Centre stage: Our guest list

Torre DeRoche and The Stereo Stories Band. Photo courtesy of Write Around The Murray Festival, 2018

This photo encapsulates the moment when story meets song in our shows.

Albury, 2018: Torre de Roche turns to the band as they play some of Ben Lee’s Gamble Everything For Love partway through Torre’s story about sailing right across the Pacific with a new lover – and discovering, pretty much in the middle of nowhere while baling out water, that he doesn’t know much about sailing. Or love.

Our shows turn on that fulcrum, that intersection, that moment when song and story merge. It’s more theatre than anything. It ain’t a pub gig, that’s for sure.

And crucial to it all is the give and take between the band the writers, with many writers very new to the idea. How many writers? I’ve stopped counting, but you’ll see the tally board on The guest list. Take a look sometime.

Guest writers for our next shows are Jock Serong and Angela Savage (Port Fairy 3 September) and Amal Awad, Eliza Hull and Jock (again!) at Albury on 17 September.

Anson Cameron ponders the fate of a friendship while Jack Gramski sings The Kill Devil Hills song Words From Robin To Batman. Photo courtesy of Write Around The Murray Festival, Albury, 2016.