SNEZ E-News: The Zens, Workshops & Tipsy Burps

What a buzz the Blue Mountains Festival was! Got some great footage by fellow musician Dan Hopkins when we were playing at the Tantric Turtle stage. I've just gotta get it off him : )

NEW ALBUM NEWS: The live studio album 'Snez and the Zen's is on the way. As mentioned, I'm on the final touches of the artwork and mixes and off it goes. This is a limited edition CD, I won't be making any reprints. There are only 500, so if you want a copy, you can pre-order by sending me an email.

TOUR STUFF
Anyway the tour plans are still underway, with most of May and June booked around the coast to Brissie and the out west to Alice Springs. We're doing a couple of joint shows with Toowoomba country/folk artist Alan Mackey around Brisbane, Toowoomba and Chinchilla. Really looking forward to that. Alan has done many regional tours with Anne Kirkpatrick, Peter Denahy, Mad Violet (Canada), Brent Parlane, Jodi Martin, The Hillbilly Potentates (USA), Warren H. Williams and Brett Hunt.

This tour we're also doing 3 weeks of music and songwriting workshops in an indigenous school called Yipirinya in Alice Springs, on top of performing. What a fantastic opportunity. Yipirinya is actually a non-government run school. They have several buses that go out each morning and travel upto 150 km out to communities and pick up whatever children they can find. When they get back to school, they get fed and then the learning begins. We're so privileged to be able to share what we have and hopefully inspire some kids to make music.

Numbalwar community and School

We also have a 2 weeks workshop stint at a school in a little community called Numbulwar which is several hundred km east of Katherine towards the water in Arnhem Land. The funny thing is, we met Selena, the teacher, in Cambodia last year, while we were doing the workshops with the gecko kids. Selena had a handful of students from the Numbulwar community on a cultural learning excursion. Selena mentioned that they were always looking for people to come and teach the kids. Looking at the map, I think it's going to be a bit hairy. There's at least 2 rivers to cross and lots of dirt road...we'll see if we ever get there, I'm willing to try. We made it to Home Valley Station across the Ord River, I'm sure we can do this.....I think.

Jeanette Wormald

We have also been asked to be part of Jeanette Wormald's album launch which I am very excited about. Jeanette hosted a house concert for us in Alice Springs last year as well as a series of other gigs. All I remember from staying with her on the previous tour is, drinking too much wine and then doing a rendition of Mr Bojangles with a tipsy burp in the middle of it.....I'll never redeem myself : )

Smell ya later
Snez xx