AUGUST WINTER CONCERT

A fundraiser for ArtSound FM

It’s a cold Saturday afternoon in August, and instead of sitting at home waiting for the weather to improve, you’re walking into the Polish White Eagle Club in Turner. There’s a warm room, a friendly crowd, and the sound of instruments being tuned. Somewhere near the bar, someone you haven’t seen since the last ArtSound event waves you over. It starts the way most good afternoons do: with people arriving a little early, ordering a drink, and finding a seat before the music begins.

At 2pm, Ducks in Trees take the stage first. The band is largely the work of one musician, American-born CJ Adams, who moved to Canberra and started writing folk songs about the place he now calls home. On this afternoon he’s joined by friends Bevan and Macca, filling out the sound with acoustic guitar, banjo and close vocal harmonies — and often a guest or two turns up to swell the ranks further. Their songs deal with the kind of things most people have thought about at 2am at some point: sanity, love, distance, old dreams. The sound sits somewhere between the folk revival of the 1970s and the more recent folk-rock of bands like The Lumineers, and it tends to settle a room in nicely before the afternoon builds toward Salonistas.

Come in from the Cold — ArtSound's got a concert for that (ducks)

Come in from the Cold — ArtSound's got a concert for that (salon)

By the time Salonistas take over, the room has warmed up in more ways than one. They’re a five-piece band from Sydney’s inner west, led by singer and songwriter Rivkah Shoshana, and their songs are about the things most people have lived through at some point: love that didn’t work out, long drives, the pull of leaving and the pull of coming home. Their sound moves between country, soul and rockabilly without settling in any one place for long, and it tends to bring a room like this one to life. For fans of Lucinda Williams, Kasey Chambers, Sarah Shook & the Disarmers, and Hurray for the Riff Raff, Salonistas will be a real treat.

Somewhere in the middle of the afternoon, it’s easy to forget this is a fundraiser at all. That’s rather the point. ArtSound doesn’t run on its own, and afternoons like this one are what keep the station on air: ticket sales, a drink at the bar, people simply turning up. There’s no pitch, no long speech about donations. Just two bands, a room full of listeners and volunteers, and a station that means something to the people in that room.

By 4pm, when the last song finishes and people start gathering their coats, it feels less like an event that happened at the club and more like something the ArtSound community did together, in a room they happened to borrow for the afternoon.

If that sounds like your kind of afternoon, here’s where to start.