Description
Billie Dean and Andrew Einspruch – Finding Joy
CD review by Tony Smith
TN217-40 – $28
TN180 Sep 26
Numerous projects share the name of this album, which is the soundtrack of the 2003 Australian film.
This was a ‘Laughing Owl’ production in which Billie Dean and Andrew Einspruch were heavily involved.
All the projects of this name share the stated aim of helping people through creativity, spiritual strength and yoga like activities.
The feel good film centres on a young woman who arrives in a country town wanting to sing but unable to. Then she takes in a stray dog and finds her voice.
The dog, ‘Raffi’, has a special song which is heard three times: straight, an ‘Ah! version and with ‘rock’ treatment embellished by saxophone and electric guitar.
The film was shot around Braidwood, atop the hill before the plunge down the Clyde Mountain to the coast.
The CD boasts an hour and a quarter of music from the soundtrack, and includes contributions mainly from artists resident around south east New South Wales and Canberra, but also from further afield.
Some of the songs and tunes are brief, but the producers no doubt needed to fit audio to the background scenes and events on screen.
Short or long, they are collectively evocative.
Pure folk fans will enjoy especially the Gillespie Girls from Majors Creek singing ‘Far Away in Australia’, and the traditional tunes ‘Ash Plant’ played by Katyusha and Malumba’s renditions of ‘Gravel Walk/ Tamlin Reel’ and their own ‘The Edge of the Green’.
Blues aficionados will delight in Richard Steele’s finger picking guitar in ‘Bermagui Moon’ and will be unable to avoid a grin over Einspruch’s cheeky ‘Stuck in the Sixties Blues’ and growly ‘Hole in the Sock Blues’.
Rick Grossman sings the title track with relish while Chrys King’s ‘Faeries Hornpipe’ on Celtic harp and several ethereal contributions by Tribe create a light and happy atmosphere.
Braidwood’s Merrilyn Simmons in ‘Searching for the Spark’ is both strong and joyous.
Perhaps of all the tracks, this one best expresses the positive theme of the album and indeed of the movie.
Her ‘Little Bit of Everything’ also has a freshness about it.
Themed albums always hold that extra level of interest as the tracks interact and support one another.
When the producers ensure that there is balance, variety and clarity, as they do in Finding Joy, the outcome is enjoyable listening.
Whatever happiness Billie Dean’s character finds because of Raffi, the entire concept is uplifting for us listeners.
The album has good karma.
Music by a number of artists from the Finding Joy Film.
“At every meet-the-filmmaker session we have done, someone asks for a Finding Joy soundtrack album. And it’s no mystery why. The music in the film is, quite simply, some of the best folk music that Australia has to offer.
So we are thrilled to have been able to put together a soundtrack CD. Featuring the “Finding Joy” title track from Rick Grossman of the Hoodoo Gurus, the rollicking music of Katysha and Malumba, the haunting sounds of Tribe, some of the pieces that Peter and Joy perform in the movie, and much, much more, the album delivers over 1 1/4 hours of fabulous music”. Featuring the Talents of: Katyusha, Tribe, Merrilyn Simmons, Malumba, Billie Dean, Richard Steele, Rick Grossman, Andrew Einspruch, Chrys King, Gillespie Girls, Hanna Gillespie.
