Darcy Hay | Public figure
Darcy Hay
Phone: +61 417 242 725
Reviews
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25.01.2022 Had a lovely time playing today for the opening of Geraldton's newest beach cafe! It doesn't get much better, as far as vibes are concerned, than playing music overlooking the peaceful Indian Ocean, with some great company in tow. Thanks very much for having me AJs!
22.01.2022 G'day! I bought a banjo two weeks ago, and this is my little debut on it - a shaky reindition of Ring Of Fire. Watch this space, as I shall practise and improve!
22.01.2022 Here's a bit of good old fashioned blues, utilising my trusty cigarette lighter slide - hope ya can dig it!
21.01.2022 A rough demo of a brand new blues song I wrote, with a good dose of cigarette lighter slide. My apologies, again, for reading the lyrics (off the computer screen this time) while singing them, rather than facing the camera and singing. Hope ya like it nonetheless! THE ANCIENT WARNING The sun on my skin didn't warm me, ... it didn't warm me - it didn't warm me. The river's bends were muddy, and smoke rose, like bitter steam. The honeyeaters were crying, and flying, and screaming and the honey-bees were diving into the rushing stream. The winds are a motherless child, an orphaned lamb in the barren wilds, and the flames, a ravening crocodile licking the stones clean. A preacher stood with his hands out, throwing bones down, on the black ground - spitting liquor in the gales, and shouting, "Come and wash me clean." His faith was tempest in the flames, Lord, and the sky poured, and the clouds roared, and the hail ripped like crystal swords, and the rains were pink and green. These wicked rivers are not Jordan. Child, hear the ancient warning - "The sunset is kin to the dawning, for both hold the darkeness' dreams." Didn't my Lord deliver Daniel? Deliver Daniel, deliver Daniel? Didn't my Lord deliver Daniel? Why not every man?
21.01.2022 A cheery old tune about dying #inmytimeofdying #blues #bluesmusic #australianblues #australianbluesmusic #folk #bobdylancover #bobdylan #oldmusic #darcyhay
20.01.2022 After an onset of quite devastating sickness, I've had to pull out of tonight's gig at The Murch. I'd like to give my deepest thanks to the manager and staff down there for being so understanding - I hope to be back on my feet soon, after some rest today.
19.01.2022 Good news everyone! I'm very lucky, in this life, to have some very cool friends - and, with them, I get to play some very important music. I'll be working with my good mates Rosie, Jacqui and Peter, to record a song written in the Warriyangga language. There's only one fluent speaker still with us, and it's a great privilege to be able to lend some of my handiwork and enthusiasm to something that could help keep a language intact for generations to come. Also, I'll be perfor...ming at next year's Nannup Music Festival! I made some great friends there last time, like absolute gun songwriter Elwood Gray from Broome, and will be looking forward to performing again and seeing who I bump into next year down amongst the tall trees! https://wam.org.au/wam-announces-ten-mid-west-artists-sel/ See more
19.01.2022 What a wonderful shot, taken after playing Saturday's Art Games! Joel Pearson there is a gun on sound and tech, and I can quite honestly say that I know no better camera coordinator than Westy there. Good times with good friends!
18.01.2022 Mullet and banjo = the height of urban sophistication
17.01.2022 Now that was a night and a half! I cannot remember having so many people dancing at a gig before, nor having such a soaking wet shirt by the end of the night. 1000 odd k round trip in 24 hours - such is the muso life! Thanks for having me Carnarvon!
17.01.2022 Three jerry cans and three guitars means this humble songwriter is off on an odyssey! Tomorrow, I'm heading out to a few remote csttle stations with some good friends from Bundiyarra Irra Wangga language centre, accompanying the last fluent Warriyangga/Thiinma speaker, and a bunch of Warriyangga people for a trip to country in the inland Gascoyne region. Here's a very rough impression of where that country is, with Geraldton (our starting and finishing point) also highlighted.... For two weeks, I'll be helping to identify birds on Warriyangga country so as to help build up a Warriyangga dictionary for future generations - I'll also be holding a few little songwriting sessions, to hopefully help support the passion for music as a means of passing culture along. I'm very much looking forward to two weeks of birdwatching, great company, remote bushland, singing around the campfire, and whittling down 30 possible original songs for my next album into a finalised tracklist for the studio! It's a very deep honour to have some small involvement in helping do something as priceless precious as preserving a language, and I'm looking forward to the next two weeks immensely.
16.01.2022 I'm delighted to announce that I'll be recording a new album full of country songs, right here in Geraldton, in October! Here's some of the 32 songs I'll be sifting through to choose what makes the final cut, along with some new lyrics I've been playing around with. Huzzah!
16.01.2022 This was a blast to be part of last year, and I'm looking forward to giving it a crack this year! To Gero musos or poets who feel like striking a creative blow for your hometown - I'd recommend getting in touch with Funtavia and giving this program a shot! https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=3350261861659307&id=1055076294511220&ref=content_filter
15.01.2022 I went and saw the start of our wildflowers this morning, complete with paper daisies starting to emerge. It reminded me of this little ditty that I wrote, about specialised health care being unavailable to people outside cities, and how illness can effect regional families. PAPER DAISY PLAINS She came here twice or so a year, ... with flaming rings of scarlet hair, and sunken eyes, stretched thin with fear and shame. Cucumber sandwiches, if you please; in the midday eddies of Monday's breeze. Kulbardi calling, joyously free were pain, to a woman from the plains. No visitors most of the times that she came. Instead, we gave four walls to make her sane. No children came by on a Saturday - once, there were phone calls that played Fur Elise on endless reels. I suppose that the children ceased to feel that there were words left for either side that could heal, or say much of anything anymore. She last came by about three years ago with buckled old legs and whirls of snow, and a rattling cough that just wouldn't go and no home left in this world. We knew that one time would be her last, and when her time came, it was sweet and fast. No more sadness. No more past, for a woman with endless curls. A pauper's grave. A plastic rose. A cigarette. A doctor's note. Magpies, fly her - fly her home to paper daisies on the plains.
15.01.2022 Friends! I've got two gigs on this week. The first is a little slot on Tuesday between 12.45pm and 2pm, playing at the opening of AJ's Beach Cafe (at the southern end of Midallia Beach, as per the map attached here) - should be a lovely one, with all of the beautiful beach weather we've been having! Then, Saturday night, you can catch me at my first ever gig down at The Murch, between 7pm and 10pm. Looking forward to it!
14.01.2022 An old, flatpicking country standard from the 1920's - this song was apparently the 'Stairway To Heaven' of it's day, that all budding young guitarists yearned to play. The lyrics actually date back to the 1860's, before 'country music' as we know it existed! WILDWOOD FLOWER I will twine, I will mingle my raven black hair... with the lillies so pale, and the roses so fair - and the myrtle so bright, with emerald hue, and the pale amaryllis, and hyssop so blue. I will dance, I will sing, and my laugh will be gay. I will cease this wild weeping, drive sorrow away. Though my heart is now breaking, he'll never know how his name made me tremble, my pale cheeks to glow. He told me he loved me, and promised to love through ill and misfortunes, all others above. Now another has won him - misery, to tell how he left me in silence, no word of farewell. He told me to love him, and called me his flower that blossomed to cheer him the brighter each hour. But I awoke from my dreaming - my idol was clay, and all portions of loving had faded away. I will think of him never; I'll be wildly gay. I'll charm every heart, and the crowd I will sway. I'll live yet to see him regret the dark hour, that he won and neglected his pale wildwood flower.
12.01.2022 Friends! I'm doing an interview with ABC Drive Regional (all over regional WA, I think) about the relation between musical expression and mental health. It's mental health week, and I've been honoured by them choosing This Blue World Is Full Of Joy as an example of how music ties into expressing the darkness - and light - within our souls, with particular regard to depression. I'm on air at 4.45pm, and I believe the frequency is 630AM. Hope ya like our yarn!
11.01.2022 It's a grey and gloomy day, and I thought I'd sing a bit of a slow, brooding number about fighting with the ones you love. 'TILL NEXT TIME AROUND Day is done, and I'm tired. ... The wind is sucking my bones, and the cats are yowling. My face feels hard as leather, and my lips are cracked and torn - and I'm too tired to feel angry, like I might have done before. Just fetch me my pillow and blanket, I will curl up here on the floor. Day is done - the words have been said, and I don't care anymore. This house is trembling. It's a teapot lined with barbed wire. The wind feebly threatens the steam as it blows - and I think of all of the arguing, bottled up, out of sight. The drudgery of the daytime, and the leaden weight of the night, and all of the shouting in between from two who consider themselves in the right. Not anymore - I lay down my sword, you can have this fight. The stars are out now, and my body has grown cold. I need the sobriety of the night to cool me off. You use your time alone, like me to cry your victim sounds. Tomorrow, we'll both be cooled off - our feet on solid ground. Yes, it will all be good, it'll all work out, we won't argue, or make a single sound. It will all lie down - it will all lie down, 'till next time around.
10.01.2022 Look who made the front page this morning! Thanks very much to the Guardian for covering my WAM Song Of The Year nomination! I don't believe I've been front cover material before, so that's one little dot point to cross off the musical bucket list.
09.01.2022 We're two days away from the WAM Song Of The Year awards night - a nail-biting occasion for this songwriter, in finding out if I've been blessed enough to take home the gong in the Outstanding Regional category. I take much joy in knowing that whoever wins, it'll be a win for regional music in having musical produce from the regions so well represented by the other beaut musos who are also nominees in the regional category - not to mention friends from the regions who've picked up nominations in the folk and country categories! If you'd like to tune in, the evening kicks off at 7.30pm on Wednesday - huzzah! https://m.facebook.com/events/565532000989214
08.01.2022 A little bit of Folsom Prison from last night's gig! #folsomprisonblues #johnnycash #johnnycashcover #folsomprisonbluescover #aussiecountrymusic #aussiecountry
07.01.2022 It's my birthday tomorrow, and I've long wanted to perform my favourite song - a slide guitar instrumental by Blind Willie Johnson, and the most spiritual song that I know. Forgive my sloppy playing. This was a spur of the moment performance, after some time of not playing music. A birthday present to myself, I suppose.
07.01.2022 One for Minister For Arts, #davidtemplemanmla - definitely check out his acapella cover of Hallelujah, parodying very cleverly the last year of WA politics. I've sung it in faithful imitation of #leonardcohen . I'm doing a sold out fund-raiser on Tuesday night with the Minister and #laradaltonforgeraldton , with a newly formed three piece band! #hallelujah #halleluyahchallenge #leonardcohencover #leonardcohenpoetry #leonardcohen #leonardcohenlyrics #leonardcohentribute
06.01.2022 I didn't take home the big prize at last night's WAM Awards, but I had a terrific time taking part in the awards ceremony, and the great thrill involved of being a nominee in the first instance! I'll be looking forward to getting a few new songs together and giving things another shot down the line!
04.01.2022 Some electric slide guitar jamming, with an exquisite drummer! Motherless Children is a timeless classic #motherlesschildren #ericclapton #slideguitar #bluessong #bluesmusic #australianblues
04.01.2022 First gig with a little three piece band was reasonably successful! Lots of love from the (sold out!) venue for our fund-raiser with the Minister For Arts. Good times seemed to be had by all, even if my Irish pennywhistle cover of The Lord Of The Rings theme exploded most viciously in my face :p
02.01.2022 A draft demo for a cheery little flatpicking song I wrote about our local river rising with the Winter rains. My apologies for reading the lyrics off a piece of paper while singing them, rather than facing the camera - I'm still trying to memorise this knotty tongue-twister of a song. CHAPMAN RIVER RISING Rippling, swelling, ... foaming, sliding, trickles splitting - waters widening. Lapping, tapping, sapping saplings, bending eddies, with the waters, rising. The fury of the flotsam soon will be arriving. Tangling trees with bark and leaves 'till the Chapman River's flow is subsiding. Yabbies, guppies, tadpoles - trapping eggs in jars, for homeward raising. Children goggling, giggling, fishing for mozzie larvae, for their tadpoles, grazing. Muddy thongs, soaking dogs, on carpets that I'd spent hours razing with shampoo, and scrubbing too, 'till it was soft and new as the baby blue horizon. Surging seaward, purging driftwood from the dry banks, to the ocean. The sand resists for a little bit, then two waters kiss where the dunes had closed in. An ancient fight - two snakes collide, then peace subsumes their commotion; and all is well as the waters swell down at my beloved River Chapman.
