Review: MR J. WHISKEY: ADELAIDE FRINGE 2021 at Garden Of Unearthly Delights, Spiegeltent

Reviewed by Ray Smith, Sunday 21st March 2021.

As I entered the Spiegeltent in the Garden of Unearthly Delights for the last time this Fringe, to see Indulkina man, Jeremy Whiskey, perform his only show, I was struck by how tatty the old tent is looking. Rips in its roof, its scuffed flooring, and faded colours, gave it an unloved air of dejection.

The "Wonderland Spiegeltent Festival Hub" has a remarkable history that prompts waves of dewy-eyed nostalgia, but I can't help but wonder if it is fit for purpose in a modern international arts festival. At least they could sew up the rips and clean the stained glass windows, and then reserve it for shows that demand less of the sound system than the heavy rock trio that was about to put more stress on the ninety-year-old stitching.

I took one of the many vacant seats just in front of the stage, but I didn't stay there long. The sound system in the Spiegeltent is minimal at best, and one look at the amplifiers and full drum kit laid out before me was enough to tell me that the PA would not be able to compete with the stage sound from this close up, and I was right. The first two songs had me moving back to the centre area, and there were plenty of empty seats to choose from, in order to be able to hear anything of Whiskey's vocals at all.

I had never seen Jeremy Whiskey live, and had only seen videos of his performances back around 2015, when he would perform solo with an acoustic guitar, mainly at open-air events on the APY (Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara) lands, and I had expected to see a similar performance at this event. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Whiskey took to the stage with an electric guitar, a drummer, and bass player, after an odd introduction by a man I did not know mumbling something about being his business partner into the microphone. It was most peculiar.

The trio burst into a very rocky song that had Whiskey's fingers flying all over the neck in a frenzied solo of tapping and sweeping at lightning speed, the drummer keeping pace with ease as he inserted intricate fills into the tiny gaps left by Whiskey's guitar. The bass player, strangely masked, and with one foot on a fold-back wedge, thumped out very simple and familiar 'one and five' bass notes with a plectrum that sounded like it was made from concrete.

Jeremy Whiskey can play, alright, but after the fourth song of shredding solos and the relentless predictability of the bass, I was beginning to tire. It started to sound like speed for speed's sake, and the songs seemed to be in the same key and at the same pace in a simple twelve-bar format that left the drummer in a corner hammering out a standard rock beat, with the occasional opportunity for a tasteful and beautifully timed fill.

Respite was offered when the bassist and drummer left the stage to allow Whiskey to perform a couple of songs solo, and what a difference that made. The songs were introduced in English but performed in Whiskey's native Yankunytjatjara tongue. The language is very similar to Pitjantjatjara but there are differences, some subtle, and others quite distinct, but both sound, to my ear, like water tumbling over rocks, evocative, emotional, and utterly beautiful to listen to.

As he began to sing, the blurred distortion of the earlier guitar work gave way to a gentle, clean finger-picking style, and then the voice rose up, filling the space with a delicate but resonant tenor.

Whiskey's voice is superb, rich, sonorous, and utterly beguiling and, though very few of the words he sang were recognisable to me, I was still swept away, as he told the story of a child waking up alone, waiting for their parents to come.

I was obliged to move seats again as a dear friend asked me to join her, as she could not get to me in her wheelchair because of a step in the central aisle of the "Wonderland Spiegeltent Festival Hub". My friend is a very highly respected Yankunytjatjara Elder, and she was not the only member of the audience who hailed from the APY Lands, as the sparsely populated venue had a number of First Nations people in it, and Jeremy Whiskey and his work was obviously no stranger to them, as they joined in to many of the songs that he sang in the Yankunytjatjara language. "That backdrop he's got behind him is the Yankunytjatjara flag", she whispered to me.

The performance ended quite a bit short of the one-hour show programmed and, as the small audience yelled for more, the trio was obliged to repeat an earlier song. I'm quite sure that Whiskey could have played for hours more on his own, but his new trio simply didn't have the repertoire to join him. Jeremy Whiskey is a diamond in the rough, but a diamond, nonetheless.

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