If you love folk music, you will love this show. If you hate folk music, you’ll love it even more!
Warmwaters are folk comedy duo Bridgette and Dave who attempt to express themselves but fail in a hilarious and ironic way. “Dave and I have collaborated on a few theatre projects over the years,” says Bridgette. “Dave is also an extremely accomplished musician and we discovered we had a love for daggy folk music in common, so we would occasionally go around to Dave’s place and play some daggy folk songs. Then the idea was born of this daggy folk singing duo who sang original songs they thought were all about love, joy, happiness and hippy values, but were actually about sex and bodily functions and they didn’t realise.
“Bridgette came to me with the idea of dagaret [daggy cabaret]. I’m a songwriter in the real world but I love amateur musicians and bad song writers and was really interested to experiment with that in a loving way” adds Dave.
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After realising there were hardly any male/ female duos doing the same thing, they jumped into writing original songs. “When we made the show, we hoped it would work but we weren’t sure it would. Along the way, instead of pretending to be a folk music duo, we did real gigs in music venues as these characters. Some of the highlights for me were lowlights. They were really terrible gigs,” laughs Dave.
“We realised after that the show is a comedy; it’s a musical comedy piece. Since we’ve positioned it like that, we’ve had some really awesome responses” says Bridgette.
Warmwaters have gone on to perform the Queensland Cabaret Festival's Gala Night accompanied by a four-piece band, as well as Woodford Folk Festival. “I was really worried because I thought people would think we were making fun of them from the way we were dressed but it turned out: A) we were under-dressed; and B) they simply loved it,” says Bridgette. “There’s nothing nicer than playing a song and having people recognise the first few chords and we have started to get that because we have a bit of a following now.”
Warmwaters are set to release their debut self-titled album this year. “The Warmwaters think they’re passionate about political issues but unfortunately they’re not able in anyway to write songs that address them. One of the main challenges as a songwriter is to write songs that are bad and its enormous fun to do that! It turns out some of them are really quite good [laughs] – that has been the irony of the whole project.“The album covers real world issues such as environmentalism and these things. It’s really important and I don’t want to make fun of people who want to save the environment, what I make fun of is narcissistic song writers… I know a lot about them,” laughs Dave.
“There’s a song that I love to play called ‘Let It Grow’ which is about deforestation in sensitive areas. ‘Don’t mow your lawn’ is the chorus, the Warmwaters think it's about deforestation but it's actually about hair removal in sensitive places” laughs Bridgette.
At a gig, audiences can expect to see an hour of original music, “movement and dance; I’m actually an extremely good dancer so finally you’ll get to see me dance. There will be music and comedy and once the Warmwaters get flowing there won't be a dry seat in the house,” finishes Dave.Warmwaters perform Redland Performing Arts Centre 4 June.
