Lonnie Holley played his first Australian shows in 2019, appearing at the Melbourne International Jazz Festival, Sydney’s Vivid LIVE and Dark Mofo in Hobart. Holley’s profile was rapidly growing following the 2018 release of his Jagjaguwar debut, MITH – an album that wasn’t just critically acclaimed but resonated with listeners on a deeper level. In the words of Pitchfork‘s Allison Hussey, MITH encouraged listeners to “look beyond pervasive doom and gloom and summon the spirit needed for another day.”
Lonnie Holley – ‘Oh Me Oh My’
Holley is now 73 years old and touring the planet in support of MITH‘s successor, Oh Me Oh My. The Atlanta-based, Alabama musician spent every moment of his time onstage at the Art Gallery of New South Wales’ inaugural Volume festival summoning hope for another day, a better day.
Holley is touring the country with the Afrofuturist jazz ensemble Mourning [A] BLKstar, whose bio describes them as a “gender, genre non-conforming amalgam of Black culture”. The performances have been largely improvised, with Holley finding inspiration in his surroundings in the hours leading up to the show.
The sounds and words that poured out of Holley onstage in Melbourne and Sydney tended to be as richly emotive and musically elemental as anything on the artist’s acclaimed recordings. In between songs, Holley was every bit the raconteur, recalling details of his destitute upbringing in Jim Crow-era Alabama and the journey that’s allowed him to feel hope and optimism for the future.
Holley will perform at Wanderer festival in the coastal NSW town of Pambula Beach this Saturday, 30th September. Ahead of his Australian send-off, Music Feeds spoke to Holley about going deeper, spreading hope, and continuing to educate oneself.
Music Feeds: Do you enjoy all of the travelling that comes with the job? Did the idea of coming back to Australia excite you?
Lonnie Holley: Yeah, it’s so great to be able to come back and continue to spread hope for a better existence on the planet.
MF: You’ve been touring a lot since Oh Me Oh My came out. When you witness the reactions of the audiences at your shows, do you feel like you’re spreading hope and understanding?
Lonnie: Yes. A lot of people come to the merch and say how grateful they are to be touched by my thoughtsmithing. I call it thoughtsmithing, but actually it’s seeing deeper or ahead of a lot of what our current situations are to help people be aware. I see it as a motivation tool and also a preparating tool – cos we as a people, we have to be preparated.
For a situation that is now occurring, we need to not only be alert but be ready when they occur so we can handle them. At any time – at any time – we have to be ready to act and get ourselves together and put our situation back together just for living’s sake.
MF: Do you ever struggle to find hope yourself, to remain hopeful for the future?
Lonnie: Well, being in the ocean of thought or being in the ocean of current events, you are seeing why we should be alert and why we should be ready, and how we should appreciate the lives that we have as individuals and not treat those lives so foolishly.
MF: You mentioned “seeing deeper”, and you sing about going “a little deeper” in the lyrics of ‘Oh Me Oh My’. Can you explain what you mean by going deeper – deeper into what, in what way?
Lonnie: We, as the humanity that is moving forward with the universal occurrence, with the current of universal activity, we must be able to make ourselves aware, and we have a better chance now to become aware by what we use as our tools to study with. And we have those tools and they are called monitors and they are called computers. We can buy a cellphone now that gives us the capability to pretty well study the whole universe, not only the planet.
MF: Are you trying to continually educate yourself?
Lonnie: I think all of us are. I think all of us should learn to appreciate being these people. It’s almost like we are looking for any other bodies out in the universe to learn from. We should learn from ourselves and our own experiences and what we have grown to learn, and think about all of that learning that is left behind as evidence of learning by our ancestors, and respect it.
Then we could easily plant a seed and appreciate the growth of the seed and the time that it takes to grow. We are the ones that have a better way of measuring anything now and then let it be written to help the newcomers of the humanity.
The babies is what I’m talking about – they’re going to be technically aware because of digitalisation. They’re going to have a better opportunity to become global communicators.
MF: Lonnie, your life has been really difficult. You were born in Alabama during a horrible, violent era of American history. I’m sure you still live with some of the pain from your childhood. Did you have to learn how to appreciate the life you have?
Lonnie: It was something that I had to learn and respect. I had to really understand, and I’m still understanding, that I don’t know as much as I wish that I could know. But when we all get together and everybody say what they know and put all of what we know together, we can start spreading a situation of what they call a mass amount of matter.
Now we are challenged with the digital and with the growth of the digital, and if we’re coming online or if we are using the online as a tool, let’s not do it unwisely. Let’s use it to help others.
Lonnie Holley – ‘I Am a Part of the Wonder’
MF: Are there many parallels between your artistic practice and the music you record and perform?
Lonnie: I’m working with what they call the trash, garbage and the debris, all the way down to the particle-ations of it, to be evidented as my visual art. But my music allows me to sing about that. That’s all – the music just allows me to get it on a radio or on a computer or on a digital program that people just can pick up on it a lot quicker.
MF: Your live shows are more immediate than both your recordings and your visual art – do you agree?
Lonnie: I think the live show that I’m doing with music is a lot quicker for peoples to access because there is more ways to going live. Even after you do go on live, you still have a spreading situation of that liveness by somebody being there in that crowd. It may be a thousand people, but a few hundred of those people is going to pull out their cellphones and they’re going to record you and they’re going to share that online, via Instagram or whether it be some other form.
Lonnie Holley 2023 Australian Tour
- Saturday, 23rd September – Max Watt’s, Melbourne VIC
- Tuesday, 26th September – Volume @ AGNSW, Sydney NSW
- Saturday, 30th September – Wanderer, Pambula Beach NSW
- Monday, 2nd October – Thumbs Up for Mother Universe @ The Wheeler Centre, Melbourne VIC
Tickets to Wanderer available here and Thumbs Up for Mother Universe here
Further Reading
Set Times Announced for Wanderer Festival 2023
Solange Locked In To Headline Volume, a New Festival at the Art Gallery of NSW
Nabihah Iqbal: “I’m Confident in Myself Because I Know People Appreciate What I Do”
