You Are Here writer in residence, Andrew Galan has submitted this article about the You Are Here festival breakfasts, which you should all probably go to, because why not spend breakfast with lovely people.
Nic Delatovic’s Festival Breakfast with Matty Ellis and Luke McGrath
YouAreHere’s series of festival breakfasts are informal chats occurring most days between one of the festival producers and a couple of the artists. They are useful opportunities to gain some insight into the festival process, what lies behind some of the art being showcased, have coffee, and decide what to check out in the coming days.
On the sunny Saturday morning of 16 March at the YouAreHere Festival Breakfast, out in New Acton, Nic Delatovic spoke with Matty Ellis of The Ellis Collective and Luke McGrath of all kinds of things regarding their art and the festival.
For those unfamiliar with Luke McGrath he is a musician with Canberra bands such as The Missing Lincolns and Babyfreeze; the filmmaker behind cooking webseries One Pot Punk Rock and online music showcase The Slimer Sessions; and he writes articles, scripts and comic strips.
Quizzed by Nic under the warm sun Luke outlined his daily shoot of ten part webseries Heartbroken Assassin and its exploration of love-loss and violence; playing with The Missing Lincolns at the Mixtape From Canberra; assisting close friend El Lukio to stage the live luchador cooking show One Pot Punk Rock; and lastly, preparing his component of Hit Him in the Comic Cuts. Describing this last show was where Luke was most animated. For Hit Him in the Comic Cuts Luke was given access to National Film and Sound Archive materials to create an artistic response. For this show Luke has edited an unfinished silent film into a 20 minute narrative, composed an accompanying soundtrack, and assembled and rehearsed a Canberra super group to perform the music live. You can read more about Luke and his expectations for YouAreHere and Hit Him in the Comic Cuts here.
Luke McGrath records Sam King for The Slimer Sessions
For those unfamiliar with Matty Ellis, he is the The Ellis Collective singer/songwriter described in music magazines around Australia as ‘a masterful storyteller’, ‘one of the most intelligent, compelling and honest male singer/songwriters to emerge in a long while’, and ‘Emotive and gutsy.’ With his band he has the album Means What It Means, and the much searched for but out of print Orange EP.
Talking to Matty Ellis Nic delved into YouAreHere history and raised The Ellis Collective’s victory during the YouAreHere 2012 basketball knockout between Waterford, Fun Machine, and Super Best Friends, and this led Matty to raise one of the perceptions of YouAreHere he enjoys; that the festival provides opportunity to realise ideas. At this point Luke jumped in stating he has seen a number of concepts come together and work really well under the festival banner, that it engages with audiences while pushing artists, and that over three years the festival has gone from strength to strength. Matty continued on this theme saying The Ellis Collective involvement this year is in support of others as the band is currently developing a new album, that they are playing more gigs than they have for a while, but that through the 2013 festival he has started thinking of concepts for next year. One being an interview series called In Bed with Matty Ellis, another being a festival residency for the band.
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The Ellis Collective live at the Street Theatre
Luke McGrath can be found digitally at http://lick-nuke.com/ and Matty Ellis at http://www.theelliscollective.com/. Festival Breakfast details can be found under the talk-series tag on this YouAreHere website.
Andrew Galan, YouAreHere writer-in-residence
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