An Evening With The Waifs

The Waifs are celebrating 25 years since sisters Donna and Vikki Simpson (now Vikki Thorn) joined forces with Josh Cunningham to create one of the country’s best-loved bands, and commemorating this event having released their critically acclaimed double album called “Ironbark” which took out the number one position on the Aria charts, the first time for the band to have achieved this milestone.

Since releasing their debut, self-titled album in 1996 The Waifs have established a strong and loyal fan-base worldwide. Ironbark, the group’s eighth studio album, is a thank you to those thousands of fans who have stuck with them at home and overseas, and a fitting one given the quality of the material.

In a catalogue of many great songs, from early favourites such as London Still and Lighthouse to Black Dirt Track and Dark Highway from their most recent album, Beautiful You (2015), Ironbark is an embarrassment of riches. Aside from the title song, which opens the album, Cunningham’s contribution includes a couple of gems that are immersed in the land and sea around his home. The Shack, for example, a gentle spoken-word stroll, takes him back to his youth, to the tiny house where he grew up, next door to where he lives now. Then there are the exquisite sibling harmonies on I Won’t Go Down, a pulsing acoustic tale of resolve that came to Cunningham during a thunderstorm while he was camping on the beach.

Thorn’s mournful vocal glides over Franz’s sparse basslines and McDonald’s brushed snare on her ode to the emotional games young lovers play, Lion and Gazelle. Then she wrenches emotion of her own from the depths of another powerful musing on love, the banjo-infused Dirty Little Bird. Based in Utah with her family for many years, Thorn looks back to her roots on the lilting, alt-country tune The Coast, a reflection on the ghosts that are said to inhabit the treacherous coastline near Albany in WA where the sisters grew up.

Simpson has written about heartbreak before and does so again on the sprightly country/ blues of Done and Dusted. “Loves done and dusted/ that ship has sailed/love’s done and dusted/I’m on my way,” she sings. There’s a fragility to her voice on Syria, the longest song on the album and one that observes sympathetically from afar the human tragedy going on in that country.  “You see everything that is going on there on TV and social media,” she says, “and here I am sitting by my fish pond in Fremantle playing my guitar thinking how lucky I am.” 

Ironbark was recorded in true Waifs style in a make shift studio in the unfinished kitchen of Josh Cunningham’s rural retreat on the NSW South Coast across two weeks. The name references the majestic eucalyptus standing sentinel over the band as they recorded, and the resilience and inner strength of the wood as opined in the song of the same title.  

An Evening with The Waifs features over two hours of music that spans their 25 year history of touring with their sets determined with input from you, and laced with your stories.

Monday 20th November 2017 – 8:00pm
Tickets $60
Phone orders call Country Leather, Milton 4455 3056