Hi all

I'm doing a performance at Sydney Bush Music Club – Marrickville in Sydney on Saturday afternoon 29th November 2014 from 4.30-7.00pm. Margaret Walters has been the organiser behind the event and below is the publicity that Margaret has released to advertise the gig. I'd love to meet up with the Sydney Mudcats to share some songs and to meet face to face.

Fergus

Fergus Russell is an unaccompanied singer in the Irish Tradition from Dublin. He has just released an album of lively songs titled Landless and Free and will be appearing at a concert at the Bush Music Club – Tritton Hall, Hut 44, Addison Road Community Centre, Marrickville in Sydney on Saturday afternoon 29th November 2014. As a support act we have Australian Traditional Songs from Southern Cross Trawlers (Margaret Walters and Don Brian).

You can find some clips of Fergus singing on You Tube – eg Lord Landless: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3d5Zzae-7mY

Fergus was born in Dublin in 1950 learning songs from his parents who were both singers. He lived for eight years in Sydney from 1974 and in that time incorporated many Australian bush ballads and songs into his repertoire. In recent decades he has enjoyed the sean-nos singing at the Góilín Singers Club in Dublin and was inspired by the late Frank Harte to ferret out little known material through old songbooks, magazines and broadsheet collections, bringing them to life by finding suitable airs or composing his own. His researches have resulted in a fairly unique repertoire of traditional and music hall songs that are proving popular and are beginning to be reabsorbed into the tradition.

In performance, Fergus intersperses the collected material he showcases on Landless and Free with Irish variants of Child Ballads, Australian transportation and bush songs, Napoleonic songs, traditional songs from England as well as Ireland, and a few that he has penned himself.

Fergus Russell is visiting Australia from Dublin in November to perform at the Folk in the Forest festival at Dwellingup, a beautiful timber and fruit-growing area 106km south of Perth. He is also giving a house concert in Melbourne on 21st November.