John C Reilly and the Tawny Frogmouth

I thought I was hearing things when my bloke told me he had booked tickets to listen to John C Reilly at the Northcote Social Club. ‘John C Reilly? Kevin’s dad? Jodie Foster’s long-suffering husband? At the Northcote?’

Now it was his turn to think he was hearing things. ‘Must be a different John C Reilly,’ he said, but when I saw the pictures of his comically creased face, it was clear they were one and the same guy.

The Northcote Social Club gets some great acts and it’s tiny. We are standing about five feet from the stage when John Reilly walks on; I could reach out and almost touch him. He’s a wonderful actor, but I’m still not sure why we’ve come to hear him sing. When he starts, I’m still not sure – this is possibly my least favourite kind of music – country dating from the thirties to the sixties – sugary-sweet, simple songs of love and desire and heartbreak. By the end of almost two hours, however, John C Reilly has me and all the rest of the audience in the palm of his hand.

Partly this is because any music at all, even if it’s not a kind I’d normally go for, is wonderful when performed live, performed well and performed with heart and generosity. And John C Reilly ticks all the boxes. His band is called John Reilly and friends, and it’s aptly named. He only has three of its members in Australia (he has really come to publicise his latest movie, and just brought them along and decided to do a couple of gigs for a bit of fun) and they are just like a threesome of buddies deciding to muck around with a couple of guitars and a few golden oldies. By the end of the third or fourth song, we all feel like his friends.

The two-hour bracket is so understated it doesn’t feel like a performance at all. It feels like friends getting together for a bit of fun – a couple of stories, a few jokes, some singing. Vocalist Becky Stark – she had to be Becky – is dressed in a twirly black dress with musical notation on it, high high heels and a face like an innocent sixteen year old. Cute as. Skinny blond Tom Brosseau and big crumpled John stand either side of her with their guitars and harmonize softly – funny old B side songs by the Delmore Brothers, the Everly Brothers, Patsy Cline and a bunch of others I’d never heard of.

John breaks a guitar string and ambles off to replace it, leaving Becky and Tom to entertain us, strolls back, picks up where he left off, like a big, amiable bear. I’ve never been that close to someone I’ve only seen on the silver screen. It’s surreal. Right there, close enough to touch, John C Reilly.

For their second-last song, John insists all the lights be turned off, and he and Tom and Becky sing us a lullaby that has me close to tears. ‘Who’s going to shoe your pretty little feet, who’s going to glove your hands? Who’s going to kiss your ruby red lips?’ crooned so simply into the microphone and the audience sway softly in the darkness. ‘Daddy’s gonna shoe your pretty little feet, mama’s gonna to glove your hands. I’m gonna kiss your ruby red lips…’

Then they ask for the lights to be turned up full, come out to the very front of the stage, away from the microphone and we all sing along to ‘Good night Irene’. (The quaint chasteness of the line, ‘Good night Irene, good night Irene, I’ll see you in my dreams’ – ah, those were the days!) A quick wave, a blown kiss, and they’re gone. We wander happily out into the night with our friends, exclaiming over their generosity, their lack of pretentiousness.

The next day we drive to Anglesea to mow the bush block, in preparation for fire season (when I say we, I mean my husband). Right in front of the main door out to our verandah is a tawny frogmouth and her two chicks – the ugliest, cutest things I’ve seen since John C Reilly. She stares impassively as us and hunches around, protecting her babies from our view, but their two comical little heads poke out, around mama, checking us out. The wind picks up and the branch that is their nest blows precariously around but mother owl looks completely calm, bored even. At dusk she swoops off to catch some dinner and the fluffy baby birds look exposed, for all their colours and patterns mimic the gum tree they live on perfectly, but next morning there they are again – family intact.

There are a lot of remarkable things to hear and see in this world of ours. If you are fortunate enough to live in Melbourne, go and hear some live music. And don’t miss the luminous purply-blue of the jacaranda trees that have just burst into bloom this last fortnight. Note that they are the exact shade of the agapanthus blossoms – a fact I have pointed out in this blog before, but such things bear repeating.

Comments

[anon]

I had not realised the jacaranda and agapanthus arethe same colour!
And I love them both. It is impossible to explain /describe the colour. It simply "is" and it melts in my eyes.

[Rod]

Ah yes - live music is like conversation - so emotionally rich because it is transacted between living beings, face to face, eye to ear. No tweet or technological mediation can match it! You evoke it perfectly Clare.

[Finlay]

Hi Clare
Did Alistair also join you to hear John C Reilly?
We were sorry to miss Catriona's wedding in February. Heard about it only oin the Christmas card from Sue and ROss!