Americana singer/songwriter Liam Grundy and playwright Jonathan Holloway, the masterminds behind the upcoming production Badback Mountain, answer a quick-fire round of questions about their new play. Here’s what they had to say…
Hi both, now here’s a challenge – tell us about your show in one sentence?
Liam Grundy: We’ve tried to make a curious and compelling closet thriller that mixes live music and humor with a tight plot in which two adventurous chaps undertake a remarkable quest to take a show to the Edinburgh Fringe while harboring a covert darker purpose.
Why should people come and see it?
Jonathan Holloway: It’s not just one show, it’s actually several shows jammed together. So on the one hand people will come and enjoy Liam’s very accomplished original Americana music while simultaneously relishing the surprising yarn spun by a pair of amiable misadventurers – cunning ‘third agers’ just like ourselves!
Explain for the uninitiated what Alt Country music is?
LG: It’s a term people came up with about 15-20 years ago. They now call it ‘Americana’ or ‘Americana roots’. It’s country music with a modern spin, rooted in Blues but nimbler and more affecting than the roadhouse rock one usually thinks of.
Liam, we hear you have quite a big fan base.
JH: Yes he does.
LG: Hmm, there is a small group of people who buy my stuff.
JH: Come on, you’re big in Scandinavia aren’t you?
LG: Well, Norway has been very good to me. In Sweden and Norway there’s a lot of musical interest. It’s not anything that involves line dancing or stuff like that, they’re very big into their Americana music.
Something tells us you are holding back on us a little Mr Grundy!
JH: He’s big in Memphis, too! He recorded at Sun Studio, where Elvis first recorded.
LG: I don’t know… I just like stuff and record it and put it out and say I’ll perform and then I turn up.
You currently have 2 albums out at the moment. Richmond and the second Huston. Are you playing any of the music from them?
LG: Yes, We’re doing a mix of stuff from both and a couple of new songs, too. There will also be a single out for the show called No Girl In Tennessee.
What question would you hate to be asked on a chat show?
JH: What do you want to do next with this show? We’re at Omnibus Theatre for six nights and the objective is to polish up this well-crafted jewel of a show and from there maybe go touring. It is 60 minutes in which the audience get to meet us in the guise of two subtly unhinged characters and there’s humour in it – slightly wonky humor, it has to be said. We haven’t mentioned there’s also genuine suspense – that’s the thriller element. It’s like Marmite – condensed entertainment extract. In all honesty, we have tried to bring drama and country music together in something that is very personal and very much about us, really.
In the play, do you ever get to the Edinburgh Fringe?
JH: Yes, we sort of do… Basically, the show is made as though this is the evening before we get on the train to go to Edinburgh and we’re here at Omnibus Theatre, the AD Marie McCarthy has given us access to the theatre until 9 pm on the Sunday evening before we leave. The truck is coming around to pick up all our stuff so this is literally the moment before were about to embark on this expedition.
Why call it Badback Mountain?
JH: Because it made us laugh!
LG: Our characters wrongly thought it was funny.
Finally, why Rockford Files?
JH: That’s the name of the fictional show these two are preparing for the Edinburgh Fringe. Overall, a bad decision. It turns out fewer people remember it than they’d hoped!
