Samuel Vincent and I recently did a residency at Lighthouse Arts, on Nobby’s Head – Whibayganba in Newcastle (AUS). Here a lighthouse (1858) is surrounded by cottages in which artists may work on their various projects. Our aim was to compose music and lyrics for Tyrone and Lesley’s next album with a particular emphasis on the connection between site and song yet other than that our artistic aims were open-ended.
The lighthouse sits on a promontory (which used to be an island) with the entrance to the harbour on the left, a beach on the right, Newcastle city behind, and the Pacific Ocean out front wider than the eye. The breeze is constant and cooling, the quiet at times underlined by the hooting of ship’s horns or a helicopter rescue. A few weeks earlier this passage had been a site of protest. It’s an imposing landmark on your uphill approach, followed along your path either by a large ship or pod of dolphins. We couldn’t see the colony of seals from where we were, but we were told about a seal that lives alone on a buoy out in the bay. His name is Nigel.
Our set-up was basic: a laptop, mic, digital recorder. Our instruments. In the open room, an electronic piano, a few amps, mixing desk and leads. The music room was basic, in no way silent, but rather open to the sounds which surrounded us. We weren’t unprepared: we had some songs almost finished or half-so, other fragments of music and lyric: a book of resources upon which we could draw to make new music.
In the knowledge that the world is not exactly starved of lighthouse songs, I’d read around the topic looking for an angle, and kept coming back to a strange book called Ceaseless Vigil: My lonely years in the lighthouse service by W.J. Lewis (1970). I’d had to track down a secondhand copy online. An unusual book, it alternates between descriptions of the minutiae of a pre-automation lighthouse keeper’s work, and rhapsodies on how nature enriches an isolation which is in no way splendid. Its insight is implied. It was very Tyrone and Lesley.
This residency of 5 days suggested a change in our writing approach, which is so often composing by correspondence, combined with quick meeting/rehearsals and home demo sessions. We’re both busy people with other bands, projects and jobs which usually restrict the amount of time we can spend on creative development, and makes our work intense and outcomes focussed, even if those outcomes are often sui generis.
I was keen to connect again with Newkulele, the town’s ukulele festival, where we’d played before with much pleasure. There’s a hearty ukulele culture in Newcastle, and with that group’s assistance, we were able to arrange a small concert at a venue metres from our accommodation – it was a warm, friendly gig where we played two songs we’d only completed that afternoon alongside ‘the hits’ , in a no-frills configuration.
We built upon, tweaked or rearranged works in progress. We experimented, superimposing lyric on music and seeing how they were changed by their mutual demands. We changed time signatures or added bars so a song sat the way it should. Easy for Samuel, less easy for me! We identified musical differences, and let them hang, rather than trying to resolve them.
We did some things we’d never done much before, including spontaneous jamming or spontaneous composition, or playing the songs of others: Sting’s All This Time was a moment we both started playing a tune neither of us knew the other was familiar with. We very rarely play music that’s not original, so that was quite a moment. A poet in one of the other buildings heard us mucking about with the Godfather theme, came over and said hello – the next day we swapped artworks.
We shifted genres, coming up with tunes ‘Tyrone and Lesley’ would never perform, most likely, but might become something else. Or not. We swapped instruments. We invented instrumentals. Rivers seas boats and surging chord progressions washed in to what we were doing.
We either bought our lunch or took a long walk down to the fish and chippo. It was surprising how hot it got as we came back down the hill away from the windy ocean.
We left things as unfinished sketches, moving on once something had found enough form to be a foundation. We mostly used our phones or a digital audio recorder to capture what we did as live performance that absorbed the ambient sound of our unusual workplace – the sound of wind, waves, and friendly workmen at repair. Sometimes the song seemed to require more attention, so we’d build them in garageband and record our parts separately – while more precise, this tended to slow our process down a bit so we didn’t do it much.
We met other artists, a poet and visual artists, as well as doing an interview with Judy, the residency manager who each day would meet us on the path and drive us and our instruments up the incline in a golf buggy. In the evening, back at the accommodation, after I finished working on the libretto I’m trying to co-write, I transferred and filed the audio we’d generated, and it became evident that what we were making up at the lighthouse was a lovely collection of fragments that we’d keep working on.
It was work, solid work, creative work, yet playful, concentrated work. As the days developed their own rhythm, and the set up of the space become more homely I noticed something we did every session.
We took our shoes off.
banner image: Stuart Slater
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