MAE sing up a storm at the Down South Festival
2007 started off slowly once again, but has been gathering momentum and is building to a big finish for the year!
After several months off at the end of 2006, we got back together at the start of the 2007 school year, and once we started singing it was like we'd never been away! We started off revising and reviewing all our old repertoire, and getting some coaching in Perth from our coach Jo Oosterhoff. We worked steadily up to the Central Southern Eisteddfod in Narrogin in May. We have competed in this eisteddfod several times, and were pleased once again to place 1st in our section, and scoring higher than previous years. The following day we performed at Saint Mary's Catholic School in Boyup Brook, who were celebrating their 50th birthday.
After that we were light on for engagements, unfortunately having to decline several events due to clashing schedules, so took the time to learn some new songs, including "One Fine Day", "And So It Goes" (a beautiful Billy Joel song), both with Michelle taking the lead part, a great new comedy song "Renaissance Woman", with Judy taking centre stage, and 2 new ballads, "Can You Feel the Love Tonight" (from The Lion King) and "Bandstand in Central Park" (at last, a ballad that Lomond really loves!). We also added something a bit different with the classic Eurythmics' song, "Sweet Dreams (are Made of This)". Adding some of these new songs to our show required a bit of a re-write, and we spent some time working on our new, improved show. We also took the time to enter the Joondalup Eisteddfod, where we sang "Since You've Been Gone". We were up against some pretty stiff competition (namely the current Sweet Adelines Australian Regional silver and bronze medal quartets!) and were happy with gaining a highly recommended score. However, our attention was focused on our upcoming shows with our new material.
The new show premiered in Collie in September, when we were able to perform for the men and women involved in TREK Australia, who were motoring around WA raising money for Princess Margaret Hospital, and the Children's Cancer Foundation in particular. They were a fantastic group of people and the show went down extremely well - a great time was had by all and we were more than happy to donate our performance to such a worthy cause. This show signalled the start of a rush of engagements, the next one the following week being a guest spot at the PEAC showcase in Narrogin - as a result of a suggestion by one of the PEAC students who is in my son's class at Darkan DHS! Nice to know we're appreciated by at least one 10 year old boy! The next night it was off to Pemberton to perform for a tour group over from the Eastern states. We did a 20 minute pre-dinner set then a full show later in the evening. It was a hard slog, with the group being made up of seniors (60's to 80's age range), just arrived from over east and having bussed all day - but we managed to hold their attention for the whole show, and still managed to get plenty of laughs. The following Saturday we headed off to Kukerin, to Cambinata Yabbies - a black tie shearing shed dinner - complete with 5 course gourmet meal, candle light and baby grand in the middle of the shed! We got to go all out and wear our glamorous red sparkly dresses we had for the Adelaide competition (amazingly I was still able to squeeze myself into it - with a fair bit of help from cast iron underclothing!). The venue was lovely and the show went down very well (as did the exquisite food, wine and locally produced beer ...)
Our final event for the year was the Albany Show/Down South Festival, which ran over 9th & 10th November. We sang around the show grounds, and after the fashion parades for the show over the 2 days, as well as performing 3 shows for the Down South Festival. Again we were very well received by all who stopped to listen - I have to say I was pretty proud of the way the quartet performed ... I estimate we sang for about 8 hours solid over the 2 days! Our voices (and our feet) were worn out by Saturday afternoon!
We have had some fantastic feedback from all these shows, and are very excited by the responses we have been receiving. It really does make all the hours of rehearsal worthwhile!
Our recent engagements highlighted our need to upgrade our sound gear, and we decided to purchase 2 condenser/omni-directional microphones to use for our show package. They were an expensive item, but are so much better than our hand-held unidirectional mics, and it's much more convenient than travelling to Bunbury to hire mics for every show! Thanks again to Derek and the guys from Totally Sound in Bunbury.
This year has just flown by! Once again, thanks to those organizations who have taken a chance on a barbershop quartet from Darkan ... we hope we were everything you were expecting, and maybe even a little bit more! We've certainly had fun over the last few years honing our performance skills and developing our show from being just a bunch of barbershop songs to a complete 40 minute, 'cabaret' show. Thanks also to our supportive families, and again, from me, to Lomond (amazing lead), Judy (easy-going bass) and Michelle (understanding tenor) for putting up with the hard work from an exacting and at times completely unreasonable and artistically volatile baritone and director!
However, I regret to say that due to some personal and business issues which have arisen recently, Mad About Ewe will be taking a break for an indefinite time. We certainly hope to be back up again, performing some time next year, so please don't hesitate to contact us with any queries!
Jacquie South