Sharing an orange with Megan Washington, hitching a ride with The Middle East and having a big old sook at Falls, Marion Bay – JUSTIN HEAZLEWOOD (aka The Bedroom Philosopher) reports on the 2010/11 summer festival circuit. Illustration by DAVID BLUMENSTEIN.

It’s New Year’s Day at 8am and I’m on a charter jet sitting across from Washington.
“I would murder for an apple,” she says. I remember that I have an orange in my backpack. My girlfriend put it in there and now I’m going to give it to Washington. It feels like spiritual cheating but I’m gonna roll with it.
“Here’s an orange,” I say, reaching across from my seat. I like this as a first impression. Offering a fruit that is also a colour. It’s succinct and stylish, like something the camera would linger on in a Wes Anderson film. “Oh thanks,” she says. “We must meet now.” We shake hands and I say “Justin” hoping she’ll recognise who I am somehow. “I’m friends with Ben n….” I trail off as she takes over. “Oh yeah, you’re friends with Ben Law, Anna Krien and the Brisbane mafia.”
She offers me a segment of the orange. Nice.

Someone once told me she’d acknowledged ‘Northcote’ in an Age interview. I wasn’t sure if she’d put two and two together. There was also three and three. A couple of months ago after seeing her film clip I discovered her alias Facebook profile and wrote a message saying I liked the camera angles. She never wrote back.

“I’m that guy with a gimmick song who wrote that message you can’t remember,” I say, with my eyes.
That’s the end of the conversation. I could push it, but I’m not in a good mood. I’m surrounded by medium- to high-profile musicians, most of whom I can’t recognise, on a charter plane delayed by two hours.

The captain appears, looking exactly as a captain should, with white moustache and bushy hair poking out from a blue authority hat. He’s striding up and down the cabin with an uptight yet professional Malaysian hostess in tow. The problem is, there’s too much music equipment on the plane. Their computers are telling them the tail weighs too much and they can’t take off. They are now bringing luggage onboard the plane, filling vacant seats with guitar cases.

“Can I ask you all to move from the back of the plane to the front please?”
We’ve been sitting in our seats for about an hour nibbling on pretzels that Washington and her people squeezed out of the hostess, with nothing to read but an in-flight magazine. (I’d smashed The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time.) “There’s a great boat on page 24” is the tip-off going around. It’s the world’s most expensive liner, its design based on a whale bone.

We move to the front of the plane and take new seats. The captain looks at us, concerned, and then makes us move again. We say we can’t because the other seats are filled with guitars. He says he’ll move the guitars and then reassign us and then trudges off, leaving his cabin crew to pick up the pieces. The hostess shoots us a worried smile.

“Thankyou for your patience” she says through a broken accent. It’s entertaining watching someone remain official when it’s clear they’re itching for a good scream.
Dudes behind me are loving it. “And as the plane takes off if you could all jump up in the air.” Ha ha ha.
“And if you could all lean to one side as it banks left.”

“I don’t love being surrounded by funny people, nor do I love being surrounded by famous people. It makes my brain work too hard, like a nervous autism, and I become so self-conscious I almost forget how to walk.”

I don’t love being surrounded by funny people, nor do I love being surrounded by famous people. It makes my brain work too hard, like a nervous autism, and I become so self-conscious I almost forget how to walk. Band people at festivals all have the same look. The dark blue jeans, the band shirt, the hoodie, the moustache, the healthy cover of stubble, the right cap, the casual stance, the right laughter in the right pack with the right people. The girls have deer legs and an aggressive haircut and speak in hushed tones with cool sunglass guys and text quietly and sip coffees and seem to know what they’re doing. I stand by myself wearing shorts staring hard at my phone until I accidentally start talking to one of the sound guys.

The auto-perceived “hierarchy of cool” of a music festival bill automatically triggers high school status anxiety. Feelings of inferiority that I thought had been incinerated by years of success and self-development reveal they are only covered over, and can be stirred up like sediment. This is multiplied by the fact I want to be a straight musician, and am forced to collide with the all-slouching all high-fiving hypotheticals of the direction my life could have taken. This is my work. It is work.

We touch down and herd ourselves onto a waiting bus. It’s hot outside. So far the mood has been jocular and patient (for musicians at 11am on New Year’s Day). But after 15 minutes of sitting on a full bus on the Perth tarmac it’s too much for some.
“C’mon, let’s get a move on.”
“What’s the fuckin’ hold up?”
This is Angus & Julia Stone, sipping ouzo from a Décor flask.

I am sitting up the front, so I can avoid people, with my clip-on sunnies and patchy two-week stubble. I’m half anxious at the fact I am alone and no one is in charge, and half comforted that I am flanked by a ragtag artistic team. Washington slinks onto the bus. She had a motherly air, and has been flitting around speaking to various sorts. If this unruly, unwashed mob has a leader, it is her.

“Half the gear has gone into a trailer already. I should rescue our keyboards.” She tells someone. I say nothing. She looks at me, reaches out her hand and cups it against the side of my face. The next moment, she is gone.

∗∗∗

I’m at Woodford and it’s been raining for three days straight. Inside my tent, everything smells like damp durps. The ground outside is pure mudslush. Fortunately, Woodford has a rock solid sense of positivity about it. A dinosaur could be walking around biting people’s heads off and there’d be a small coterie of Norfolk folk dancers happily urging it along with their leg bells. The dinosaur would then tell everyone to buy its dub album Reggaesaurus from the merch tent.

My girl and I fill in the mornings by playing travel Scrabble in the green room. This is a collective artists area where they have iPhone charging docks and a water cooler we can fill our bottles from. (The folk rider.) There’s nothing more delightful than sitting down to Scrabble in dry trackies, a cup of chamomile tea and a pair of mandolin and fiddle players jamming a jaunty tune only metres way. There’s nothing worse than them still playing an hour later. We ask one of them whether “RAZED” is a word. As in, “Razing a city.” He says he isn’t sure. We consider asking five people and tabulating the survey results. I decide not to run with it. Damn, it is a word. I would have got heaps.

“I stand by myself wearing shorts staring hard at my phone until I accidentally start talking to one of the sound guys.”

I’m billed under the spoken word section, but the tent I’m playing is pretty big. I ask for a fan on stage as my first gig has me sweltering, even in shorts. Everyone is surprised when the stage manager presents me with a shy but cute bespectacled girl wearing a Boosh T-shirt. I hand her a cardboard sign and order her to start waving. The thing about folk festival gigs is you end up performing to nationalities you wouldn’t normally play to, including that exotic race of slow, special midget people called children. During ‘New Media’ a kid with a frog backpack is going nuts and jumping about. During a pause I kneel down to give him a high five. He obliges, grabbing onto my hand. I pull away and he sprints off to his mum. I start squealing into my hands.

During the banter, the bored looking kids and dad down the front make a ruckus. The girl pops a balloon she’s been fiddling with, (not literally, though it is a folk festival), so I snap.

“What’s happening down there?” I make a comment challenging that playing with balloons is more interesting than my blistering poetica. The Dad says “play ‘Khe Sanh’” for the second time and I glower.
“You Woodford audiences, you’re so smug. Oh look at us, we can see anything we want, there’s 15 stages.”
Apparently the girl looks mortified as I derisively whip into ‘Northcote’.
At the end of the song, the girl and her Mum get up and present me with a half-deflated yellow balloon animal. It’s a giraffe rapidly downgrading to a deformed dog.
“Thanks,” I say. “You’ve restored my faith in humanity.” Sometimes, performing is like meeting yourself for the first time and not being that into it.

∗∗∗

“I’m sorry but I don’t know who you are.” It’s the security guy on the VIP tent at Falls and he doesn’t know who I am. I’m at Marion Bay and I’ve left my artist pass at home. This guy isn’t having a bar of me. I consider trying a few lines including, “Google my face, bitch!” But he doesn’t have a laptop. I don’t feel qualified to try, “Do you know who I am?”, but consider, “Do you know who I think I am?” A safer bet is probably, “Do you know who I am, because I don’t anymore.” I have a feeling this still isn’t going to get me into the gourmet bain-maries where I can collect the crap out of my meal ticket.

All is not lost - my lady has her pass and goes inside to order outrageously tasty salmon and paella in biodegradable tubs. While I wait outside patiently sulking, a girl from my past comes up and leads with, “Hi! Do you remember me?” Honestly, what happened to, “Haven’t seen you in ages, how are you”, and if the person has forgotten who you are, just rolling with it? I’ve had conversations with people who’s not only names I’ve forgotten but faces as well. I love having no idea who I’m talking to or what about. I pull out all sorts of open questions like, “What projects are you working on?” and, “Facebook. Discuss.” It’s conversation extreme sports.

“Mandy?” I say, getting it wrong. She is crestfallen and we can’t recover.
Another dude appears, sunnies on head, eating chips casually.
“Ay love that tram song man,” he says. I’m in a filthy mood, but I try not to take it out on anyone.
“Thanks man.”
“I’m from Launnie and we went over to Melbourne and were in JB Hi Fi walking around going ‘fffflick through indie.’”
“Yeah right, there’s heaps of hipster dudes in there.”
“Want a chip?”
”Yeah.”
I take a saucy chip as the sun sets over the scenic beach backdrop. A crinkly cut and a decent young bloke, my wonderful womanette about to bring out some food, douche security guard in sunnies just doing his job. Life’s OK.

∗∗∗

Life’s not OK. I’m at Perth airport and my iPhone is broken after Woodford and my ride has just driven off without me. This couldn’t be more disorganised and I have no idea where I am and no idea where I’m supposed to be and no manager and NO LOLLIES! WAAAAAAAAAAA. It’s hot, and I just bought a coffee and a sushi which is probably a silly combination. Milk and seafood, together at last - all over my backseat you dreg. The red-haired dude I'm chatting to (Jack, remember that!) is from the band The Middle East so I follow him back to his entourage.

“Where’s your ride?” Asks the long haired dude in sunnies. Wait, that’s all of them.
“I don’t know, I have no idea where I’m supposed to be,” I say. Half not caring, half enjoying the dramatics of it, half embarrassed and all bad at maths.
“You can get a ride with us I reckon.”

“Sometimes, performing is like meeting yourself for the first time and not being that into it.”

And there you have it. For the next 24 hours I hang out with the fine chaps from The Middle East. An actual adventure! I’m on fire, offering gum, eating Subway, borrowing phones, staying in Bunbury. They have a shop called “Thingz.” When I performed there recently I made fun of “Thingz” and the locals didn’t laugh, which is unforgivable. Most problems in life can be attributed to low self-esteem and losing your sense of humour. People wonder why comedians often lose theirs. Goodness knows, how often do musicians misplace their equipment? There’s been many a sense of humour left in the back of a taxi or under a bed.

Not getting picked up is a blessing in disguise. I check in with fellow novelty music practitioner Josh Earl, who is already at the festival site. He says camping is “hell” and he was woken up at six in the morning by “drum circle”. This WA festival is treating us like second class citizens. Tom Gleeson has already pulled out because on the website they wrote, “Love him or hate him you would have laughed at least once.” He was headlining the comedy!

People have funny ideas about comedians. Do they think we hang out in the artist section keeping the rest of the bands in hysterics? Do they think we’re contently sitting in the sun jotting ideas in a notebook? Oh no. We are either hiding in the corner waiting to perform or walking around grizzling. There’s a lot to grizzle about too. No rider, no hotels, and in Sam Simmons’ case no tents. They didn’t have a tent organised for a presenter on a major radio station who sponsors the festival. If you wonder why I’ve been selling myself as a musician when it suits me, this is why. The side effects of a boutique comedy scene in Australia are many. At Glastonbury comedians have their own stage. Here, we aren’t even on the poster. I’ve had more triple j play than half the acts on the bill.

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PART TWO: Public Enemy in Tassie, political clowns at Woodford and some long-awaited public recognition.