Start Time: 6pm
Cost: FREE
Venue: The Bain Marie - Hub Bar
Venue Address: 189 High street, Northcote 3070
Kenny Joe Blake writes songs about travel, the desert, women and cars, but mostly about people being people. Having lived in a hundreds of houses, caravans and swags across all eight states of Australia, he is able to sing and strum the complexities of human folk into humorous and insightful songs.
Kenny’s youth was spent as a self-confessed ‘ratbag’ in 1960s Preston, Melbourne. One day a mate’s father set him the challenge to learn the harmonica, after six months of sonic torture it all clicked, and his older brother’s Honky-Tonk Blues record collection sent him on a path he had not expected.
He’s busked and walked his way around this great land more times than you might think possible. His open-heartedness and unabashed way of laughing with the world has led him to experience encyclopaedic proportions of adventures, which he can yarn about and share for hours and hours (which he thoroughly enjoys). He’s worked on refineries up North, sheep stations in the West and on oil exploration in the desert. One could easily picture Kenny and Jiddu Krishnamurti meeting at a bar and finding instant kin-ship through their common disposition for truth-telling and seeking happiness as primary considerations. He’s written songs for Slim Dusty and it’s said that Kenny penned the last song Slim ever recorded (yet to be released, and currently in a “Slim’s voice wasn’t strong enough” vault). A six-year stretch of playing R-Rated shows at Tamworth, had supporters worried about his ‘career’, his emblematic response was simply, “I don’t have a career, I have a life.”
If you like the songs of Woody Guthrie, Lead Belly or Towns Van Zant, you’ll have a fine time with Kenny Joe Blake.
Alcohol served to 18+
Wheelchair Accessible
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