SPECIAL MELBOURNE PERFORMANCE
The Majishans present Nashville – a rock odyssey
St Kilda Sports Club
66 Fitzroy St., St Kilda
Friday, May 27, 2022
7:30PM
BUY TICKETS
Hold on to your seats folks – it’s going to be a wild ride!
“A little bit of theatre
A little bit of storytelling
A whole lot of rock n’ roll”
Shane LadyMoon
This is the story of an almost famous Australian band whose ambitious manager scores them a breakthrough gig in Nashville, Tennessee. All they have to do is get on a private plane, taking off from a deserted airstrip at night, and all their dreams will come true…
Nashville is an amazing performance that fuses storytelling with original songs. It’s rock music inspired by Middle Eastern riffs, swampy Delta blues, funk anthems, psychedelia and the smoky, guitar-fuelled journeys of the Deep South.
Nashville is written and performed by The Majishans, an art rock band with a gift for storytelling and a charismatic stage vibe. Nashville features ten original songs by the brilliant guitarist/composer Antony Romero, accompanied by Tony Jozef, a virtuoso soloist on cello, saxophone and resonator guitar, and percussionist Reuben Alexander. Artist and vocalist Helen Hopcroft writes most of the lyrics, with production support by sound musician James Carter.
Music writer Matt Petherbridge describes the band as ‘A true magic trick of the literary, the poetic with remarkable compositions echoing the likes of Radiohead, King Crimson, Morphine, Bob Dylan and Patti Smith’.
Nashville is about the lengths that creative people will go to to realise their dreams. The show begins with the words – ‘I am about to tell you a story but none of it is true’ – and goes on to relate an entirely fictitious history of The Majishans, a thrilling tale of survival and creative transformation in the Australian desert.
Hopcroft is probably best known for My Year as a Fairy Tale, a piece of performance art that saw her dress as Marie Antoinette for one year and go about her everyday life in Maitland. Of Nashville she says, ‘this is easily the strangest, most beautiful and genre-defying project that I have ever worked on. The music is spectacular’.
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More information:
https://linktr.ee/themajishans
Contact:
Helen Hopcroft 0408 637 404 hhopcroft@hotmail.com
Helen Hopcroft Bio
Helen Hopcroft is an artist, writer and producer based in Maitland, NSW. She holds a MA in Painting from London’s Royal College of Art, and a Creative Writing PhD from the University of Newcastle, Australia.
Helen has written two non-fiction books for the University of Newcastle and Hunter Valley Grammar School. She recently won an NSW Writers Centre’s Access for Regional Writers grant and was selected for Radio National’s Tony Birch masterclass. Her publication list includes The Australian, The Sydney Morning Herald, Griffith Review and Art Monthly. She occasionally writes reviews for ArtsHub.com
In 2107-2018, Helen spent a year dressed as Marie Antoinette, in full replica costume 24/7, for a piece of performance art titled My Year as a Fairy Tale. She is now writing a memoir about the experience. American novelist Debra Spark wrote about Helen’s performance in her latest book, And Then Something Happened: https://www.awpwriter.org/magazine_media/writers_chronicle_view/4702/writing_in_a_time_of_disaster
During the early stages of writing her memoir, Helen was mentored by Kathryn Heyman, a highly regarded writer and teacher.
Helen’s recent production credits include the hit cabaret show, Mad Bitches Inc., which she describes as her ‘gender equity tantrum’, and The Road to Tibooburra, a new Australian musical written by Julien Poulson with a score by Steve Kilbey (The Church). Proudly supported by City of Newcastle, Mad Bitches Inc. will be part of the 2022 New Annual Festival.
Helen is the vocalist and spoken word poet for The Majishans, a band that launched its Nashville show at Newcastle Fringe Festival in March 2022. She has just been shortlisted for Spineless Wonders and Newcastle Writers Festival’s 2022 Joanne Burns Microlit award, and the prestigious Nillumbik Prize for Contemporary Writing.
