Review: ADELAIDE SONGS – OUR STORY: ADELAIDE FRINGE 2021 at Adelaide Town Hall

Reviewed by Ewart Shaw, Friday 19th March 2021.

Adelaide is a truly great place to live, pandemic or otherwise, and Adelaide people are generally far too decorous to make a song and dance about it. Some people, Adelaide Songs, however, are prepared to subvert the dominant paradigm and at least, if not dancing, are singing about it, and writing the songs as well.

This concert, one of the last events of the Adelaide Fringe 2021, is the latest manifestation of a songwriting project linking the Clare Valley to the City of Adelaide through the voices of some very talented people indeed. HATs Inc. SA (Heritage Arts and Traditions) is based at the Auburn Courthouse Cultural Centre, and songwriters and singers have been writing, inspired by this city, since 2015.

There was an impressively large audience in the Adelaide Town Hall, though the front-of-house staff was active in dissuading people from sitting too close. A woman sitting behind me made herself comfortable by resting her legs on the lap of the man in the next seat but one. He wasn't complaining, so I assume they'd been introduced. The first hour was pretty full-on and the couple next to me didn't make it back after the interval, but there was enough variety in terms of subject matter, song styles, and instrumental work to keep it lively.

The songwriters on stage were the ubiquitous Keith Preston, Alan Hartley, and Paul Roberts, with Jamie Webster, singer and harpist, Peter Franche, on accordion and bass guitar, Ashley Turner, on violin, and Satomi Ohnishi, percussion. There were some serious decades of experience on the stage.

Paul Roberts led the ensemble, with his powerful voice and repertoire of hand gestures. His Hindley Street Waltz reflected on the neat footwork required along the street on a busy night, but his Rosaleen looked back to the fate of one of the many young Irish girls, survivors of the famine, effectively transported to Adelaide and elsewhere in Australia to make up the shortfall in women in the state, in the 1840s and 1850s.

If I have to pick three songs that demonstrate the political and social range of the project, Keith Preston's Duduk in Gawler, a celebration of a Lebanese wedding in a country town, roared along, with great backing from Ashley Turner's fiddle, My School, by Alan Hartley sets to a jaunty tune the Adelaide question "what school did you go to?", which sets you neatly socially and financially in your place, the performers chanted "My school is better than yours" with great conviction, and Alan Hartley's Timmy was not about his dog or his best mate in primary school, but Tim Marcus Clark and the collapse of the State Bank of South Australia. A mate in the audience filled me in on the back story. Former journalist, Hartley, had been a member of the SBSA media department at the time of the collapse. They do say "write about what you know".

While the director's cut CD is a fine souvenir of the concert, and the project, some of the best songs of the night aren't there. There are some songs from Paula Standing, who wasn't on stage. It's on the Arts on Air, Mondays at 4pm, 5EBI FM play list.

This is another event made possible in this prestigious venue, with a grant from the City of Adelaide Community Activation programme, that also made it possible for the Adelaide Baroque Orchestra to present their Purcell concert. I've said it before, in print, on air, and online, that the Town Hall should be open to more events like these.

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