Harry James Angus Brings A Piano Bar And More To Mullum Music Festival

"There was so much that worked last year," The Cat Empire's Harry James Angus begins. He's talking about his return to the Mullum Music Festival as Patron, and guiding light of The Village Vanguard. "So many great successes with some of the artists that we brought to the festival who were relatively unknown to that area beforehand that we're bringing a few of the kind of 'hit' performers back.

"I suppose what we did last year was to try and create a bit of a jazz club in the Mullum Festival, and this year, it's still a jazz club, but we've opened the doors to, I guess, the world music stage. So a lot of party bands that draw on different world influences, whether it's South American stuff or Eastern European stuff. The one thing I didn't realise last year was how hard everyone was going to be dancing in that jazz club," he chuckles. "So I've kind of adjusted accordingly. There are still a few artsy things but it's mainly pretty party-heavy. There's a band called Madre Monte, who I'm realy excited about — they're Melbourne guys, a Columbian band who play cumbian music, which is really great stuff."

"I can remember a night I had a few years ago in Paris..."

While there are still going to be a lot of horn players adorning the club's — and Festival's — stage, there's a little more attention being paid to another instrument this year.

"We've got some pretty exciting performers, including Hauschka, who's this German guy, who kind of does extreme avant-garde solo piano compositions, and Ollie McGill from my band, The Cat Empire, who's coming down and basically hosting a piano bar for the whole weekend. One thing I'm really excited about, although in a way it's a small thing at the festival, is that we're going to create a piano bar. I can remember a night I had a few years ago in Paris. I'm sure there are piano bars all over the world but there's quite a few in this one little area of Paris, and it was just the funnest thing to spend the whole evening in a bar gathered around the piano listening to people sing and perform in a really informal, spontaneous kind of way. So we're going to try and create that kind of feeling at the Mullum Festival. I imagine it's going to be a, what's the word, flashpoint for all kinds of spontaneous collaborations."

One collaboration that's actually been engineered by Angus will be that between McGill and veteran drummer/percussionist Greg Sheehan, whose extensive CV stretches back to the early '70s and quintessential experimental blues-rockers McKenzie Theory and Blackfeather. "You can trace a lot of things back to Greg," Angus suggests, "and Ollie in particular I think is the musician who took some of Greg's ideas and has run with and developed them in his own way."