Two men. Two acoustic guitars. An hour and 15 minutes of music. It would be fair to say that this is the best way one might describe this weekend’s debut Australian performance of The New Mendicants, aka Norman Blake from Teenage Fanclub, among others, and Joe Pernice from The Pernice Brothers, among others. The pair, who have recorded a few tracks together under the Mendicants guise for a new EP, played tracks from this record, as well as some of their own material from over the years, in the intimate Sydney Festival Spiegeltent. And for the most part, they made it up as they went along.
This was the sort of gig that was perfect for the Spiegeltent. In the venue’s intimate surrounds, the pair told stories, sung their songs with nothing but guitars, their voices and a brief appearance from the glockenspiel (or the glocken”spiegel” as the dubbed it for the evening) and a tambourine. They went back and forth, often collaborating, and sometimes sitting back and letting the other do their thing. Without a concrete setlist, there were even some songs they weren’t too familiar with, having one member tell the other the chords throughout the track. In some environments this might come off as unprofessional or sloppy, but here in the Spiegeltent it felt like you were sitting around watching your mates – casually wearing t-shirt and jeans – play some fantastic songs on their guitars, and having a great time doing it. And what could be better than that?
They opened with “Sarasota”, one of their collaborative tracks, which was penned about the movie Midnight Cowboy. A Teenage Fanclub favourite came next in “It’s All In My Mind”, and later on we would hear “When I Still Have Thee” and the classic “Everything Flows”, of which Joe Pernice told the crowd: ‘if you don’t like this song then I don’t know what’s wrong with you, you have no soul – it makes the hair on my arms stick up every time!’. Norman Blake also played a track from his band Jonny, “You Was Me”
They covered The Go-Betweens’ “Finding You”, whole Joe Pernice played “Amazing Glow”, which he also played on the TV series Gilmore Girls, the track “Cronulla Breakdown”, which he wrote for his wife while he was in Cronulla (and features lyrics like “I’m still in love with you”) and many more. Meanwhile, the collaborative songs they performed were generally on the topic of suicide, as many were created in hopes they’d be used for the Nick Hornby film Long Way Down. They still haven’t heard back.
It was a gig as laid back as you get and it was a pure joy to see two masters at work. Don’t miss their final performances at Sydney Festival this weekend! They return to the Spiegeltent on the 25th and then head out to Parramatta’s Spiegeltent for the 26th and the 27th.
Photo by Prudence Upton
