Waveney – Give it to the Sea

WAVENEY Ayscough, a volunteer with Bellingen Hospital Auxiliary, has just launched an album, Give it to the Sea, at waveney.bandcamp which is free to listen to.

“A few of the songs are about Bellingen and its characters,” Waveney told News Of The Area.

At age 50, the Bellingen volunteering advocate is philosophical about her venture into the recording industry, a free-ing feeling she has experienced within herself since tackling cancer in 2021.

“I love to sing, don’t think I’m good enough but then I thought who cares.

“I’ve been through much worse than other people’s opinions and if I have to leave this earth early, I’ve left a piece of art behind,” she said.

Waveney’s mother was a music teacher who instilled in her whole family a love for music.

“I hear music in my mind all the time.

“I love how it makes me feel, how I can be transported, motivated, moved,” she said.

With a fascination for the human condition, writing stories, poems and singing, Waveney returned to her former childhood enjoyment of writing music only three years ago.

Having not touched a piano since childhood, she took up the guitar for its easy portability and found it tricky to begin with.

She was heavily medicated as she struggled with depression.

“I hate what those drugs did to me,” she said.

“The music disappeared from my mind.”

Her forays into singing saw her doing backing vocals in 1992 for her brother and sister-in-law’s 70’s and 80’s covers band ‘Yesterday’s Heroes’ and for their trio/quartet ‘Karizmah’.

“I also sang in their big band show ‘The Supergirls show’.

“I always wanted to sing in a band, it was my dream, but I’m quite shy so I Iiked being back-up; and I adore singing harmony,” said Waveney

Growing in confidence she started doing a few open mic nights at the local Federal hotel in Bellingen.

“It was terrifying but fun at the same time.

“Nothing bad happened, so I went back.”

A few years ago, she felt an energy come over herself and she began to write songs.

“I love to sing, and I love to tell stories.

“The songs I wrote really gave me something special for myself; a sense of self-worth, which had been annihilated over the years,” she said.

“Two years ago, I discovered I had breast cancer and I fell into a deep depression.

“The treatment and infection almost ended me.”

Writing the songs and singing her work has been a therapy of a kind.

The whole album is about a woman who is finally allowing herself to be who she really is; a woman who is finally letting herself feel.

“I think to myself, who would want to hear these songs? Do I have any talent? Am I being ridiculous?

“Cancer made me realise….’who cares, you love it, so do it anyway’.

Speaking about the album title, Give it to the Sea, Waveney said, “Whenever I feel so sad I just can’t make sense of existence, I go to the beach; give all your pain, your hope, your fears, your love to the sea, she will take it, and heal you.”

She recorded the album with her mentor, Marguerite Montes, at Happy Place Studios in Sydney.

“She is an amazing, magnificent artist herself.”

Waveney now jams with some of the older musos that she met at the open mic nights.

“We think we might get a covers band together with a few originals, if we can get our **** together,” she said, laughing.

By Andrea FERRARI

Waveney – Give It to the Sea CD review by Tony Smith TN162 Mar 24   At just over 30 minutes, this 2023 album of 11 tracks is surprisingly short. Nevertheless, it is always a good policy to leave your audience wanting more and Waveney Ayscough certainly does this. The album has a good mixture of songs accompanied by piano and guitar and Waveney has a true voice of a very listenable pitch and she expresses the lyrics very well indeed. Waveney Ayscough is active in the community of Bellingen on the north coast of New South Wales. This explains the song ‘Old Bello Town’. Her sleeve notes describe her songs as being about ‘love, depression and living in a small country town’. The people of the district would be pleased with this anthem. Waveney’s musical journey began providing backing vocals for a couple of bands and writing songs ‘as a teen in my bedroom’. She graduated from these small beginnings thanks to assistance and encouragement from the ‘amazing, generous and wondrous soul’ Marguerite Montes. Montes was mentor for Waveney and also provides backing with lead and bass guitar. There are also a couple of tracks with pleasant vocal harmony. Montes is a multi-lingual multi-instrumentalist and admits to wearing many sombreros. ‘That hippystormboy’ is the longest track on the album and is upbeat with damped staccato guitar chords. ‘Nobody knows’ is an unusual wailing blues number: ‘you hold my hand but you don’t understand … you tell me I can’t always have what I want’. Personally, I think that ‘Atticus’ tells perhaps the best story on the album and Atticus is an interesting character. Interestingly, Waveney’s voice seems slightly stronger on the tracks with the guitar accompaniment and the rhythms are perhaps more varied. Other songs include the title track ‘Give it to the sea’, ‘The cat song’, ‘Gudangs’, ‘Ghost in the wind’ which features pleasant piano and fine vocal harmony, ‘Down these halls’ – a song of searching and yearning that shows the range of Waveney’s voice, ‘Darkest depths’ – ‘I love you from the darkest depths… now you’re free … if you come back to me’ and ‘Fly’ which flits across the keyboard as Waveney’s voice soars. Waveney’s journey has included a ‘battle with breast cancer’ and so the album is a kind of personal healing. Her voice is very well suited to carrying the blues. It is also an introduction to a singer-songwriter of whom we can expect to hear more and we should look forward to her next outing. Waveney asked Marguerite Montes whether she has what it takes and can she write a decent song. We can all be pleased the answer was ‘Yes’ and so should we answer after enjoying “Give it to the Sea”.