One Movement for Music

After a lovely time in Melbourne, it was time for us to hop over to Perth for the One Movement for Music festival. This was going to be our showcase to the industry in Australia and the rest of the world really. Michael Chugg and the whole team at One Movement had put together such a brilliant conference and festival and we were all set to do our bit!

We were received at the airport by Carlos, possibly the most fun person we have ever been received by! We had just arrived after almost missing the flight at Melbourne and were not the chirpiest people that morning, but Carlos changed all that! He whisked us off to our van and off we went to our hotel in literally the town center. Since we still had a couple of hours before our rooms would be ready, it was time for a stroll around Perth’s town center and a quick lunch by the mint!

We had a day’s break in Perth where all of us explored the city and the next day we were to start our collaboration with the Australian group, ‘Mama Kin’. Raghu and Danielle, who you will know from our earlier post about the guitar cases, had already worked on some ideas for what would eventually become ‘Walk in my shoes’, a brand new song that was written in a day! This was part of the APRA collaboration project and it was incredible that they made it happen.

John Butler’s studio, in Freamantle was going to be our haunt for the day and bit by bit, we put together the song and even had some time after all that to work on Mama Kin’s ‘Beat and Holler’ and our own ‘No Man Will Ever Love You, Like I Do’ to put together a tight 15 minute set. As Raghu and Danielle settled down to finalize lyrics for the song, the rest of us had a cook off which led to the most interesting home cooked meal that both bands and friends sat around the HUGE oak table and stuffed ourselves with!

A quick rehearsal of the song the next morning followed with Raghu just mouthing lyrics because his voice had completely dropped due to an infection. This would usually terrify the rest of us, but we’ve known for miracles to happen with Raghu’s voice and it was best that all of us just prayed for one more of those!

Concert day came too quickly!

We were on site just after a late breakfast and were to be ready to head to stage in a couple of hours. This was the first time ever we were going to play these songs, and they were just composed and arranged in a day! So there were some butterflies in our stomachs but magically, there was a fantastic vibe over all! Both bands somehow knew that things would just click and fall into place and when we went up on stage, they did!

15 minutes, 3 songs – we nailed it!

It was then time for us to head to the next stage for our performance there an hour later. We got quite a good slot in the early evening when the weekend crowd was building up and then proceeded to deliver a belter of a show on the main stage by the river! In many ways, these are little miracles that take the band along on our journey to who knows where and when! The reception was quite fantastic, our managers Robert and Paul were beaming by the end of it and that is usually a good indicator of how well a show was! We even caught most of the industry people gathered there, jumping along and dancing, which we are told is quite a miracle!

Raghu was part of a panel discussion about being an indie musician, earlier in the morning, which by the looks of it was received well also, making it a fantastic end to a very successful and fulfilling Australian expedition.

Our heartfelt thanks to Michael Chugg and the entire team at One Movement, to Nigel Bird, who ensured that we were always comfortable, our hosts, Kate and Jeremy and Libby, who are among the most amazing people we have ever met. To the entire team at Sound Advice and Jenral, for all the work you guys put in, to APRA for making the collaboration happen, and to Danielle, George, Michael from Mama Kin and all their friends, for the awesome time!