WA – The Last Leg!!

Hello Boogie friends,

Thanks so much to everyone who came out to our concerts in Sydney, South Australia and Victoria. I’ve been really happy with the response to the new songs from the ‘Play It Again Jan’ CD (Mr Mogo Man and The Sun Shines being two particular crowd favourites).

We are wrapping up the tour in WA with shows at Fremantle and Perth this weekend, before heading out to Blues @ Bridgetown in the glorious South West Region of West Australia.

 

Whew!

 

I may need to put my feet up for a while after that, although only briefly, as I’ve started composing for a film, which I’m sworn to secrecy on at the moment. I’ll keep you posted; it’s very interesting…..

 

It’ll be lovely to finally catch up with our fans in WA, and I even have a new Tim Winton book to read while in Fremantle!

 

Yours in boogie and blues,

Jan

A Festival and CD Launch!

Hello Boogie friends,
It’s been a long time coming, 4 years in fact, but from the adversity of breaking my wrists I have risen, like a piano playing Phoenix from the ashes with my new CD, PLAY IT AGAIN JAN and an Australian Tour beginning at Illawarra’s fabulous “Folk By The Sea” festival next weekend SEP 22nd and 23rd.
Mike and I will be joined by bass playing sensation Liz Frencham for our shows on
Fri 22nd @ 6.30pm and Sat 23rd @ 8.30pm
www.folkbythesea.com.au

Next up is our Sydney CD launch at the SEYMOUR CENTRE SOUND LOUNGE 7.30pm SAT OCT 14, followed by dates through VIC, SA and WA.
Bookings for the Sound Lounge are Ph (02) 9351 7940 or online www.seymourcentre.com

I really love this album, it’s definitely my best; the team were awesome, especially engineer/co-producer Nigel Masters from the Boatshed Studios in Tauranga NZ.
I’ve got sound bites on my website, so please check some of the tracks such as The Sun Shines, Blues and the Boogie, and Scared of the Dark. It’s currently in production, copies will be ready in a few days time, and we already have pre-orders.

And for people in Adelaide, we are excited that the film I composed music for earlier this year, My Year With Helen (directed and produced by my lovely sister Gaylene), has been programmed in October at the Adelaide International Film Festival. Very cool.

See you out and about!
Yours in boogie and blues,
Jan

New CD On It’s Way!

Hello boogie friends,

Exciting news – my “Play It Again Jan” CD is in the finishing stages! This new baby is very precious to me, I have taken time, attention, as well as passion and hard work in all aspects from the songwriting to the recording and mastering.

A huge thanks to Nigel Masters, (co producer, engineer and bass player, he can do everything!) who’s produced an amazing series of tracks in his studio in Tauranga, NZ.

Over the decades that I’ve been making albums, this is the best recording of my voice ever. Love it!

We will now embark on a national tour to launch the CD, beginning in Sydney on Oct 14th, through Victoria, SA, and ending in WA in November.

Here are some photos taken at the “Noosa Alive” Festival in July, where Rococo presented a 3 day festival on the beach.

It was great fun to play 3 handers with Wil Sargeson and The Wizard, and I thought I’d died and gone to heaven to play a white grand piano on the beach! (The closest I have previously come was teaching piano to director Jane Campion before the making of her film “The Piano”, which opens with footage of a grand piano on a wild NZ beach.)

Hope to see you soon, and we’ll be back in touch about the CD launches.

Yours in boogie and blues,

Jan

A Film, a Tour and a Birthday!

Hello boogie friends,

Many thanks to the people who came out to our short North Island NZ concert series recently; Napier was a particular highlight.
The consensus of opinion seems to be unanimously that I’m playing as well as ever and singing better, this probably due to my implementing the New York Taubman piano technique method that sees me sitting a lot higher.
Opens the lungs I guess!
So from everything bad something good comes……..well, mostly……

Special news about my sister Gaylene’s film MY YEAR WITH HELEN for which I wrote the music. (Choir, percussion and piano, most unusual for me!)
Gaylene spent 2016 tracking Helen Clark in her bid to become UN Secretary General and the film has been chosen for showcase screenings in the Sydney Film Festival and the New Zealand International

Gaylene will attend the World Premiere at the Sydney Film Festival together with Helen Clark, where it will be a Special Presentation at the magnificent State Theatre on June 10, followed by a Q&A session about the making of the film.
Here are the links; the State Theatre screening is almost sold out, so be quick if you want to attend that one.
– Saturday 10th June, State Theatre, 4.20pm
– Sunday 11th June, Dendy Opera Quays Cinema, 5.30pm

Lastly, Mike and I are off to Germany today for a 3 week tour, and are very excited to be reconnecting with our Blues and Boogie fraternity in Berlin and Hamburg.

And for once, here’s a personal photo on my birthday yesterday with my awesome son Ivan.
Not a piano in sight!

Yours in boogie,
Jan

Back on My Bike!

Hello Boogie Friends,

Much composing and performing activity this month and next, so I am back on my bike, indeed pedalling hard!

First up, the wonderful Yackandandah Folk Festival in Victoria next weekend where we are playing three concerts. It’s a beautiful rural town, an extremely well run festival with a special heart to it, great acts, highly recommended.

Next a trip across the Tasman to the PumpHouse in Auckland for one concert on March 31 as part of their 40 Year anniversary, an amazing achievement for a venue anywhere in the world. I’m delighted to be returning to the PumpHouse, it’s been a few years and it’s a fabulous concert room with a terrific Baldwin Grand piano

During April I’m touring theatres in NZ and completing the score for my sister Gaylene’s film.

The score comprises piano, percussion and voice for which I will be recording a choir in my studio in Sydney, percussion in Auckland, and mixing in Wellington. I cannot tell you how much I have enjoyed working on this extraordinary documentary about Helen Clark and the United Nations. It’s very unlike any other film music I have ever written!

Please come along and hear my new wrists in concert action throughout April in theatres in Palmerston North, Napier, Wellington and Tauranga. Who says I can’t play the Bumbleboogie at speed with metal plates? You will be as stunned and amazed as me at what those clever doctors have achieved!

Yours in boogie,
Jan

Play it Again, Jan!

Hello boogie friends,

Yes, I can play it again and, I think, better than ever!
5 months after breaking both my wrists, you’ll be delighted to hear that everything is now back to normal and I cannot tell you how relieved and happy I am to be back at those wonderful 88’s.

Having been a guest on 2 shows in Sydney last December, I’ll now be performing my first entire concert, part of the Gold Coast City Jazz Club’s Concert Series next Monday Feb 20th.

I’ll be joined by Mike on drums and the very talented (Brisbane based) Andrew Shaw on bass, as well as special guest, the fabulously virtuosic piano player, Kiwi ex-pat Will Sargeson.
Will plays phenomenal boogie and we intend to carve it up together for sure!

The past few weeks I’ve also been composing music for a fascinating film, directed by my sister Gaylene Preston.
Gaylene has a unique voice amongst filmmakers which has given her longstanding success, great respect and countless awards, and I am delighted to be working with her.
The project will wrap in April, so stay posted to hear more in my next newsletter!

So what else does 2017 hold in store?
A return in March to the delightful Yackandandah Folk Festival in Victoria, some April ‘Play It Again Jan’ concerts in theatres in the North Island of NZ, the recording of a new CD in May (at last!) and a tour back to our beloved German Boogie Festivals in June.

Hope to see you soon!

And so they heal…….

Hello boogie friends,
Thank you thank you thank you sooooo much for your emails, apologies for the group reply to let you know that my wrists are healing.
I’ve got the casts off and am in removable splints; see the groovy purple numbers in the photo!
I can do just about everything, i.e. dress myself, wipe my own bum, pour a cuppa, do the dishes (slowly), shower myself which is heaven, but I can’t walk the dog, drive, or unscrew lids off jars.

And of piano playing?
I couldn’t resist buying a piano up here on the Gold Coast which I absolutely love, and am practising finger exercises and singing a lot.
I’m convinced a keyboard is NOT what I should be playing and this old piano has a lovely feel.

To keep myself occupied I’ve been writing more blogs (not compulsory reading) and I thought this one might grab you.

Yours in boogie,
Jan

The Night Spike Played To Me

 

It was the 1980s and having been a popstar with a number 1 hit single in New Zealand I relocated to Sydney, and was living in a flat in Glebe with two other people; my then husband, Martin, and Carl Ecke. Carl Ecke was a big, brown, muscular, magnificent and vibrant German-made upright piano I was in love with at the time.
Indeed, it would seem I was more in love with that piano than my husband, since a couple of years after we moved in, Martin and I divorced and he moved out.
That left me and Carl Ecke all to ourselves.
Heaven!
At last I could play and sing as long and as loud as I wanted.
Throughout 12 years of marriage, my music practicing had always greatly annoyed Martin who accused me of being “so….so….. so loud Jan!”
“There’s no volume control on a piano Martin” I would feebly reply.

I guess the split was always going to come down in Carl Ecke’s favour.

So there I was at the age of 37, overlooking the water from my brilliantly positioned sunny flat, watching the Glebe High School being built and the old Glebe Island Bridge opening and closing, opening and closing as the Russian cargo ships, the Camira and the Conara, sailed through.

At this time I experienced a huge burst of creativity and was playing, singing, and songwriting for hours every day.
It was truly the happiest I’d been in years.

Ah, but there was a catch!
How to pay the rent?
I soon discovered that whilst husbands are handy for rental contributions, Carl Ecke was not.

Ever since I was a small child I was a natural performer, taking to the stage like the proverbial duck to water. My struggling parents had somehow managed to pay for piano, singing, and elocution lessons for me and my sister, and I adored most of all the end of year performances.
Being an entertainer by nature, I had always been a reluctant and impatient piano teacher, but finding myself in such a tight financial situation, I relented and took on a couple of piano students.
I also put feelers out for some kind of playing work, which I eventually found in piano bars and Leagues Clubs throughout Sydney’s outer suburbs.
Having recently been a Popstar playing concerts to hundreds (and sometimes thousands) of adoring fans, you can imagine that it was an ever-so-slight come-down to find myself in the upstairs bar of the Sutherland United Services Club or the Caringbah inn.

I had to find strategies to survive this, and I came up with a few. For instance I always made a point, every single night, of fighting my way out into the kitchen and introducing myself to the dishhand. Getting home in the wee small hours frustrated and exhausted, I could go to sleep in the knowledge that I was much better paid and hadn’t been on my feet all night with my hands in hot soapy water.

And I had Carl Ecke to hang out with all of the next day!

One morning I was walking up to the fruit shop past the Mexican restaurant just around the corner to discover it had changed hands overnight.
Gone was the EL PASO sign, the restaurant’s new name being PIANO RAG and, much to my delight and amazement, there was a black shiny 6 foot Yamaha grand piano on a riser in the window.

I couldn’t believe my luck!
What synchronicity!
Being precisely 45 seconds walk from home, this was surely the perfect gig for me.

I spent an agonizing three days waiting for the joint to open, and as soon as it did I strode in with what I thought was a rather impressive CV, confidently believing a no 1 Hit Single (never mind that no one in Australia had ever heard of it) would surely get me in the door.

But no!
To my horror and amazement they quickly explained to me that the piano was only for SHOW, they didn’t want anybody PLAYING the piano.
I was completely gobsmacked, flummoxed as to why on earth anyone would have a 6 foot good quality Yamaha grand and not want it played?! It simply defied reason.

Before leaving I deposited my card on the bar (remember cards with our phone numbers on that we used in the 1980s?) in the vague hope at some point in the future they might change their minds.

In the meantime it was back to Sutherland and Caringbah.

About a month later my home phone rang (no mobiles in those days) and believe or not, it was the manager from PIANO RAG asking me to come in and play that night.
“But I thought you weren’t having anyone PLAY the piano, I thought the piano was only for SHOW?”
“Yes, well, that’s true Jan. But tonight we have Spike Milligan booked in with a group, and he will only confirm if there is live music.”

Good onya Spike, we got ‘em!

I have since read that all of his life Spike Milligan would only attend venues with live music, couldn’t abide piped music, and was famous for ripping speakers out of lifts in expensive hotels, something I heartily approve of.

So then, what to wear?
Having tried on and discarded several outfits, I settled on a quirky but smart Cyndi Lauper style skirt and shoulder-padded jacket which offset my (then red) massively permed hair.
Like I said, this was the 1980s.

Playing my trademark boogie-woogie and ragtime (but oh so quietly) to the murmurings of cultured conversations and clinkings of wine glasses, I saw Spike Milligan with 2 women enter the room.
I was later told that one of the women was his daughter, the Milligans having had a close and affectionate relationship with Australia ever since Spike’s mother had emigrated and lived for most of her later life in Woy Woy, just north of Sydney.

Hours of boogie and ragtime, conversations and clinking glasses passed, and as the restaurant began to thin out I thought how disappointing that I never got to meet him.
Yet at nearly closing time a serious young waiter approached me with the hushed words “Spike would like you to join him.”

My Cindy Lauper outfit made it across the room, I sat down beside him, and spent the next 15 minutes or so talking to a man that I can honestly say had the most agonizingly tragic face I’ve ever seen on any human being.
The other diners all gone, he took my hand with the words “come with me, my dear, and I will play piano to you.”
And as we strolled arm in arm across the floor of the room towards the Yamaha Grand, I said to him “Gosh, I didn’t realize you played the piano Spike.” The straight man immediately transformed into Eccles, and with that unmistakable “Ying Tong Yiddle I Po” Goons voice replied “Ohhhhh. I didn’t realize I played the piano either!”

What followed was the most heartbreakingly beautiful and skilled version of Autumn Leaves, which I will hold in my musical memory for the rest of my life.

Thank you and God rest you Spike.

So you’d be thinking by now that I would score a regular gig at PIANO RAG?
No way!
I was never invited back, the place closed down soonafter, I heard that my ex husband Martin had remarried (that was quick) and life moved on as it does.
And Carl?
Most of all, I still miss Carl Ecke and greatly regret having sold him.
I do so hope his big, brown, vibrant, quality German sound and touch is giving great pleasure to another woman somewhere.

Operations and More……

THE DAY MY WRISTS BROKE

I knew when I’d done it, I’d really done it.

I’d really really really done it.

Well, the fact that my right wrist was at a strange angle was a bit of a giveaway. I was stuck ignominiously, stupidly and downright dangerously in a driveway, unable to get up, right beside the speed hump I had just tripped over. Shaking hysterically I somehow managed to get hold of my mobile phone and call my son who came in the car, nearly running me down himself, and literally picking me up off the asphalt.

“What the hell were you doing Mum?!” he exclaimed, it being 11am Monday morning and he knows I don’t drink.

 

What followed was a 10 hour trip to Hospitaland, from Triage to Admin to Overworked Interns, and finally to the MINOR INJURIES waiting room.

Minor injuries! Where they kidding? So I am a professional piano player who had just broken not one but both of my wrists (as was later proven) and these are seen as minor injuries! Obviously the Litmus test for what can go medically wrong with me has a much broader scope in a public hospital than I could have conceived.

So I’m sitting crying and shaking as quietly as I can   in this small room with a dozen or so people within a two meter radius, and they are all pretending they can’t see me and can’t hear me which is slightly ridiculous since I’m virtually sitting on their laps, and whilst I am choking my husband stands on one side and my son on the other (no seats left) determinably looking at the wall opposite.

And so we wait.

And wait.

And wait.

Queues are so frustratingly fair!

The professional concert pianist waits in line behind a man with a possible boil on his left little toe, a woman who’s been poked in the eye not very badly, and an older bloke with an ankle that might have been sprained but turned out later it wasn’t. There were at least five of those people with virtually nothing wrong with them and I know this because we all ended up eventually being treated in the next door ward, given a bed or a chair, a file, and painkillers in that order.

And as I am sitting there, I am completely freaked out and overwhelmed by the possible scenario this presents, not only for my career, but for the rest of my life.

Completely freaked out, but not as freaked out as I become when, after a trip to the x-ray room and confirmation that indeed both wrists are broken, they perform a procedure whereby they put a tourniquet on my right arm, pump heavy duty anaesthetic in which will stop my heart in an instant if it gets past that tourniquet, cut off all bloodflow rendering the arm in essence dead (and it certainly looked it), and attempt to manipulate my right wrist back into place.

This entailed three people; one young strapping boy pinning me to the bed, a well built young woman at the other end pulling my arm with all her might, and another woman described as “the Doctor” twisting and pulling down, twisting and pulling down until she thought she had the wrist back in place. (Their average age looked to be about 14, although the Doctor maybe 22.)

I found out later this is the same procedure they have been using since 1860, so I guess it must work. It did work, and it was also the only pain I’ve ever experienced greater than childbirth.

But I was okay, I was big and brave!

This thing had happened.

I couldn’t believe I had been so stupid, but it had happened.

There was no going back, it had to be dealt with!

And I was truly alright (at least on the outside) until the dead arm stayed dead for longer than they’d planned (a hold-up with the trolley guy and the x-ray machine), and as I looked down in excruciating pain at the arm of a corpse, yellow and grey, I started having the worst panic attack I’ve ever experienced. It just looked like I would lose my arm. It looked like I HAD lost my arm, even though they had previously explained to me that a limb had to be in this frostbitten state for four hours before there could be any chance of permanent damage.

Hell, that was three hours away so just relax Jan!

What followed was scans and waiting.

Waiting.

Waiting.

By the time I was discharged at 10:30pm that night I’d had nothing to eat or drink since 9am (there being the possibility of an operation later that night so Nil By Mouth), and the cup of tea I ultimately drank at midnight at home was the best cup of tea in my entire life, and believe me, I’ve drunk a helluva lot of cups of tea.

The operation was booked in at the public hospital in Robina, part of the Gold Coast University Hospital, a spectacular new and learned facility, but for all of this I was given three days to think. And to listen to other people’s thoughts, such as, “What, you don’t have PRIVATE health insurance?!, What, you haven’t had your HANDS INSURED?!, What, you’re thinking of going to the PUBLIC hospital?!” followed by many suggestions that I spend every penny I had ever earned and more than I ever might (which at this point in time looked like precisely nothing) to employ the Great God of Squillion Dollar Orthopaedic Surgery on the Gold Coast to perform operations on both wrists to have metal plates inserted.

Some frantic googling and ringing followed, but ultimately lead nowhere as it became clear it was way too expensive, it would delay the operation which could create complications, and anyway who could guarantee that God himself doesn’t have an off day once in awhile?

I can’t believe the numbers of people that say the words PUBLIC hospital, like they are saying PUBLIC toilet (and we all know what they’re like).

In my case they could not have been more wrong.

I went ahead on Friday morning, five small life changing days after the fall, with the orthopaedic registrar who was rostered on, whose name was Chris. I only met Chris a few minutes before the operation but he told me something terribly helpful, in flexing his young, strong, large and capable surgeons hands, looked me in the eye and said “Yes Jan, I understand. If I damaged my hands in any way my career would also be over.”

That and the fact that I knew this ordinary and extraordinary guy had performed 300 to 400 of these so-called routine operations beforehand, (was just finishing one as I was being wheeled in conveyor-belt style), reassured me.

He even calmly and coolly explained how he would slit my wrists, pull the tendons and nerves to one side, insert the plates and stitch me up.

Just like that!

How do they do it?!

I mean really, how do they do it?!

My feeble skills paled into insignificance when I considered that all I’d ever learned to do was plonk on a piano and write a few songs, and that had been hard enough.

So here I am five days after the operation looking out over the ultra tacky fake-brick PARADISE SUN Units on Surfers Paradise, thinking how lucky I am.

Lucky to have not been diagnosed with terminal cancer, lucky to still have hands attached, lucky to have not lost my eye or my hearing.

And in saying to a friend “Thank God for the public hospital system” he swiftly replied “Don’t thank God Jan, thank Gough!”

Looking back on the whole circus of the last week, the most bizarre experience of all was waiting in the pre-waiting of the waiting area for the operation.

10 ladies of various ages and ethnic backgrounds in identical blue operating gowns with matching elasticized plastic caps, five along each wall, seated facing each other on identical La-Z-Boy chairs, as if the manicurist was about to enter and join the script of a B-grade TV sitcom. I felt like Lucille Ball about to tell them a bad joke about the concert pianist who broke both her wrists, yet a Lucille-style slapstick gag involving my shining white plaster was something I would have to pass on for the moment.

And the most touching experience? On the trolley looking up before entering the operating theatre to see a small piece of green tape on the ceiling with my father’s initials followed by the word ABOVE.

Sheer coincidence or a meaningful sign, it matters not.

Chris appears to have performed a spectacularly brilliant operation, I have the feeling back in all of my fingers, am managing the pain, and trying to get a grip on my life. Not easily done when you can’t get a grip on a pencil, turn on a tap, wipe your own bum, or take off your cardi.

And as things progress I am eternally grateful for the technology, skill, professionalism, love and humanity that I experienced in, yes, the public hospital system.

Bless Australia, bless Gough, and bless the Gold Coast University Hospital!

And to think that at the moment I fell and my glasses flew off, I was worried that I’d broken them.

The glasses that is.

Jan’s Broken Wrists !

Hello Boogie Friends,
Well, accidents do happen!

I managed to trip over and broke both my wrists. I hear the gasps…..yes, boogie friends, not one wrist but both!
Needless to say, all my concerts for the rest of this year are cancelled.

I will be having operations on both wrists in a few days to have metal plates inserted, and will be six weeks in casts, followed by rehabilitation, so it will be some months before the Queen of Boogie is banging it out at a venue near you!

The clever people at the hospital have assured me this is a routine operation, have written CONCERT PIANIST in large writing on my files, and say there is no doubt I’ll be back playing as usual.
However, you can imagine that this is a very challenging situation for me!

In the meantime I will be singing and songwriting for my new CD over the next while, and will keep you updated.

Yours In battered boogie!
Jan