Greetings from fair Europa where we have just finished a run of shows with the awe-inspiring Gurrumul. WOW!

Thank you for having us fair Parisians, what an amazing time we had. Cafe de la Danse was such a gorgeous venue, so intimate and cosy and the audiences welcomed us so warmly. We felt privileged to share our music and stories (in English, peppered with the odd embarrassingly bad French phrases!) with such enthusiastic smiling faces. Merci beaucoup.

We lapped up the beautiful sights – not to mention the beautiful people! – and fell in love with the cafes, parks and cobble-stoned streets once again. Here’s hoping it won’t be too long before we return.

I’m in the midst of pre-departure craziness, so I’ll be brief, but I did want to say farewell before I jet off for Mama Kin overseas adventures next week.

The 2010 whirlwind continues and this past month has been stacked full of great shows, (we have a WOMAD crush!) filming of a new video clip for the next single, To My Table, and plenty of plotting and scheming for the rest of the year as we steam towards the album release in July. (We have heaps of exciting news but we have to be super tight-lipped about it, so watch this space!)

We had a great couple of days filming, blessed with a wonderful team of film gurus who are as lovely as they are talented. I can’t wait to see the finished product and share it with you all.

The new single To My Table hits iTunes on…

Fresh from a killer weekend in the lushness of Adelaide’s Botanic Gardens for WOMADelaide (where we had a cartwheeler in the place of a crowd surfer!), I’m very excited to drop some big Mama Kin news. We’ve had such a great run of summer tour dates. Thank you to all you lovely peeps for coming along and shaking your booties with us. We have been so chuffed by the smiling crowds. And we can’t wait to share the new album with you proper-like…roll on July! So how about that news?!

We are pleased to announce that come April we will be jetsetting our way to Europe for a run of theatre shows from Dublin to Paris and London. WAHOO! For those of you in the northern hemisphere, come on down, we would love to see you.

Here are the dates:

APRIL 8 – Dublin – Olympia…

I cannot believe it’s February. As 2000 and ZEN speeds along outrageously quickly I wanted to stop, take stock and get excited about all the musical goodness on the horizon.

January blitzed by in a haze of amazing festivals, including Woodford (where we had our first ever crowd surfer!) and Peats Ridge (where the rain stopped LITERALLY two minutes before we took the stage), not to mention a few fun guest spots on TV and radio.

So as the vortex season rapidly consumes us, I just wanted to send a shout out with some Mama Kinsmas  cheer (is that even allowed.. That kinsmass thing.. Wow!)  anyway.. In the spirit of giving.. We have some new dates to announce.. Lot of things popping up over the next few months.. Check out what’s happening after the Woodford and Peats Ridge haze begins to clear.

Triple J Hottest 100 is coming up.. You can vote for Mama Kin: Tore My Heart Out here if the mood grabs you….
 

Tore My Heart Out got SINGLE OF THE WEEK @ ITUNES for the week beginning NOVEMBER 3rd so for that week you can download the song for FREE. We are THRILLED with this news it is a very encouraging start to the album release and a great way to get the song to all you amazing people who have been so supportive and open our music up to heaps of people who would never have heard it before. Big Love. xx

So today I get to share some upcoming gig announcements with ya’ll.  I am so excited to announce that we will be playing a couple of festivals in the upcoming months…

This is all I am allowed to announce for now.. So if you want to catch Brother Michael and I, we will be doing our thing Westside at the Bridgetown Blues Festival WA we are performing on the Saturday 14th & Sunday 15 November, tickets are now available and selling fast… So go to head to the website for more details and full line up wwwbluesatbridgetown.com

On the East side also in November you can catch Brother Michael, George and my good self shaking our tail feathers at the Mullumbimby Music Festival on Friday the 27th and Saturday the 28th November – for full line up and…

Hello there. Felt it was time to touch base again. Been in a vortex of travel and adventure and now find myself back in the world of this album… Incidentally we have a name for the album! We are calling it Beat and Holler… And it is looking real good for an October release. This process is so much like having a baby, all this preparation, thinking about it, talking about it, planning for it, worrying about it, doing it, talking about it more, wondering about it, contemplating who it will be in the world, and then one day… It is out.. In the world “released” out of your grip, out. Anyway I am like third trimester right now… 8 months pregnant with this Beat and Holler… And I remember this feeling from when I was pregnant with my human children! I can imagine what it will be like, and…

Ok so yesterday we did It’s For Me….. We did it live in the room.. As in did the piano and drums at the same time in the same room.. Great vibes.. I was doing the vocal take in a separate room and the kids were visiting at the time.. Chaosville!!! At one stage I was doing a take with my son on my back doing his version of the back ups and my daughter beside me…

Hello there. So its the end of day 3, well almost. It is 10:39 as I type this out on my little phone and we are mid way through song 2. It is called Love’s Not So Great. The song came from a passing comment a friend once made to me about his relationship which had just broken down. He said that everything she had loved about him became everything she hated. It really struck me. It got me thinking about how love is a process, particularly once the initial gloss wears off where you are infatuated with the us-ness of everything.

Hello out there..
It has begun.. Officially.. We are pressing record tonight on the new Mama Kin album. I am here in Fremantle, WA with Brother Michael, George Servanis, and Tony Buchen and we are almost ready to roll. It has been a really frightening process for me, but the last day or so has been easy and definetely helped to allay my fears. I feel very vulnerable, but beneath it all excited and eager to hear how the songs, that were written in the quiet on my loungeroom on my little Wurly, often whispered in song so as not to wake sleeping kids, will sound to others ears.

I’m hoping to keep a little recording journal that I will update every day or so with snippets and photos.. So stay tuned for more news as it rolls on out.
Big Love
Mama Kin.

BTW:…

Hi Ya’ll,
I am writing to you all today to bring light to this very important issue.  I was lucky enough to give birth  in the sanctuary of my own home.. Because that was my choice, and to support that choice I was able to engage an amazing midwife to assist my partner and I through the birth and pre and post natal care.  The following is terrible news and I urge you to respond.. Whether you would choose homebirth or not yourself.. This comes down to choice.. And I believe that homebirth is best for some women and those women should be completely supported in this.  I urge you to sign this petition.  With thanks and love Mama Kin

http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/australianhomebirth/?e