Inaugural Coffee & Lyrics provides a wakeup call for local music fans

It was the great Kris Kristofferson who famously sang about the “Sunday Morning Come Down.” While for some, the traditional day of rest is still devoted to regretting the night before, local musicians Bill Lawrie and Claire Moodie are setting about livening up Sunday mornings in the port city. Debuting at Fremantle’s Hybrid Warehouse this past Sunday was the pair’s new listening room experience, Coffee & Lyrics, where music aficionados filled the airy Quarry Street warehouse-come-venue for a delightful serving of, well, coffee and lyrics.

Lawrie and Moodie also opened the proceedings, performing a short and spritely set of acoustic ballads under their Sea Swallow moniker. In 2018 the pair authored and released the quintessential Fremantle music almanac, Freo Groove: Musicians of Fremantle (UWA Publishing) and while Coffee & Lyrics is presented under the book’s banner, it’s been broadened to include a wider geographic offering of musicians. With the aim of getting musicians out of pubs and bars and into a listening-friendly environment, with patrons settled back into the ring of sofas and armchairs and the warm, empathetic, and attentive atmosphere provided the perfect environment for Sea Swallow’s airy acoustics and gentle vocal interplay.

The format of Coffee & Lyrics saw Sea Swallow warming up the audience for two or three songs before handing over to the morning’s musical act who played two sets with a featured poet reciting their work in between. This week’s featured musicians were Maylands-based stalwarts, The Little Lord Street Band. Performing in duo mode, Natasha Shanks and James Rogers joined by a guest poet Natalie Damjanovich-Napoleon. The pairing provided the perfect launch to the inaugural presentation as, with coffee in hand, the enthusiastic audience seemingly delighted in the new and unique creative presentation.

The Little Lord Street Duo opened its first set with “Desolation Road” from the band’s 2016 Nashville-recorded EP Walk With Me before following up with “At the Bar” from the 2000 debut album, A Minute of Another Day. The duo’s first set drew heavily from the debut album with “Where Are We,” “Frankie’s Back in Town,” and “Fighting for Air,” all following suite. It was a heartfelt and at times wistful serving of chiming acoustic guitars accompanied by the pair’s gorgeous vocal chemistry. Little Lord Street’s sound often gets labelled as alternative country (a moniker given to classic Americana acts such as Uncle Tupelo, The Jayhawks, and Whiskeytown that died a death in the US long ago yet is still curiously embraced here) but their sound is more akin to classic folk-flavored west coast country-rock.

As The Little Lord Street Duo wrapped up their set, Moodie returned to the stage to introduce the guest poet. She pointed out that Natalie Damjanovich-Napoleon has not only won a bevy of national and international poetry accolades, but this past week was also awarded a Doctorate in Philosophy for her poetry. Damjanovich-Napoleon treated the audience to a selection of motherhood inspired poems from her latest collection, If There Is a Butterfly That Drinks Tears (Gazebo Books) including an inspired performance-style recital of the book’s absorbing and inflicting title poem. She finished with a timely erasure poem created from deconstructed transcripts of Donald Trump’s blundering boasts about building a wall. The poem delivered an amusing yet striking comment on just how easily society can be divided.

Moodie joined the Little Lord Street duo upon their final return to the stage to conduct a short question and answer session with the two musicians prior to them launching into their 30-minute closing set. She asked them about both the genesis of their musical partnership and their songwriting process. As the stage was turned over to music, the pair delved into some newer material, commencing with title track of their recently released second album Time and Place. “Burning All Night,” a song written while trapped during an east coast tour when wild fires converged on the Blue Mountains, was a particular standout as was “Safety Bay,” which concluded their set. Given both the quality of the music and poetry and the sizeable turnout for the inaugural event, it seems that coffee and lyrics are an ideal Sunday morning pairing.

Brett Leigh Dicks an American/Australian photographer and writer based in Fremantle. He has written and photographed for The New York Times, VICE, The Sunday Times, Santa Barbara Independent and spent two years photographing in Yellowstone National Park for the book, Seen & Unseen: Discovering the Microbes of Yellowstone (Globe-Pequot Publishing; 2005).

For more Fine Photography and fine writing from Brett Leigh Dicks here on Fremantle Shipping News, including Fine Photography podcast with Brett Leigh Dicks look here

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