PROJECTS AND OUTFITS Shackleton3 The Shackleton3 album is out! We are playing an official record launch Sunday 27th of November at the Kew RSL. It is a family friendly sausage sizzling affair and Mac' and the Boys are going to open the show starting at 4pm. It's a cracking old RSL and it's lovely to be part of opening up new venues rather than bemoaning the closure of old ones. After that we've an instore at Basement discs on Friday the 2nd of December - it's double bill with Jeff Lang which should be pretty decent you'd think. After that we'll be taking the super flying folk show (Liz, Van, Mick) to Ararat Live on Saturday 17th December and then playing the Carringbush Christmas party Sunday the 18th. BIO Shackleton3 is Anna Burley, Liz Stringer and Mick Thomas. It's a low key Sunday evening excursion none the less potent for only being a couple of instruments and three voices. The playing is understated, the delivery casual - but (not surprisingly) forceful as there is enough vocal horsepower to tow a large caravan up a sizeable hill. It's a bunch of well chosen covers and some original songs that seem to be creeping in there as time passes. Anna sings most of them, Mick sings a few, Liz does a couple and everyone sings together a lot of the time. It's a band put together for the love of playing - for the excuse to get out there on a Sunday evening and be amongst friends, to document the city - the lights shining in the winter rain along Victoria Street, the birds returning to the city parks after so many years away, the remorse of a dusty Monday morning at Clifton Hill Station. The love you lost on Fitzroy Street and found at the Edingurgh Gardens and could never seem to find in The Lanes. 'Just Turning Pages' is the name of Shackleton 3's debut album. It's fifteen tracks long and it was recorded in a single day. It's mainly the covers they have been playing on and off for a couple of years but there's some surprises there, something to get you in and keep you wondering. Out through Croxton Records it's an album they are prepared to let people find for themselves - on line, a few select stores and live at shows. On a Sunday night maybe. This is pretty much what the band looks and sounds like Founders and Survivors Founders and Survivors is a project begun by Roar Film which initially will be a website based thing dealing with the extensive convict records they are still discovering in Tasmania. There are twenty stories to follow through - each with a strong musical component that will take in a number of songs and voices. Happy to say I have been working hard at this one and am up to song number twelve. Not that all are by me strictly - at this stage we have a couple by Van Walker, one by Liz Stringer and one by Ben Salter (Sex Hospital - modern classic!). Recording has begun and there have been a variety of guests including The Band Who Knew Too Much, Anna Burley, The Gin Club, Gary Adams and Tracey Harvey, Swill from the Men They Couldn't Hang, and Shelley Short. In the coming weeks we have got Rory McLeod booked to have a sing (via cyberspace) as well as Dobe Newton (from The Bushwackers), The Aerial Maps - and possibly Kat Spazzy, The Wolfgramm Sisters and Darren Hanlon. But I guess one of the really exciting elements of the project is that the core band for a lot of the recording is pretty much (well, actually) Weddings, Parties, Anything which is our first official recorded effort since 1998. I think it's going to be an absolute belter of a record. Weddings, Parties, Anything It was four shows this year and despite all the emails and Facebook messages that's definitely it for another twelve months. It was a great pity the appearance at the Preliminary Final at the MCG fell through but I guess that's what you get when you buy into an area where the music is a secondary consideration. The AFL have promised us we have a definite booking for next year but I guess we've got a good ten months to wait and see. At this stage I would say we are going to keep next year's Weddings schedule to the one show at the Palace in Melbourne so providing the MCG show can tie in with that then we'll be fine.