Entries for December 2009

One thing leads to another.

Occasionally we get lucky breaks. When I first came back to Brisbane one of our new neighbors was a jazz trombonist. He asked us along to see him perform at the Jazz Club one Sunday night. I took my camera along and took some shots. The singer Melissa Western, happened to be beautiful as well as a good singer. I emailed her some pix not realising she was also part of the marketing team at the Queensland Theatre Co. and they were after some rehearsal photographs. Since then every month or so I have been invited in to witness people gathering to discuss big ideas and portray life in all its guises, I couldn’t have asked for more.My first gig was photographing “The Lonesome West” by Martin Mc Donagh and directed by Jon Halpin. It is a story of anger, frustration, cruelty and pain and made for riveting albeit awkward experience. Gallows humor deserves a wry smile at best and it was surprising when I got to see the production how some of the audience guffawed at the blackness, …maybe it’s just me.

(Friday, 18 December 2009)

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Troy Cassar-Daley

Last week Troy Cassar-Daley won his 4th ARIA and when added to his umpteen Golden Guitars, makes him a genuine legend. It took me back many moons to 2001 and my chance encounter with the great storyteller himself. A few month's after I met Roy Wilders (previous post) he introduced me to Jeff and Vicki Chandler who managed Troy at the time. Roy was getting local gigs through a guy who had an office beside the Chandlers. Jeff was really successful and there were gold discs all over the office walls with names like James Blundell, and Lee and Tania Kernigan etc. Roy being the personality he is, popped his head in to say "hi" every time he went past.

To cut a long story short, Troy had a new single and needed some shots. He drove down to the Northern Rivers in his new red HSV (a birthday present from Laurel) and we spent an afternoon at the Billinudgel Hotel. Troy's love for music just pours out of him and he could hardly put down his guitar, except for when he was spotting fish from the bridge at Brunswick Heads.

Soon after he signed with EMI and I shot two of his first album covers with them too. That time I'd driven to Briso to hire a new fangle DSLR which weighed the same as two bricks. The only trouble was I couldn't get it to work. So there was Troy, a stylist, his management team and Chris O'hearn who was A+R manager with EMI at the time, all looking at me. Anyway I made some excuse I didn't understand myself and hoped they didn't realise, and shot it on film. Once it was shot the Art department took over and knocked out some interesting results, some made it some didn't. Anyway Troy congratulations on your ongoing, upward, stellar career! 

Troy Cassar-Daley, Musician portraits, Good looking pub dogs

(Wednesday, 09 December 2009)

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