Currently riding out the COVID storm by working on new songs and attempting to maintain morale, singer, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, visual artist and poet Karl S. Williams is a finalist for Artist Of The Year, Release Of The Year and Live Act Of The Year at this weekend's 2021 Gold Coast Music Awards.
Karl and his band will also perform live at the awards ceremony from Home Of The Arts that will be broadcast live as a Facebook stream."I hope you are keeping well my dear friends. It is such a time of disconnection, even thoughts are decoupled from each other and scattered," Karl says.
"There is nonetheless much to be grateful for, and today I am grateful to be a finalist in three categories for the Gold Coast Music Awards.
"I am very much looking forward to attending the awards this Saturday. It is a real privilege to be able to gather and celebrate music and community in this time. Thank you."
With his performances frequently referred to as a visceral and 'spiritual experience', leaving an audience slightly altered in the best way possible, Karl's songs are a distillation of life, love and the human condition shaped by the swamp water of the cane country of Northern NSW and the Gold Coast, the landscape of his childhood.
Here, Karl has penned five stanzas written to the country's leadership (or lack thereof).
One
Into every silence
(Where I used to write)
There now comes
The birdlike crowing
Of economic rationalists
Religious apologists
Worker exploitationists
Amateur proctologists
And miscellaneous misogynists.
Two
Their ultimate incompetence
Exposed by something
Which can’t be
Locked in detention
Hauled in by the dogs
Or otherwise
Dismissed by political spin.
Three
The sound of
Handshakes and handouts
For the Fortune 500
And old people
Out on the bones of their arse
To make way for
The Rose Bay mafioso’s
Diversified real estate portfolio.
Four
Pentecostal pandering
At the confluence
Of Big Business
And Big Religion
The neon evangelists
Puppet-masters of prayer
Devotees of the dollar.
Five
A sound unlike
Those elected to serve
The interests of the people
But rather
Like belligerent children
Jealously guarding
Their chosen corner
Of the stolen sandpit
Which the rising ocean
Will soon reclaim.
The 2021 Gold Coast Music Awards will take place as both an in-person event at HOTA and a Facebook livestream on 4 September from 1pm EST. Karl S. Williams also plays Offbeat Music Festival (Sunshine Coast) 27 November.
