April 2012: Farewell Sava, but not at BMW Edge on Easter Sunday!
Hey guys!
Is it April already? No. No it is not. Not for a couple of days. Phew.
Get Vocal 2012 - what an awesome party!
As a lot of you know, the Get Vocal 2012 festival has now been run and done, after months of crazy planning and behind the scenes work from Mealz and the Colonel. Two weeks later and we're starting to recover...
Anyone who made it down will agree - the guys have done a pretty astounding job of getting the a cappella community together and really building some energy and momentum. The festival had more than 650 performers. That's just crazy.
It's awesome to see how much the other groups in town are improving - and very scary to see just how good the next generation of vocal bands might be. Congratulations to everyone involved and here's to singers, you guys really know how to party!
One of the sad bits of news we had to deliver at the festival is that our freshly minted bass, Sava 'Turkish' Djukic has decided the touring musician's life is not for him, and he's going back to full time teaching at a school that's given him the keys to both the choir and the rugby team.
Sava's still going to work with us around Melbourne when it fits in with his kiddy wrangling, but he won't be doing any touring with the band.
So... Who's replacing him? Well, nothing can replace his manic enthusiasm, manly sportiness and knowledge of Australian Prime Ministers throughout history (which has helped us to "no dummy" accolades through many a Herald Sun Super Quiz).
We're grooming Luke to take over Sava's role as primary sex symbol of the band. This may take some time.
And musically speaking, we're taking the opportunity to take things forward instead of straight rebuilding around a new singer.
So, before too long, Suade's going to be a 4 piece show. But that doesn't mean we're losing voices. In fact, by the end of some songs we'll have as many as 30 voices going at once. We're going a bit high tech, folks.
In fact, we're pushing to the limits of what's possible with current live looping and effects technology in search of new sounds - some of which are very vocal and some of which are a bit out there! We're mixing it in with some good ol' 4-part a cappella and calling it our VocalTronics show. And as we develop it, we're mixing it in with every show we do from now on. Our first few test runs have gone extremely well, we're loving the looks on peoples' faces when the new sound hits them!
So... One door closes (sort of) and another opens. We're really excited about the new show and we're working harder than we've ever worked to get it up and running. Come check it out!
BMW Edge on Easter Sunday
When, you ask? Well how about Easter Sunday, at one of the sweetest venues in Melbourne, BMW Edge theatre at Federation Square?
We're performing as part of Jonathon Welch's National Festival of Choirs. We're the Choir in Residence (even though we're not a bloody choir) so we'll be working with a bunch of other singers throughout the event, but it all leads up to a big public concert on Easter Sunday.
Here's the lowdown:
Where: BMW Edge theatre, Federation Square, Melbourne city. When: Easter Sunday 8th April, 8pm How Much: $30 / $20 concession Bookings:right here!
Is this show going to be a great opportunity to (sort of) farewell Sava? Well, no. In fact, he's going to be wrangling teenagers in some remote part of rural Thailand. So we'll be joined at BMW Edge by the awesome Sammy Q, one of our best buddies and Suade tenor from waaaay back. He sang on our 'All Singing, No Dancing' CD, he's got an absolutely stunning voice and is a total ratbag like the rest of us. So this will be a pretty unique show! C'mon down and say g'day. :)
I think that's about all the news we can handle this month. Stay warm as winter sets in!
See you soon... :D Loz ...and the Suade lads.
Photo of the Month
Unfortunately, as Sava's tenure with Suade ends, so does his famous "Sava squats on the great monuments of the world' photo series. Here's one of our favourites, as he squats on Singapore's Arts Centre. Fabulous.
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Sorry we've been so quiet for the last few months - we needed a break! 2011 was twice as busy for us as any previous year, but we had a nice long break over the holiday season.
Time to kick back, relax and unwind? NO! We've spent the last two and a half solid months completely rebuilding the band from the ground up. We're talking a truckload of new music, some lineup changes, and some crazy new technology that we believe is gonna push our sound into places we've never been before.
But let's not get ahead of ourselves... Here's what's going on in the next couple of months:
West Coast Tour
Tomorrow morning, we fly out for Perth on our first visit to the West Coast of Australia. We'll be spending a month over there, starting with a big concert, ending with a fantastic international vocal festival, and sandwiched in the middle is two solid weeks as artists in residence at a prominent high school.
We don't know a lot of sandgropers yet, so if any of you guys know folks over in Perth or Albany that you reckon would enjoy our show, let 'em know about the following dates:
Victoria Park Twilight Concert Finale When: This Sunday the 12th Feb, 17:30-19:30 Where: McCallum Park, Canning Highway, Victoria Park (Perth) WA How Much: Free! Facebook event you can invite people to here!
One Big Sing, Playmakers Closing Concert, Great Southern Festival, Albany WA Featuring: Suade with Coco's Lunch and the Plumbers of Rome (USA) When: Sunday March 4, 18:30 - 20:30 Where: Wignall's Winery, 448 Chesterpass Road, Albany, WA 6330 How Much: Standard $39.50 Family (two adults, two children) $100 Bookings: Right here!
Get Vocal 2012
Closer to home, our fearless leader The Colonel has been burning the midnight oil working on his other baby - Vocal Australia, an organisation dedicated to promoting and developing modern a cappella music in Australia. VA has been going great guns here in Melbourne, with a whole host of talented groups coming together to form a singing scene with a real sense of camaraderie and co-operation.
The jewel in VA's crown is the Get Vocal festival - the first one here in Melbourne in 2010 was a sellout event and an absolute riot, and The Colonel and Mealz have been slaving away to make sure the 2012 version is bigger, bolder and better in every way!
Take a look at the lineup of groups assembled for this lung-fest - of course Suade's gonna be there, as performers, volunteers and general drunkards, but the lineup also boasts The Idea of North, Coco's Lunch, Fourtunate, Mal Webb, Joel Turner, Pot Pourri, Tripod and basically every vocal band in Melbourne on top of that. There's something like 30 events across a six day stretch.
If you dig singing, this is gonna be a six day birthday party. Six days of workshops, concerts, and best of all, drankin' and sangin' in the festival lounge. I can't state this strongly enough: It. Will. Be. AWESOME.
It's also hopefully going to be our first chance to run the new Suade show. So here's how you can catch our two feature shows at Get Vocal:
If you've never heard of Tripod, all you need to know is this: they're funny, funny buggers, famous throughout Australia and internationally and for good reason. And Fourtunate is an absolutely stunning group of three young brothers and one other out of Sydney - these Samoan kids just ooze singing talent out of every pore, with a swagger and attitude that has built them literally millions of YouTube hits. See to believe stuff.
Mal Webb is an Aussie vocal music institution and an absolutely exhausting force of nature to watch on a stage. His one man show is hilarious, wildly creative and it runs at a zillion miles an hour, just like his crazy mind. And Fixate... We have no idea what to expect from these guys. It's Mealz Alder's new vocal supergroup, featuring our buddy Phil Tesoro on vocal percussion, and the bombastic Kristen Bourke on lead. This band looks like an absolute beast in training, and this will be one of their first shows ever.
These will be two amazing nights of a cappella... But we'd encourage you to get involved and get out to as many other concerts and workshops as you can, because the Melbourne singing scene is an awesome community full of hidden superstars, amazing music and friendly people. So please take the time to visit www.getvocalfestival.com, check out the avalanche of events and spread the word to your vocally minded friends and family.
Remember, Get Vocal 2010 sold out long before opening night, and a lot of people missed out on their favourite acts. Don't let it happen to you! There's more seats available this year, but book early and don't say we didn't tell ya to!
If you didn't notice, we're a bit excited. :)
See you soon... :D Loz ...and the Suade lads.
Photo of the Month
What will the new Suade group look like? What will it sound like? Will it be rubbish? These and other questions to be answered as soon as we get our new show together!
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Long time no newsletter... Sorry! We've simply been crazy busy this year. With Sava and Luke on board, we've been able to really pick up the pace. In the last 12 months we've done twice as many shows as we did in any previous year, and we're working as hard as we can to accelerate even harder. We're having a great time, getting out around the country and around the world on a regular basis, even if it's destroying our social lives!
We're gearing up to head over to Korea and Singapore again for most of October, which is gonna be fun, and we've got a whole stack of other projects on the boil which we're sure you're gonna love!
But the big news right now is two things: four shows at Melbourne's Fringe Festival just before we head off overseas, and our very first batch of Suade t-shirts... Yay! So here's the skinny:
Suade @ the Fringe Festival x 4
Four nights at the old Trades Hall building. It would have been a full week, but we're leaving on the Monday to take on the world again in the Korean a cappella competition. So we'll be brushing up our contest pieces and showing you a few new tunes before we go.
When: Thursday 22 til Sunday 25 September, 8pm Where: The New Ballroom at Bella Union, corner Lygon and Victoria streets, Melbourne How much: $35/32, groups of 8 or more $25 per person Bookings: Fringe Festival on 9660 9666.
It's long overdue, we know, but we've finally extracted the ol' digit and got our first batch of Suade t-shirts printed.
We've got 'em in a bunch of sizes, and in mens and ladies cuts, and we're selling 'em for a measly $25, through the suade.net website. We'll ship 'em anywhere, too, so international orders are most welcome, even if the Aussie dollar is pretty strong right now.
So get the lads on your chest!
That's all for the moment, we're all working hard to bring you some bigger news, but that's in the pipeline. ;)
Until next time... Keep on singing! Love Loz ...and the Suade lads.
Photo(s) of the month
Sessions have finally started for a new CD - we're working on it in the tiny gaps we get in a pretty crazy schedule at the moment. Here's the Colonel in the studio to prove we're not fibbin'.
Well guys, I guess it's time to break the news on one of the worst-kept secrets going around. Tom Cruise is gay. Closer to home, I have the bittersweet task of announcing that after 8 years of singing with Suade, our good buddies Roy and Een have decided to move on - Een to focus on his flower arranging, and Roy because he is pregnant.
These two guys have put in an amazing amount of heart, soul and hard work to build Suade into what it is today. 8 years is a pretty significant time in our young(ish) lives and I guess in a lot of ways we've grown up together and learned a heck of a lot in the process. The departure of these two irreplaceable friends left the rest of us with a tough choice: should we wrap this band up for good, and get our social lives back, or fight to rebuild Suade again?
Chris, Robbly and I had a good hard think about it, and decided that we all felt the best was still ahead of us on this journey. Suade is busier than it's ever been, we're earning more and more opportunities both in Australia and abroad - in fact, this accelerating schedule was the major factor in Roy and Een's decision. So with so much ahead of us, we decided to retool and move forward. And these are our new tools:
:
Luke and Sava. Click to inspect them more closely.
Meet Luke Stevenson and Sava Djukic, our new countertenor and bass. Luke is a music nerd of the highest order, a jazz-obsessed, pitch-perfect, falsetto-singing oddity in skinny pants that accentuate his twig-thin legs. Sava is a six foot four, rugby-playing, gym rat music teacher with infectious enthusiasm, big energy and an even more tightly packed scrotum than Roy's. Put them in the same room and they seem like the perfect metaphor for the odd combination of talents that make up Suade.
For the last four months these two guys have been working their butts off to get up to speed with the Suade show - hence why we've been quiet of late - and we're proud to say the new lineup just completed a very successful short tour of Korea last week. Luke and Sava have earned their stripes, and we're confident that with the new energy they're injecting into the group, we're ready to take this thing further than we've ever gone before.
At times of upheaval like this, it's important to party, and party hard - and that's just what we plan to do. We thought it would be fitting to throw a Goodbye/Hello show to give Roy and Een a chance to go out on a few big notes, and introduce you guys to Sava and Lukey.
Farewell-o show
So I guess this is it. A farewell-hello show - it's your last chance to catch Roy and Een on stage with us and share what will probably be a fairly emotional night, followed by what will likely be some fairly heavy drinking.
We've chosen the Revolt arts space in Kensington, close to the Melbourne city centre, for the show. It's an amazing venue with a great team. A bit hard to find, but well worth your while, it's an old converted woolshed with a history as long as your arm and a pretty amazing future ahead of it.
This is a big one, folks. We'd love to see you there. You can't book tickets just yet, but that'll come online soon. Stick it in your diary and we'll let you know as soon as bookings open.
Other shows in June/July
We've been doing a lot of shows out of town and internationally lately, and we're aware some of our Melbourne peeps are starting to feel a bit neglected... So we're hitting Melbourne with a vengeance in June/July... Here's what's coming up, click through for full details:
Sunday 19th June Vocal Australia: Get Vocal: Lazy Sunday (with our buddies Blue Notion and the Nymphs) Penny Black, Brunswick
Wednesday, 22 June Vocal Australia: Get Vocal: Winter Harmony Showcase (with Harambee, DeCaf, Bacchanae, The Candy Stripes and the Vocal Agents) Bella Union, Trades Hall, Melbourne
Saturday 9 July Suade live at the Treble Clef cafe/lounge - a strictly limited $90 per head dinner in this fantastic venue out at Chirnside Park. 6 tables of 10 maximum, so be quick! Treble Clef cafe/lounge, Chirnside Park
Tuesday 19 July Melbourne Cabaret Festival: Opening night gala South Melbourne Town Hall
Fri/Sat/Sun 22/23/24 July Suade: For Adults Only - fans of 'Never seen my face before' and 'Underpants' will enjoy this show - we're doing all the borderline and dodgy material we can't get away with when we're representing Australia or entertaining corporate clients. Part of the Melbourne Cabaret Festival. South Melbourne Town Hall
Sat 30th July Suade live @ Firbank Grammar - three 30-minute sets and there's rumours of a man-meat auction at this annual fundraiser event. Centre for Creative Arts, Firbank Grammar, Brighton
Sunday 31st July Afternoon show as part of the Glen Eira City Council Winter Music Series. Glen Eira Town Hall, Caulfield
Click on the dates for full information and booking details, all these shows are now on sale!
Sorry to drop such a bomb on you, with a bit of luck we'll be able to perform more regularly around town and around Australia in the next 12 months.
All the best
Loz ...and the Suade lads (old and new)
ps. if anyone wants to write Een or Roy directly, you can get them at een@suade.net and roy@suade.net.
Photo(s) of the month
Bye bye Roy boy.
Bye bye tweety bird.
Two sad farewells and a new beginning... Strange and emotional times for the group, but there's good times ahead!
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Lozzo here. We're back safe and sound from the Asia 2010 tour, and we're happy to announce that it was a great success.
Six weeks on the road is a heck of a long time for us, but at the same time it's a great privilege to be able to support a trip of this sort of size doing what we love and representing the Aussie singing scene.
The main focus of the trip was the Korean international competition - and we put together a killer set for the night. We took 'Best Stage Performance,' but third overall, behind Germany's Niniwe and Korea's MayTree. Still, the work we put in was noticed by no less than the Australian Ambassador to Korea, who has invited us back for a show in Seoul on Australia day... So we'll be back in January!
Other highlights of the trip included:
- A performance in Singapore's old parliament house - the very room in which Minister Mentor Lee Kwan Yu forged today's Singapore through the sheer strength of his iron will and iron fist.
- A new Suade record of seven gigs in one day in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
- Singing the first ever performance in a beautiful, brand new concert hall in Gyoung-Ju, Korea... Followed by a brutal 5-hour ride back to Seoul with our knees around our ears in a tiny tour bus with other groups Niniwe and One The Full.
- A trip to the famous 'Modern Toilet' restaurant in Taipei, Taiwan, where they serve you turd-shaped foodstuffs out of miniature toilets. Classy!
- Looking through the glass floor at the observation deck on the 97th floor of the Shanghai World Financial Center, the third-tallest building in the world. Being afraid of heights, I nearly chundered.
Loads more stories to tell, and plenty that can never be told, but we'd prefer to tell them to you in person. But when?
VOCAL AUSTRALIA SHOWCASE
How about this Wednesday night? We're doing a set as part of Vocal Australia's Melbourne vocal showcase. It'll be us, plus Ginger & Tonic, Blue Notion, Key Change, Soul Serenade, the Vocal Agents, Voicebox and Mood Swing, down at the Trades Hall building in Melbourne. And only ten bucks for the lot!
Details:
When: Wednesday December 1, 2010, 8:00pm Where: Bella Union, Trades Hall, Cnr Lygon and Victoria Streets, Melbourne Bookings: www.bellaunion.com.au or 9650 5699
C'mon down!
HAVE A BEAUT CHRISTMAS
We're not singing any of the big Carols shows this Christmas, so we'll probably catch most of you in the new year. We've had a pretty amazing 2010, who knows what 2011 is gonna be like?
Oh, and if you're still looking for chrissy presents for somebody, we've got a fresh batch of 'Cuddles for Christmas' CDs out in the shed - since we sold out of them last year. So get in and grab a few copies to stuff yer stockings with!
Merry happy jollies to the lot of ya! Ho ho ho :) Loz ...and the Suade lads.
Photo of the month
Een and our buddy Rose from Shanghai, trying on the latest in kitty-hat-with-attached-mittens fashion. Lookin' smooth, guys!
Click image to enlarge.
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Suade is an award-winning five-part male a cappella vocal group based in Melbourne, Australia. That's five guys singing, each with a microphone and nothing else. No band, no backing tracks. Prepare to be amazed. Read more.
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