I've just noticed that I haven't uploaded a blog post for about 3 years and thought that it was high time that I did one. Welcome to Rous Unplugged's 5th year on the planet! Over the last four years, Rous Unplugged has truly been a wonderful community event, bringing together audiences and performers of all types and providing some of the best acoustic entertainment in the country. Rous Unplugged really is the best night out $5 will give you! One of our greatest achievements is the fact that over the past four years, Rous Unlugged has raised $13, 471.14 for the New Alstonville Preschool building fund! We are so pround to have been a part of this, and to have been able to help our local preschool. Not too long ago, Alstonville almost didn't have a preschool however the community rallied, including Rous Unplugged, and now we have a beautiful, designed built preschool. Here a few local folks celebrate the moment that our new preschool was opened! This year, in March we will achieve a milestone - we will have our 50th ever Rous Unplugged. This is a wonderful achievement and we can be very proud of all the hard work that has brought us here. Also, in May, Rous Unplugged will be turning 5! Happy Birthday, Rous Unplugged! Another great achievement! We are now saving madly for the building of a new deck at the rear of the hall. Rous Mill Hall is a much beloved community hall and over the last few years, a wonderful, vibrant community energy has been bringing life and a real sense of community to the hall. We love our hall, and it gives us great pleasure to be able to give back to the hall. At the end of 2016, Rous Unplugged had donated $2,149.80 towards building our new deck. This is a very exciting project and one that we hope to commence work on sometime soon. Well, it's so great to write another blog post! And it's so great that Rous Unplugged continues to rumble along, bringing joy and togetherness to the community, providing an opportunity for performers of all standards to ply and hone their trade, and giving audience after audience night after night of awesome, heart-warming entertainment. We look forward to seeing you soon at the next Rous Unplugged event! All the best, Simon Rous Unplugged - the best $5 you'll ever spend!!
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For the March Rous Unplugged, we had another great night, with a plethora of awesome local musical and poetic acts. The profits from this evening were once again donated to our special charity - the New Alstonville Community Preschool building fund. We donated $195.00 to the preschool and purchased three stools for performance Rous Unplugged as well. These should be in use from our next Rous Unplugged - May 2nd. Look forward to seeing you all then! You can see the photos from the night by clicking here: G'day folks!
Well, the first Rous Unplugged for 2014 was an awesome occasion. We had a wonderfully appreciative crowd of about 90 or so and a fine gathering of some awesome local talents. Poetry, instrumental music, voice and accompaniment, it was a great night which turned out to be our latest ever Rous Unplugged. We finally finished at around 10.30pm - yawn! Sleeping kiddies everywhere! February Unplugged is looking awesome! The new program is online now, at the Performers tab, and promises to be a fantastic night. Again we have a terrific line-up - some more familiar performers and some new faces as well. Also, for the February 28th Rous Unplugged only, we will be donating all our profits to a different worthy cause - the Phillipines-based disaster-recovery group the SEALS. We will be resuming our dedication to the New Alstonville Preschool from the March 28th Rous Unplugged. Looking forward to a great night in February. See you there! Simon Welcome, one and all, to the 2014 season of Rous Unplugged. Our first night will be on Friday, January 25 - kicking off at 7.00pm as usual, and the talent for the night is looking awesome! The night's performers have been booked solid from early December, all waiting for their opportunity to take the floor and deliver their 12 minutes of excellence!
The latest schedule of performers is available now on the Performers Tab - so check out who's on when and then make sure you're at Rous Mill Hall, in plenty of time for the 7.00pm kick off! Look forward to seeing you all then! Cheers, Simon It was a night of awesomeness!
We weren't sure how many folks were going to be on holiday for this one - but the audience was at least 100 strong! The first half started with father and daughters, Andrew, Ella and Sylvie with a couple of beautiful songs, including our first Scarborough Fair of the night! This was followed by Jessica Chate reading her ANZAC DAY poem - from the point of view of a WarHorse. After Jessica, a new face to Rous Unplugged took the stage - Miki Kehoe - with three awesome songs on guitar and voice. A very contemporary sound! Great job MIki! Local flautist Janet and pianist Carol (both staff at the Alstonville Preschool) played a number of tunes expressing their joy at the fact that the New Alstonville Preschool has been given a temporary venue! We then had Simon and Leigh perform the second Scarborough Fair for the night - this time with the canticle thrown in as well! And lastly, before a yummy tea break, we had Karl and Shaz playing three of their sultry Irish folky numbers. A great first set! The second half kicked off with Anabelle Barnes performing an A Cappella version of Lean on Me, to great applause. Next up, Margaret Loong took to the floor with her crazy, quirky musical story-telling and poetry and was followed by a slightly longer set from Men Wot Sing - sixteen lads in very whacky outfits - singing a cappella . A couple of naughty songs sneaking in, but they were forgiven! Next up Bernadette and Helen played three lively Irish sets on harp and guitar - (including our last Scarborough Fair for the evening!) The second last act for the night was a polished three-piece jazz improvisational group called flatmates with a very cruisy sound and our final act for the night was Rous Unplugged veteran, Keegan Sparke who brought out the ukelele and sang and stomped in excellent style! It was a great night by one and all. Some of the feedback we've had was wonderful, one Rous Unplugged regular audience member said: "It was the best one yet!" Yes, folks, fresh off the grape-vine! The New Alstonville Preschool has been approved a temporary venue for the foreseeable future. From January, 2014, the preschool will operate out of Amaze N' Place - an awesome venue on Wardell Rd, Alstonville. Congrats, preschool crew! And thank you so much Rick and Lisa Dillon of Amaze N' Place, and Ballina District Council!
This is exciting news! It means that the children of Alstonville will still have access to an excellent, long-running preschool! Fantastic! And while the preschool operates from Amaze N' Place, the building process for a permanent dwelling will continue and all the profits of Rous Unplugged will continue to bolster the Preschool Building Fund! Hooray!! So, look forward to seeing you on Friday, September 27th at Rous Unplugged - The Biggest Littlest Unplugged night around! What a night we had! Friday, July 26th was our Winter Rous Unplugged and we filled the hall with an audience 120 strong. We had a great variety of acts and about 120 + smiling faces! We began the night with the Von Trapp kids taking us down memory lane with four excellent songs from the recent Ballina Players' Sound of Music production. Next up we had Anais Cross performing on guitar and voice, followed by Rennick and Simon performing on two guitars an adaptation of Pink Floyd's "Is there Anybody Out There". Guitar and vocal duo, Jack and Kate McCabe then took to the stage with a flawless performance as did Jessica Chate with her poem, "Where the Wind Blows". After Jessica, her dad Simon (me!) leapt up with the mandolin and played the Can Can while a bunch of kids danced wildly - and with abandon! The first set was excellently finished off with Georgina Pollard's new Evans Head group, The Sea Singers and a quick audience rendition of the round, "Time for my Tea". The interval was catered for by the staff and parents of the Alstonville Preschool who, as always, baked up a storm! We began the second half of the show with a scary song performed by local singer, Col Wright, detailing the horrid exploits of a very hungry Green-Eyed Dragon. Next we had James and CJ performing a mix of original songs and covers with two guitars and voice. Then Rous Unplugged co-host, Mim O'Grady, took the stage and performed her first ever three song solo set and did a beautiful job of it too. Our second last act was the guitar and vocal duo, husband and wife, Karl and Shaz Mullan, as they played three magnificent pieces sung soulfully by Shaz with her wonderful Irish brogue and beautifully harmonised by Karl. Our final act for the night was singer guitarist Tobias Moldenhauer who had booked to perform while his dad was over from Germany. He did a magnificent job with four original pieces, 3 songs and an instrumental, and his virtuosic guitar playing took many a breath away. As an encore, we got the Von Trapp family kids up once again to sing Edelweiss and So Long, Farewell! It was a great finish to an otherwise awesome night! Well done everyone! Ou G'day again, folks, Simon from Rous Unplugged here. Rous Unplugged turned 1 year old last month, and we're going to celebrate our first birthday this Friday! Happy Birthday to us! Yay!
As I type this, it's Monday June 24th and we've only got another four days till this month's Rous Unplugged and we've got a great looking show lined up for you featuring a few new faces as well as some seasoned Rous Unpluggians. Some of of the new faces include Alstonville High School's Sam Stanek on classical and Flamenco guitar, local singers, Kris Periera, Dinah Waters & Cloe Jagger, Karl and Sharon Mullan with some great Irish and folky sounds and well-known singer songwriter, Liz Lord. Some of our more familiar faces include Gary Collocott and friends with their awesome guitar and vocal pieces, Leigh Cross and his younger sister, Anais, will be performing separate sets, Hannah Davis will add her voice to either keys, ukelele or guitar, piano teachers Steve Johns and Dylan Curnow will add their distinctive sounds as will Steve's young students, Bibi Stevens and Mya Tosomeen. For a look at the full program, click here or on the Performers Tab! Don't forget that the proceeds of Rous Unplugged are donated to the New Alstonville Preschool. I look forward to seeing you all on Friday! Tell your friends! Bring your mum! Bring some cushions, nibbles, wine, etc. and join us for an awesome night! Rous Unplugged is a wonderful event, held on the last Friday of the month and while there's a plethora of awesome talent to be seen, it's about so much more than just good music and entertainment. It's all about community and the coming together and sharing of family and friends in a warm and beautiful environment. If you haven't yet experienced a Rous Unplugged, try to get down tonight! You won't regret it! Well, hello again folks, it's been a few days since I've got the site up, and now I'm almost done with getting all the photos online. I'm feeling like it's looking pretty good! Some great shots and some great videos too.
The videos will take a lot longer to get online, as there's much more editing involved in the process of turning the raw footage into decent Youtube clips. But you can rest assured that I'll prioritise getting them up online - slowly, but surely! Also, I'll be getting some information together on how the New Alstonville Preschool is coming along. This will be uploaded over the next week or so! I'm really looking forward to being able to bring the preschool situation more into the public eye! Awesome! Well, that's about it for today! Mim and I are already hard at work organising new talent for the next Rous Unplugged, which will be held on Friday, February 22nd. We look forward to seeing as many of you as possible then! Cheers! Simon Chate |
Simon Chate
I'm a musician and music teacher at Alstonville High School and I've been wanting to get an acoustic event happening for some time now, and Rous Unplugged seems to be surpassing all my hopes! It's so great watching our community come together for this fantastic monthly evening of varied and excellent entertainment. Archives
January 2017
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