk into the natural amphitheatre next to the mighty river, the rhythms of the punch clock and the traffic light fade away…
Rounding out the first day, as clouds of fragrant insect repellant drift over the crowd, is Joe Camilleri And The Black Sorrows.
Camilleri shows no signs of slowing down 46 years into is career, strutting around the stage like a wild turkey, brimming with energy. He wails on the saxophone, swaying and rocking, grinning as he sings.
The guitarist fixes a strained orgasm face for almost the entirety of his lengthy solo time, which provides a soaring front to the band.
The crowd is up and dancing by this point, whipped into a slightly nostalgic frenzy by old hits like “Never Let Me Go”; the Southern Cross hangs over the stage, glimmering indifferently over this celebration of Australian music.
Bravely opening day two under a beating sun and to a crowd too sweaty from sitting still to contemplate dancing is Gossling, ‘that voice’ from recent hits “I Was Young” and “Boys Like You”.
Her high-ranged voice veers between cute and dark, like a porcelain doll locked in an attic.
There’s a freewheeling energy to her songs, counterpoised with slowed down restraint. For those aiming to appreciate Gossling’s voice, it may help to know that she talks like she sings, albeit minus the American accent.
Gossling underlines the family friendly atmosphere of the festival when she calls out to her parents, who she says have floated down the river from her hometown of Albury Wodonga.
“Yes Mum, I have sunscreen on” she reassures. Another mother is standing at the front of the crowd with a daughter of about seven, tapping the rhythm on her shoulder, perhaps coaxing her gently into the world of dancing.
Sporting the all-white cowboy hat and suit of the man who takes himself just the right level of seriously, Tim Rogers takes to the stage. “Damn you Echuca, your water tastes like wine,” he shouts as the band loads a big rock track into the barrel.
Rogers’ voice is sometimes big and blustery, with a guitar tone to match – that he introduces as “brought to you by the great lord Satan”.
At other times his singing is close, almost vulnerable, better matched to the dreamy keyboard sounds purring out of the band.
“Feed your mind, feed your heart, read poetry, listen to free jazz!” he exhorts the kids in the audience as he launches into “You’ve Been So Good To Me So Far”.
“Don’t worry about looks,” he continues. “When you’re older, all the kids who are good looking now will be butt-ugly.”
Rogers is a tough act to follow, but 11-piece retro-Bollywood juggernauts (or more appropriately, jagannatha) The Bombay Royale seem far from worried.
The first part of the band stride onto the stage – The Skipper (played by Andy Williamson) and his nefarious gang, who are all wearing bandit masks.
“Welcome to our movie, featuring the sights and sounds of 1970s Bollywood,” purrs Williamson, in a white boat captain’s uniform and oversized peaked cap.
As they fire up, the horn section hits like a ‘POW!’ screen from a 1970s action TV show. The capable sound engineering of the festival’s crew is on full display in the well-compressed sound of each individual instrument.
Then it’s time for the stars of the show. Dancing onto the stage are two figures dressed in lurid, hand-embroidered knee length achkan style robes.
‘The Mysterious Lady’ in purple (played by Parvyn Kaur Singh) has silky black hair down to her knees, and as she twirls she’s like a beautiful squid surrounded in water by its own ink.
‘The Tiger’ (played by Shourov Bhattacharya), resplendent in bright orange, prowls the stage and utters a guttural “ugh!” before launching into the first vocal of the performance.“Everyone dances at the end”, says Bhattacharya after the show. “That’s Bollywood.”
Sung entirely in Hindi and Bengali, the vocals’ indecipherability draws attention to its musicality for those who don’t understand the two languages – without decipherable words, focus falls more on the pleasant nuances of melody, harmony, and rhythm.
Bhattacharya’s baritone beautifully offsets Singh’s soprano, which is like warm honey poured over a lotus flower.
All of the musicians perform masterfully, particularly Williamson, who rocks and reels about the stage with his saxophone or his flute, which he applies with the deft touch of a watercolour brush.
Singh’s twirling Bollywood dance moves are infectious, and before long she has a good part of the dance floor mirroring her, even in the dampening afternoon heat.
“Everyone dances at the end”, says Bhattacharya after the show. “That’s Bollywood.”
Clare Bowditch follows up with a voice by turns bold and fragile, backed up by a brass section borrowed from the Royal Jelly Dixieland Band.
She sings through a broad and genuine smile, her obvious joy in performing shining out on the audience like a soft light, along with her warmth in generous use of the word ‘darlings’.
As she launches into crowd pleaser “Thin Skin”, she confides that she spent most of her life carrying her sensitivity “like a sack of hot potatoes, trying to get rid of it.”
That was until she realised that “it may in fact be our only superpower”. She drives this home with the refrain of the song; “We’re so lucky to feel the world the way we do.”
With darkness falling, James Reyne’s set comes, the high point of the festival for many of the punters.
His traditional rock ‘n’ country provides a stark contrast to the adventurous offerings of The Bombay Royale, still fresh in the audience’s mind, but the crowd packs to the front of the stage to sing along in appreciation.
The band rocks and chugs through hits from his Australian Crawl era like “Reckless” and “Errol”.
Clairy Browne & The Bangin’ Rackettes take the stage for the final set of a sold out Saturday night, their pumped up blues-soul sound bringing the crowd’s energy right up.
As with many festivals, even at this high point in the dancing energy, the crowd is full of individuals dancing with themselves rather than another.
It’s easy to imagine Browne and her all-girl backup singers inciting people to dance with one another at one of their own shows, with their well-choreographed and almost hypnotic moves. But even in this picturesque and relaxed festival, the scale perhaps limits the intimacy and it doesn’t come off that way.
The final day of the festival kicks off with a funky Latin-infused performance from Better Than The Wizards. Their energy transfers into a lot of toe tapping and shoulder shaking from the mostly seated audience, who are too hot under the beating sun to contemplate anything more strenuous.
Mia Dyson follows with her soulful, sorrow-drenched voice, pleading “use this pistol on my heart, take me out before it starts” in the well received track “Pistol”.
Lighter, more hopeful moments also shine through on tracks like “When the Moment Comes”, with talented multi-instrumentalist Liz Stringer providing backing vocals and honky-tonk keyboards. “We’ve just had the last band arrive, so no one’s gonna call in with gastro and cancel!”
Caught in a moment of calm on the final day, festival producer Dave Frazer is breathing a sigh of relief. “We’ve just had the last band arrive, so no one’s gonna call in with gastro and cancel!”
He’s pleasantly surprised at the popularity of the festival, particularly the sell out crowd of around 3,500 on Saturday.
One of Frazer’s aims, in conjunction with festival supporters Tourism Victoria, has been to move away from the jazz focus of the festival’s previous incarnation as the Riverboats Jazz Food And Wine Festival, and towards more ‘contemporary’ music.
This is with a view to enticing the higher spending denizens of Melbourne’s inner north up to spend some time and money in Echuca Moama. He sees the small scale of the festival as its main strong point, and says that he and the production team will be aiming to make it better if not bigger for next year.
Archie Roach takes the second last slot of the festival with a moving performance. “I’m glad I’m up here near this mighty river, the Murray”, says Roach, proudly dressed in the colours of the Aboriginal flag.
He is particularly grateful to be playing today, he says, as it’s the third anniversary of the passing of his partner Ruby, of whom he speaks with reverence and grief.
Mulyawongk, he explains, is a word from Ruby’s language, and refers to the pelican spirit that is her dreaming. In that dreaming story, he explains, that pelican spirit comes down to earth and enters a mother before she gives birth, and when the person born eventually passes, they are called by that spirit to return to it.
There is a depth of pain and celebration woven into every one of Roach’s notes, into the stripped down spiritual folk style of his songs and into his fragile vibrato.
This is especially strong in “Big Black Train”, where Roach sings of the experience that he shared as a victim of the stolen generation, removed from his family by order of Australian Federal Government policy.
He finishes his set with some encouragement: “we’ve all got a song to sing. You, me, everybody. It’s just like telling a story.”
The festival’s climax comes to us in the form of Pete Murray, who, despite the shade, places his level of cool somewhere in the ‘leave reflective sunglasses on for the entire performance’ range.
Most of the audience seems to agree with his assessment. Nathan Kaye on guitar and loop-pedal-beatboxing features in the two-piece backing band.
Alongside the smoking lap steel performance and dexterous bass, the beatbox loops provide an even rhythm to the songs. The lack of dynamics and variety in this approach to percussion begs the question however: why didn’t Murray simply hire a drummer?
In further recommendation for a drummer, Murray recollects that upon Kaye’s first request to beatbox with him, he thought that Kaye wanted to fight him.
Murray’s voice is smooth like his slicked back hair and has a soothing, almost whispered quality to it. He pleases the crowd with the hit single “Better Days”, where he squeezes an admirable number of syllables into his account of praying in the refrain: “I get down on my knees and I pray to God/ hope he sees me through to the e-y-ey-e-yand”.
One thing that strikes the listener throughout the festival is the prevalence of Southern American accents in the singing. Almost without exception, every singer on the bill talks with an Australian accent but adopts a Yankee twang during songs.
Without arguing for any sort of parochial nationalism in Australian music, and with the understanding that many artists have a lowest common denominator international audience in mind, there is a respectable authenticity in people who use the same accent to talk and sing.
Territorial pronunciation aside, on the whole, the festival was marked by a wholesome, relaxed, and family friendly atmosphere.
(Respectable examples include Missy Higgins, and Melbourne locals ‘Flap!’. Sydneysiders Frenzal Rhomb are a less respectable but no less admirable example.)
Territorial pronunciation aside, on the whole, the festival was marked by a wholesome, relaxed, and family friendly atmosphere.
Young children danced unhindered in the photographer’s pen at the front of the stage as old and young alike lounged around on the grass munching on $5 tacos and downing $6 cans of beer and cider.
Georgia and Patti drove from Melbourne’s southeast to take in the festival.
“There aren’t many festivals like this,” says Georgia.
“It’s fun, there’s good music and a good family atmosphere, but it’s not daggy,” she continues, before Patti adds “yeah, there’s no face painting or balloons.”
They both agree that James Reyne was dreamy, and that they’ll be back next year.
With its single stage appropriately placed on a wooden stilted platform above a pool of the river, the festival flows in a single relaxed stream.
Just like the river, the setting and its many enticing rhythms exert a gentle pull that makes you very reluctant to plunge yourself back into the city.
With these rhythms still echoing, it’s hard to imagine that this festival won’t continue to get better. This is definitely one to keep an eye out for next year.
