On a musical and visual journey with Western Australia in Pictures and Songs

Go on a musical and visual journey around Western Australia this summer as Western Australia in Pictures and Songs hits the Back Bar at Dutch Trading Co from Thursday, February 2 for Fringe World 2024. Historic photographs of WA from the late 19th and early 20th centuries, along with contemporary images, will be projected to accompany original acoustic songs performed by Spare Parts Department inmate and guitarist Gudgeon Pinn, and Boorloo/Perth-based singer, songwriter and WAAPA star Bethany O’Brien. BEC WELDON caught up with Gudgeon Pinn to find out how audience members can look forward to being transported across this great state to places and events familiar and new. 

Congratulations on presenting your show, Western Australia in Pictures and Songs, at Fringe World 2024! Can you tell us a bit about the show and what audiences can expect to see?

Original songs composed by myself and Bethany, and Bethany’s mum, with strong Western Australian themes will be performed to accompany projections of old and contemporary photographs from WA. We are looking forward to providing an entertaining and thought-provoking show, both musically and visually.

It’s great to see a Fringe World show celebrating Western Australian themes, and your show Western Australia in Pictures and Songs does just that. What inspired you to create the show?

Over the last few years, I have written many songs inspired by Western Australia and really wanted to share them with a wider audience. I also became hooked on the regular postings of historic photographs by the State Library of WA on social media, and it occurred to me that a show that celebrates WA using these pictures and songs would be very enjoyable to many people.

Before you began writing songs as Gudgeon Pinn, you were working as an engineer in the WA mining industry. What inspired the change of career—the running away with the proverbial musical circus?

There is an immense joy in being able to create music and share it with other people, and this is my main inspiration—one that I hope I never lose. However, I do still have the day job as an engineer in WA mining, as I am very aware of how hard it is for other performers who have to rely on the wider gig economy to supplement their income!

When you say that your music is inspired by Western Australia, what elements of the state and its lands and peoples most inform your songwriting?

The immensity and natural beauty of the state, the struggles of its peoples past and present, and the challenges we still face. And also how great it is just to live here!

Like your namesake, you’re quite known to pivot, having written acoustic folk ballads, sea shanties, and folk rock-style songs—that's quite the variety. What motivates you to experiment with those different styles?

I’m very influenced by the music I listened to when I was young, which was primarily my dad’s original Buddy Holly and Beatles vinyl, along with his eclectic tastes in folk and other music. As I got older, I became very appreciative of many different styles, which have great melodies and finely crafted lyrics.

I rarely set out to write a song in a particular style; instead, they tend to form organically as the song progresses, informed by all of those previous influences. The exceptions to this rule are sea-shanties, which I write specifically to perform once a month at the Fremantle Shanty Club because belting out a song of the sea over a beer with a room full of like-minded people is just so much fun!

In this show, you’re accompanied by the talented Bethany O'Brien. How did that collaboration come about?

I knew I wanted her to be part of the show from an early stage. I first saw Bethany perform a few of her own songs at a songwriter’s performance night and was awe-struck at how good her songs were and how beautiful her voice is!

One of the songs she performed that night was the wonderful Mary of York about her great-great grandmother’s life, which fits so well with the theme of the show, so I was really pleased she has agreed to include this song with the others she's playing. I’m also pleased that my fellow spare part and refugee from the mining industry, Grub Screw, will also be accompanying me for a few songs!

What is the significance of the visual component of the show, and how did you choose the historic photographs you wanted to include?

The photographs are very important: the historic photos give glimpses back in time into a world that can be simultaneously familiar and incomprehensible, where places that seem old to us now were only just being created, and where people who have been dead for decades lived lives filled with hardship and mundanity that the majority of modern Western Australians will never know. 

There were so many great historic photographs available, especially in the State Library of WA, that it was difficult to choose, but occasionally images would stand out as striking, fascinating, or absurd to modern eyes and just had to be included. There are also a few amazing contemporary images in the show that have been chosen for the quirky views they give of modern WA.

As someone who seems pretty passionate about Western Australia, we’ve got to ask, what, in your opinion, makes Western Australia the best state in Australia?

As someone who only made WA their home in the 2000s, I can be objective and say Western Australia is the best state in Australia, and I wouldn’t want to live anywhere else. I think other parts of Australia are fantastic and I enjoy visiting them, but Western Australia’s people, unique beauty, untamed wildness, and Perth’s superb quality of life and weather mean that there is only really one state I would like to live in!

What are you hoping the audience will take away from Western Australia in Pictures and Songs?

I hope they have a really enjoyable evening, feel invigorated by how amazing WA is, and enjoy some of the fantastic brews at the Dutch Trading Company, which is our host venue for all of the shows. I also hope they will take away one or two earworms so they can’t get the songs out of their heads!

What’s next for Gudgeon Pinn and his musical romps through the state in 2024?

It’s time to get out to more venues and take my songs to more people—maybe even take this show on the road. Perhaps I might get to spend some time in the studio too!