If you love living in the past and want to spend your time somewhere a little more lively than antique stores, then the stage show ‘Sun Rising - The Songs That Made Memphis’ is right up your alley.
Singer and guitarist Dave Cosma is a man on mission to share his passion for the classic tunes from the 1950s. With three years experience playing the show throughout Australia, it’s obvious this is one performance that will never get old. “It kind of just wrote itself in a sense,” enthuses Dave.
“I mean, once we'd decided – when I say 'we' I mean myself and a friend of mine Damon Smith – both of us are original musos that have been working with each other doing our own music for several years and we have this common interest for 1950s music.
“So when we decided to put the show together it was like 'okay what are we going to do' and we thought 'we should celebrate this record label, Sun Records'. But then how do you condense it to a show? There’s so much history there.
“Once we decided to focus on the label's inception to the first seven or eight years it kind of just wrote itself. We decided who the artists were that we wanted to represent; these are the songs they did and it happened around this time. And essentially once that decision was made it took sort of a chronological approach: finding a way to represent the songs we had a passion for, but also the best that the label had to offer in that short period of time.”
The story also focuses on the owner of Sun Records, Sam Phillips. “I think he kind of stumbled into the discoveries that came his way, but he had the foresight to start the studio and more so to take the opportunity to record mainly African American artists who had nowhere to voice their art at that time. I mean you can imagine how America’s South in the '50s would be if you were an African American.
“[The music] was getting a little radio time, but there certainly weren’t any recording facilities around. That’s predominantly what Sam did from 1950 to 1953 and then Elvis came along and the rest is history. We ended up having contact with Sam Phillips’ son who got wind of us doing the show and we were humbled by the response we had from him.”
Though there’s plenty of info on the king of rock & roll and the record label online, Dave and Damon mined their own memories and experiences to draw the show together. “It was done with the information that we had gathered personally over the years; Damon and myself are massive fans of that particular era and that particular studio and the music that came from there.
“So three or four years ago when we started putting the show together, for me personally it had been my whole life of being influenced by that music and those artists and I'd already been to Sun Records three times because it’s something that I loved. Damon had been there also and actually recorded there. That’s the real point of difference for this show because it’s developed into this sort of theatre show that's taken us around the country – which we'd hoped it would do – but it's been built on that passion.
"We find at the end of every show that the most common feedback is 'oh my god you guys just seem so passionate'.”
'Sun Rising - The Songs That Made Memphis' will be performed as part of the Queensland Cabaret Festival at the Brisbane Powerhouse 10-11 June.
