Pub Choir Goes Global with Astrid Jorgensen

0:03 This is Crappita Happy and I am your host, Cas Stunn. I'm a clinical and coaching psychologist and mindfulness meditation teacher and of course author of the Crappita Happy books. In this show, I bring you conversations with interesting, inspiring, intelligent people who are experts in their field and who have something of value to share that will help you feel less. Crappy and more happy. Astred Jorgensen is an Australian vocalist, conductor and composer and she is the founder and director of the Iconic Pub Choir. Since launching a Pubchoir in Brisbane in twenty seventeen, it has gone on to garner international attention. It's received accolades from the likes of Mariah Carey, the Cranberrys, Barry Gibb and Kate Bush. This year, Astred was awarded a Medal of the Order of Australia for her service to the community.

0:59 Very well deserved and I am thrilled that Astred was able to join me for a chat right before she jumped on a plane to take Pubchoir on an international tour. Here is my conversation with Astrid. Astred, thank you so much for joining me today on the Crapy a Happy Podcast. Thank you so much. I'm so looking forward to feeling happy. I'm not graffy. I have been wanting to talk to you for such a long time, and you know, when you recently were awarded the Order of Australian Metal, I thought. Oh my god, now I'll never get her on the show. She'll be in such high demands. So I hugely appreciate you taking the time to be here today, love the chat. As your life changed, Astrid since you got the OIM.

1:46 Not at all. Now that you've said that, I'm like, should it have nothing's changed and I haven't. I haven't got business cards or anything, so I just feel like it's just a special little treat for my own mind in the background, but everything's the same. It's a lovely acknowledgment of your contribution, Astrid. I have to admit I've never had the opportunity to attend a pub choir. I did participate in couch Choir and we'll talk about that in a minute. And I do have tickets for. Your London show, so I'm very very excited about that. I'm keen to know before, like, what was your background before pub choir. And I guess, then, how did it begin?

2:29 What was the spark of inspiration for this singing in pubs thing? Well, I used to be a high school music teacher and I so in twenty sixteen, I was still teaching and I got this job in Townville. So I usually live in like a fairly big, bigish city called Brisbane in Australia, and in twenty sixteen, for one year, I was shifted up north to kind of, I guess, a bit more regional. City school and I a queen's land. Okay, all right, sorry for the background. So I moved to Townsville and it's really hot there, and I got this job at this school that had a compulsory all all school choir. So I don't know if you've met children that give me really oppositional at the best of times.

3:23 And so I was charged with taking a compulsory high school choir where every single pupil at the school was forced to sing. And that sounded like a really big job. And so like once a fortnight outside in Townsville it was so hot, I would take compulsory. It was a pretty small school, so I think there's about four hundred kids and they would have to sit there outside in the boiling, sweaty heat for an hour with me. And it changed my life because I look, it wouldn't have been a job that I would have thought to sign up for, but when I started doing it, it was actually so transformative because up until then, music for me had been quite a competitive thing. You know, like we're always preparing for a competition with the choir or you know, like I'm literally marking students on who was better or worse at music in the class, and you know, some kid would sing their heart out and they'd be like B minus. And then suddenly I had this job where there was no competitive element at all, and it was so much better. It just felt so right for me.

4:32 I think that there is a place for competition and all sorts of you know, rooms in the house of music. But for me, suddenly it was like this moment of realization that I am chasing collaboration, not competition. Wow. And so my job ended after a year and I came back to Brisbane and I was just like more and more and more, forgive me more. So that's when pub QUI started A couple months after I got back in twenty seventeen. The first event happened in April and Brisbane. There was seventy people there. I pretty much just wanted to find a space for people to make music in a non competitive way for no outcome, Like I just don't care about Like it's nice to win an award, right, but I just don't care. I think it's way nicer to experience something with other people. And so that's been the goal all along. It's been going for six and a half years now, and always it is just the invitation to regular people to make music, even if they're really a bad at it, while other people are also there aiming to make the same thing at the same time as you. And at the end of the show, we'll all sing for each other what we learned. Yeah, that was such a long answer. I'm so sorry.

5:44 No, I like long answers. I really do more detailed of that. I'm a details person. I was going to ask, so, how many people were at the first event. You said, seventy people? What was that like? I guess we all love to sing. We love to sing in our car, we love to sing in the show. We love to belt out a banger at us in a public place, and there's such a reticence. So what's your experience, I guess does it start out a little bit cautious before people kind of really get going with it? Absolutely? For me, my job is to change the mind of the audience about how embarrassing this is going to be for them. I think a lot of people walk in expecting to be personally shamed, and so in fact my job is not, yes, I'm like teaching, I'm telling people what I want them to sing, but actually the first job at the show for me personally is to find a way to convince people that it's going to be okay. And so I actually start every show with like i call it a demotivational speech, where I'm like, as if you're the best at anything, you know, like, think about all the elements of your life, as if being the best should be what we're measuring our lives by.

6:55 You are here because you are dead average like everyone else, and so I absolve you of that. Sorry, of course you're not the best in the room. No one is the best in this room, and so let's just try and do something nice together. And so it's like it's like underpromising and over delivering at the show. I'm just like, none of us are here to win an award, none of us are going to like get a recording contract. At the end of the show, you've walked in. If you're a bad singer, when you walked in, you walk out exactly the same, except I hope you feel less embarrassed of it. Like, yeah, life is about an experience, not about winning something. We all kind of end up with the same prize at the end of life, you know. So it's like I think, Yeah, looking for a way to more fully experience what life feels like with other people is the goal. And so I just really try not to talk about competitiveness and comparison at all at the show.

7:49 It's such a good message. It's such an important message because everywhere in life is competition and everybody is trying to be something extraordinary. You know. I work a lot with women. I'm a percoching a psychologist, and I try to help women to you know, feel less crappy and more happy, like get in touch with what's really important to them and be less stressed and less perfectionist and all of that. And they tell me, like I was talking about, what do you do for fun? What do you do for hobbies? And they will say, well, I had a hobby, but even that became something I had to kind of learn and be the best at and strive. Like it almost turns into this competitive thing, like nothing is just fun anymore.

8:30 I know, And that is what I'm trying to live my whole life geared towards. I'm trying to have a nice time. Like it is impossible to be the best at something, and even if there is like one, I mean, the only thing that you can actually win at is a competition, like a setup competition. Everything else is just like a spectrum of experience, Like when it comes to making stuff for creativity, there is quite literally no metric that you can beat someone else at. I mean, it's like who has the most beautiful voice? I don't know, it's an opinion. The person the artist that you think is the most incredible songwriter in the world, your best friend could think is rubbish, Like it's all opinion, and so it's impossible to win this game. We need to free ourselves from the game itself of I'm trying to be the best at something when best doesn't even exist, Like, yes, there might be a fastest person in the world, a person who runs one hundred meters faster than anyone else.

9:30 But what about all of the other aspects of life, Like there are so few things where it's an actual competition. Most of life is experienced in just average, you know, like the vast average of our lives is where all of our life happens, basically, And so finding anything we can do just have to be singing, but just finding anything we can do to more fully be present in the experience that we're having. How does it feel when you sing? Like that should be a good enough reason to do anything? Really, do you like? It doesn't feel nice? And if you're not hurting anyone else, then that's a good enough reason to do anything. If it makes you enjoy your brief time on this earth a little bit more, go for it. Like that at the show, I'm just like, singing because it makes you feel happy is a good enough reason to begin, So let's go.

10:26 It started off seventy people in a pub. At some point it obviously gained in popularity and it became a thing that from my perspective, it seemed like it was something that everybody wanted to be a part of what was the tipping point, like where or was there a tipping point when it really kind of blew up? There was a moment of pure luck. I think there are lots of really talented artistic people in this world and everyone that I know that has kind of reached the next level of maybe notoriety is the word I'm looking for. All of it involves a moment of magic, and for me, it was when popquir Yes was gaining a lot of momentum. But we had picked the song Zombie by the Cranberries to learn. I think it was like, I don't know, the sixth or something show that we had, and that week Dolores Riordan, who was the lead singer of the Cranberries, died and I already had the song locked in and the show was like two days after that, world news broke and everyone was really shocked in mourning and then we sung the song and it is the most magical show we ever had, really like they're all magic in their own special ways, but this was it was sort of different. Everyone knew that it was really important that we take it seriously. There's this picture from the show that sometimes I look at or I remember that it exists and I go back and find it where right at the end of the performance, my photographer was standing behind me and you can see all these goosebumps along my arms as the final note is sung by the audience, Like it was just this moment of

11:59 good timing and synergy and something feeling important to everyone there. And then the band shared that. The band went and put that on their social media as the first thing that they said publicly after she passed away, and so it changed everything. We got like one hundred thousand followers the next week, and yeah, everything was really different after that, And I guess I like to think that maybe we would have got there anyway, but it certainly sped up the momentum and got Pubcorn to people's radars a little bit. So, yeah, the timing of that was incredible and I know that it changed everything.

12:40 Wow. That actually leads me to ask you, how do you go about choosing the songs. Yeah, it's the most frequent question and the one that I'm the most hesitant to answer because I know that it's so important to people that come to the show that they like the song and I want them to enjoy the show. But also one of my main messages that I'm trying to share at shows and in all of the lead up to shows is that the song is not as important as you think. I think for a lot of people, especially if they're not music makers, Like all of us are music appreciators and music is in all of our lives, and I love that for us.

13:25 But the difference between when you consume music or you make music is that one way is like fixed in concrete, Like if you just listen to music and you listen to your favorite song two thousand times, it's always the same. But when you make music, it changes and is fluid and is like alive in the moment. And so at pub choir, I'm creating fluid versions of songs that you know. So in my mind, it doesn't really matter what the song is because we're going to do a brand new version of it. And I think it's sometimes really hard to get hesitant people through the door if they hear what the song is and then they judge what the night will be like on how they have heard that song in a concrete way. I hope that's not too cerebral.

14:12 It's like, no, that makes perfect sense. Amazing because it's the number one thing that I'm kind of pushing against in people's minds. I want you to feel like you have a place in making music feel new, and we carve the experience around how we feel, and that's the magic of music. It's totally reflective of us. We are the instruments. So however you walk in feeling that night, the song will sound different at the end of the night because of you. And so I choose songs that I feel like are really doable. I feel like I choose songs that I hope most people have even just heard of, so that they don't feel like they're a fish out of water completely. But I only announce the songs the day before shows because I I want someone to have bought a ticket because they're really invested in the experience of working with strangers and making something beautiful and transient. And I don't want them to buy a song buy a ticket to the show because it's their personal favorite song. That metric is actually too hard to meet. I can't pick a song that everyone loves, it doesn't even exist. And so I really really like, if there's one thing that anyone is listening to when I'm talking to you now, it's that the song is just not as important as you are, Like, the song is not as important as making stuff with other people, making a piece of art that exists just for one evening.

15:39 That's the thing that you should worry about. And the rest is just like karaoke songs. Who cares what it is? Like, I'll pick something that you've heard on like gold FM, you know, on just like a popular song that's that's been well loved now or in the past, and who cares. The other one that went really gangbusters was running up that hill? Did you choose? Howd you pre picked that one or did you do that one in response to its popularity on Stranger Things? Yeah? Look, so, having said all that about how the song's not that important, sometimes the right song at the right time can make a huge difference. Actually, yeah, what happened is I think that that song might have actually re invigorated my entire livelihood and my business with pub choir and everything to do with it. Because post COVID people were really hesitant to buy tickets for live experiences, and I appreciate why so much stuff had been canceled.

16:45 We weren't getting our money back as quickly as we want, you know, like there were so many factors that were making people feel uncomfortable about a live music experience after so long without it, and in the past pubquir had been selling out shows in minutes, and then just post COVID, it was like a show could be on sale for two months and like we'd sell like half of it. It never happened before. Wow, And so I did actually go back to the drawing board and I was like, I need to remind people about I need to get them back in the room. I feel like I can convince anyone if they're in the room to sing with me, but I've got to get them in the room first. So very luckily, there just happened to be a song that was news, Like it wasn't just like music news.

17:28 It was the news that a song that was thirty seven years old was number one again and everyone was talking about it at the same time. And I thought, well, shit, let's at least capitalize on how people are feeling as something that people are already talking about. Let's just make that the focus. So I don't often do that. I don't often try and like do everything on the flight. It's nice to kind of plan ahead a little bit, but opportunity presented itself, Like I can't think of really any other time where the artist was alive, where a song was the news, and so that did feel like a rare moment and it changed everything because then we did that arrangement and I put heaps of effort in like crafting a special string quartet arrangement to a company the singing, and then Kate Bush sent us an email afterwards, and that kind of changed everything, Like everyone kind of came back to the show because I think it looked magic again. Everyone was like, Oh, that's right, singing is nice.

18:27 There's an element of genius to what you do. Asterroid. I mean, I know you'll argue with me on this. I'm not a musical person, like I never learned an instrument as a kid, Like I never learned music, So I don't have that kind of background. And it fascinates me that you are able to put together these arrangements and get two thousand people and have them singing different harmonies, Like how do you do that? That is a big question, I mean, because singing is easy, but arranging songs is not. No, not always, So I want people yeah, Like I want people who come to the show to be like, oh my god, it's so easy to start, it's so easy to get involved and to take a first step into becoming creative. But also behind the scenes, I'm like very stressed, but in a good way, like a good level. It's sustainable. But yeah, look, I don't know why my brain things like this, but a lot of us, everyone has natural inclinations to things that just make a bit more sense to them. I am not very practical. Let me say that. I don't know.

19:35 It's just like the way that my mind is wired. I can hear. I can hear layers of music that don't exist yet. Let me say that in another way, like when I listen to songs, everyone listens differently, and I think a lot of people might listen to say the lyrics, or some people don't hear the lyrics at all, and they hear the beat and it's like they feel the vibe of the song. They jump up and down. Some people listen to the guitar like they just love the way that that sounds or whatever. For me, for some reason, my brain is wirde in this way where I can hear all of those things at the same time, and if I listen a little bit harder or a couple times more, I can hear notes that would also work with that song, even though they're not in the song yet. And so what I do with pub choir is we're not just singing karaoke versions of the song, because you can do that anytime. You can sing your favorite song, like literally anytime you want, and that's awesome.

20:42 What we do at pub choir is I take the tune that you would sing a karaoke and I split it up into different lanes so that everyone with different types of voices can sing a little bit of the part they know, and then I fill in all of the gaps with news that will work in tandem with the tune, and I call those harmonies. So I don't know why my brain knows how to do that. I did study it at UNI, but I know that it was something I kind of understood already, So yeah, I guess it's like taking me probably six and a half years of doing this work to actually kind of claim, oh, I think I might be really good at it. Like at the beginning, I was like, you know, this is easy, come on, and I'll just tell you what to do, and really it has become clear to me that if it were easy, there would be a lot more of it.

21:36 And it's made me feel, like, you know, pretty tough actually, that it's something that I can offer. I can hear a thing that you might not have heard yet, and I'm so excited to explain to you what I can hear, another layer that you wouldn't have considered. And it's going to feel really good when we put it together. Like if it was exciting to be able to contribute something. As I said, I'm a very non practical person, so to be able to say, hey, if you try this thing that I thought of, it will feel nice. That's cool, It's very cool. I have actually heard you say once before that you don't hear like you you're one of those people that doesn't have an inner dialogue, like you don't hear, You don't have conversations with yourself in your head. You have music though.

22:16 Yeah, it's like my brain put all of its resources into one basket. I've got so many deficiencies in other areas. I can't remember what happened yesterday, but I can remember how a song went in a lot of detail. I've got good musical recall and even good musical imagination, but when it comes to like thinking about stuff, I can't imagine my own voice in my head. It's something I didn't know that a lot of people had this inner dialogue where they're kind of chit chatting, narrating their own existence. I'm like, what is going on for you guys? And I can't imagine what things look like When I close my eyes, I've forgotten what you look like like. Its sort of like my brains just, yeah, put all of its resources into this one thing, so I'm you know, I better make the most of it.

23:00 It's actually fascinating how different people's brains work. But yeah, I find that really interesting and no gift. So going back, I. Thought that this was your first venture overseas, the upcoming overseas tour, and then I found out that actually, no, you had already started taking it overseas right before COVID tell me about that. Yeah, so in twenty was it twenty nineteen, just before COVID grased Our Shores and Everyone's Lives. Pub Choir was heading to the UK. So we did do a show in London, and we did a show in Nottingham and Cambridge, and then we headed over to the US and then in the US it was about March twenty twenty that we went for our trip and we got one show in out of a sold out tour. Yeah, March twenty twenty, Do you remember it was though? That was and we were in America. We had one show in la and it was like the night before America realized it was a problem and everyone was sick over there, and so a lot of people didn't come to the show. And I feel like it was like, quite literally the last night that people left their homes for a lot of people that came to our show, Like I've had people message and be like that was the last time I went out. Wow, I remember this final night. It was

24:34 like the final meal before the thing. There was like this energy. It was actually a really great show, to be honest, because I think everyone was like, let's make it count. And then the next morning we were on our way to our San Francisco show the next day and America shut everything down overnight. And Australia was a big cavalier at that time and didn't realize that it was like a global thing, and it was kind of like, isn't it bad in China? And we were sitting in America and it was like a ghost town in the middle of San Francisco. There was no one around. And someone from the consulate office called and they were like, this is not official advice, but if I were you, I would go to an airport and I would sit there until I got on a plane. It is quite important you know that you do this. So we did as a crew. We like drove drove five hours to su airport and sat there on the floor and went on a stand by list until we got home. And we arrived home back to Australia the day before the borders closed. And then so kind of like sitting on the plane on the way home and seeing the world change and arriving back to like a new, a new world when we got home and twenty thousand tickets that we had sold all kind of evaporated overnight while we were on that flight, Like our lives are really different when we arrived back. So I think that that was it was a huge turning point in everyone's lives. No matter what happened, everyone went through some kind of loss and a huge change. And so that was I don't know.

26:08 Looking back on it, I think it was just a strange time for everyone to kind of reevaluate who you are and why you do what you do and what's important for you. And yeah, it was a good, big. Time devastating though. I mean, obviously it affected everybody in a different way. But to be just like really kicking goals and to have that happen, that's devastating. Yeah, it was. Briefly houch Choir was born from that. Yeah, that's it. Like it sort of was devastating for twenty four hours, and then I was like, well, naively, I think everyone was like, gee, COVID's going to be a busy week. But I think we didn't appreciate we did.

26:49 Do you read that. Everyone was just like gy, Yeah, we thought it would be like, oh, this week off work is going to be awesome. Like, I don't know. It was a curiosity at the beginning, and so I kind of had energy at the beginning because I was like, well, let's make the most of this four day weekend. Let's make the most of this brief time where everyone's at home at the same time. And then in two weeks when you laugh about this, so I mean, of course, we didn't know what we've never experienced before, and so I had all of this energy and I thought, oh, well, if everyone's at home for this one weekend, why don't we do some singing from home. And so that's what we created. I shifted to couch Choir, which was rather than a live experience of pub choir, where I teach people in a physical space together. I pre recorded my instructions about what I would have taught people to sing at the show, and I popped those three videos up for three three different harmonies that you could learn, and I said, if you like the sound of any of those, listen to it a few times and record yourself singing along with me. I'll be your companion and send us a video of that performance. And so we like stitch together the virtual Choir. I'm sure everyone's seen it and it seems boring now, but at the beginning of twenty twenty, it was actually really new, and I think we kind of paved a way for people to feel connected at like a really confusing and topsy turby time for everyone.

28:14 So in a strange way, COVID gave us well, it forced us to reconsider what music making is and how it feels for people. And it turns out you don't even need to hear each other to make stuff together. We don't need to be in the same room to make a beautiful piece of music. We don't even need to be able to sing to join in with creativity and music making. Because we started getting videos from the deaf community and people doing sign language, and I had videos of nonverbal children banging a drum and it was all good stuff. It was all music, and so it changed how I saw my own work and I wouldn't have sa there and reflected on that were it not for this, you know, being forced to stop and to reflect and so in a weird way. Of course, I know it's difficult for everyone and a really challenging time, but you know there was a silver lining for me.

29:19 Yes? Is that wrong? Oh my gosh, you have to find the silver lining. Like I said, I had not had the opportunity to attend a live pub Quires living on the Sunshine Coast, and that wasn't one on the coast at the time, so I was actually kind of excited to be able to participate when couch Choir happened, and I remember that I remember it's very weird in singing on your own in your house, sending in the video, but it was so exciting to see that compilation come out and to find your little face on the screen. I mean, how much work must have gone into that for you. But as a participant, it was such a connecting experience. It was really great.

30:04 That's so nice to hear. I can't overstate how much we enjoyed doing it as well, especially at the beginning when it was like, no one's done this before, like I wonder what will happen. I am eternally indebted to the people that you know, stuck with the work because we weren't doing it for money. No, it was. It was for free because none of us had jobs for a bit. So I am eternally grateful to Paris Owen, who is my videographer who just did it. She was I was like, I'll put the lessons out for free, and what are you doing? She's like, another, do you want to figure out how to like make a video with a thousand people? Just like all right? And you know, my pubchise manager John Patterson would sit there and you know, encode every video that came through and like we just had this working bee of generous, enthusiastic people who just wanted to do something positive. I had another like a co editor, Jacob Sosnovsky, and then I started involving a sound engineer to help me mix it because I was doing all than mixing at the beginning. Steve Thornley. Basically, I just got a bunch of people who were like, well, it's not making anything worse, let's do that. Let's do the thing, like, let's see if we can make it better, but certainly not making anything worse. And I don't know, I feel like it really gave us something to look forward to as well. And it was so weirdly intimate. Yeah, you'd think it would be not because we're not in the room together, but actually people were sending like really vulnerable videos, like it's a lot to record yourself singing

31:35 with all of your imperfections and then to trust that us strangers somewhere else in the world, we're not going to betray you. And it was like really intimate to get these videos of people just like singing to themselves alone. It's a lot. It was a lot of trust going on, and I found the product of those couch choir sessions to be the most beautiful thing. Like pub choir is really exciting and energetic and the crowd carries each other, but at couch choir it was like this really personal, beautiful, thoughtful, introspective thing, and it was a huge privilege in a treat to facilitate that. I really enjoyed it.

32:24 In the end. How many couch choirs were there. I think we probably did about five or six. And then actually we did want early this year to say thank you again because I think a lot of people kind of became invested in what we were doing. And then once live shows started happening again, there are all these people around the world being like, hey, remember us, And so we did another one this year, which was really lovely to just like check back in with everyone and be like, hey, we still are grateful and still want to make music with you. But yeah, I guess my real skill in this world, I think is convincing strangers, hesitant people in the room to sing with me. And so I can't do everything all of the time, but.

33:13 It is Yeah, you need to make a living too, right. Yeah it's true. Yeah, it was a beautiful It was a beautiful beautiful thing that you did, and like you said, it was a lot of work and you did it for nothing. But you know what you do is you do pub choir. I'm sure you do other things as well. They're right. What else sustains you beyond pubchoir? Pubquir is the biggest piece of the pie. Is it's like a full time plus plus thing. I certainly do this full time, and because we also do it privately, not so much at the moment when we're touring, but like throughout the year when there are dips, like you know, we're not on tour and I've got a couple of weeks with no public shows, we might do say corporate engagement where a business might get get me to come along and like force their miserable employees to sing together, which I love. I love as a power trip. Yeah, it's a real power trip. So we do things like that.

34:11 But then yes, I have a lot of side quests going on, Like I'm in Perth at the moment ahead of our pub choir show a few days early because I'm on the board of an arts think tank trying to promote Australia as a cultural powerhouse in the world and finding ways that we can kind of collate non partisan research and present that to decision makers in the country about why it's important that there's more of this stuff. And you know, I write music as well for choirs to sing. I did a collection of twenty songs earlier this year that are going to be released as part of this like Queensland Legacy project where people can access it for free and community christ I don't know. I love a side quest I do. I do like to feel as though I'm keeping my brain healthy on a few different projects at once, because I you know, sometimes I do feel like if I get too stuck in pub choir world, it almost becomes like a bit of a song curse where I'm like just thinking about I'm just like living song to sol and just like obsessing over like the different harmonies that I'm going to make.

35:23 So it's nice to diversify a little bit, but I really can't deny that pub choir is the most of the pot. Well, you're very good at it. I host this podcast and at the moment, I'm moving away from a network and taking over the podcast as an independent creator, which means that I need to take over the license for the intro music that I use on the show, and I thought, oh, yeah, I'll do that, that's no problem. And everybody said, just you just go and you just take over the license. And then they came back to me and said that will be I'm going to round up, but that's going to be ten thousand dollars a year for you to use that that thirty seconds of jingle at the start of your podcast.

36:03 And this has been my first experience of music licensing. Music publishing. Like, artists need to be paid. I of course they do, and this is not a world that I live in. But how do you go with that? Do you need to pay licensing fees at royalties? You know when you use songs? Do you get knocked back for songs that you want to use? How does all that play into it? I'm sorry that you are now becoming familiar with this start of things. It is I mean, let's just say it's a punish on the daily. I also believe that artists should be paid for songs. Absolutely. I do think that the publishing world is very complicated and not always transparent and difficult to navigate, and so yes, absolutely we pay every song that we do. We pay a license to. Well, it's been decided that they are re releases and not covers of songs. So I think that that is also a fraud conversation because I think that we are covering songs quite faithfully. But we pay a re release license per per show, and then we pay a license to so that that means we can make a video out of it. But and we pay a license to basically hire the lyrics out of the song for a night and all of that stuff without being too boring, it's

37:36 individually negotiated per song. So there's no like you can't just go to like song publisher dot com dot au like there's no like there's no place to go if only there's no place to go where there's like centralized information. It's quite a complicated area of the arts, and so you have to go and find who represents each individual song. And of course every song is written in different ways and so sometimes there are ten songwriter holders who the song belongs to, and you have to get them all to agree at the same time. It is a big job. I'm not convinced that the way that music publishing is set up in Australia actually does serve the artist best, because I think that I should be paid for their work, and I'm not sure that the system that we have in place at the moment does that. But that feels like a whole conversation for another day. But it certainly is complicated, and I agree with you that it can be a bit of a shock sometimes.

38:40 So therefore, how far in advance are you having to This is just me getting nosy. How far in advance do you need to be planning and preparing and choosing because that sounds like quite a well. Yeah, look, I do find it impossible task to plan ahead because I try. Not that I'm trying. I'm like always scrabbling around looking to see if there's a song in the news. It's not like that. It's more like I do try to respond to the energy of what I imagine is coming up, so like, I don't know. Sometimes we just get to November and say I had booked in fifteen songs for every show or whatever of the year, and we get to November and it's like, gee, if we sing that, it's going to feel totally wrong for how the mood of society is at the moment, Like we need a reggae song, like you know, I try to respond in real time, So actually it would be I think a problem if I had tried to slot in licenses ahead of time, because once you ask, you're locked in, you know, and you owe money, and so it's not as fluid as I would hope. So I probably am living two to three months ahead at all times. I've got a fantastic manager called John, and he has I kind of give him two or three options every couple of months so that he's got a few on the go, and we always have like sort

40:11 of one emergency song that has been paid for that hasn't been used yet, just in case. But yeah, we're probably like two or three months ahead making requests. It takes about a month turnaround if it would be accepted. If it takes longer than that, that feels like a no. Anyway. Yeah, it's a mystical process and I wouldn't wish it upon anyone. People show up and sing and think, God, this is fun. There is so much that goes into that. Yeah, apart from the cranberries, which you talked about, and that sounds like it would have been amazing. Well, have there been any other standout moments like what's the highlight?

41:00 Would you say? Oh, there are so many? Honestly, I mean it might sound arrogant, but I just find every show to be kind of a miracle in itself because even if it's the same song, people feel different and they come with different energies and it's a totally it's a totally unique experience every time, and I never know what it will be until it arrives, you know, So that is pretty magical to me in itself. I think one that I go back and listen to myself is the first Christmas show that we did. We just did Paul Kelly's How to Make Gravy, and it was the first time I had included a string quartet because I love orchestrating for other instruments to join the choir, because I just I don't know. I love the merging of worlds. I love the idea that there's like I think at that show there was three thousand people, and it's like, I love the idea of three thousand kind of drunk strangers who might feel really embarrassed about making stuff in public. I love that they are singing a song with like the premiere string quartet of Queensland, like it's a real colliding of worlds and being like, hey, we everyone deserves music of every quality, and you know, like this is for all of us to share any time, like it's special for tonight, but you know you're allowed to enjoy a string quartet anytime as well. So that was the first time that happened, and I feel like there was just

42:31 like this special I don't know, power in the air that night, and I watched that video and even though it's like not the best recorded, like we've gotten better at capturing the singing of the audience and everything like that, it was kind of like hiqulty pickledy that night and I don't know, for some reason, it just works in a beautiful way. And I listened to that a couple of times a year where I'm just like, that's all right, this feels really good. So that one pets me out, but they're all good, Like I love them all. I'm just having a lovely life. I'm having a nice time. Giving us all such a nice time as well. We appreciate you, Astred. I know that you're traveling overseas, you would you like to share where you're going, what you're doing.

43:14 I will be seeing you in London, So tell us about the tell us about the international tour and what's I guess just what's happening in Yeah. Look, I'm not sure exactly when this podcast is going out, but on Sunday I'm going week to Edinburgh. Yeah next week, great, Well then I'm in the UK as you hear this. Yeah, yeah, So we're doing Edinburgh Fringe, just actually for one big show, and then we're traveling around England a little bit. We've got a show in London. They're all selling really well, except for Manchester. For some reason. I feel like they're on a digital detox in that city. So if you know someone in Manchester, land know that we're coming. We'll also be in like Birmingham, Nottingham, a few other fun places and definitely London, and then we'll head over to America.

44:01 And we've got about ten shows across the US as well, and so if you want in, everyone is welcome. I don't care how weird your voice sounds, it doesn't matter, and we'll have a lovely time together. And you just head to pub quiet dot com dot au and there are some tickets available, but quite a lot of it is sold out, like I know leads have sold out and a few other little places along the way. So getting quick and if you know anyone in Manchester, tell them to log back into their social media profiles so that they can see the information. I can tell you I've been doing my part. I've been sharing your links inside any Aussie in London kind of Facebook groups. I've got friends in DC and I've sent them the links. I've said, you have to go along to this event. So I am flying the flag for pub QUI internationally astrid doing but it sounds like you don't need it necessarily, but I'm doing my part.

44:58 Well. I appreciate thank you so much, and I'm really excited to meet you in person and to have us sing together in London, and you know, it's going to feel really great. It's going to be amazing. Thank you so much for joining me today. I so appreciate you taking the time, Asterid, and thank you for everything that you do. Oh that's so kind. I've had a lovely conversation. Love to chat anytime, and I can't wait to sing with you soon. Grab your tickets at pubquir dot com dot au. I will definitely be there singing my little heart out next week in London. I'll share on my social media. Cash done underscore XO. If you've enjoyed the show, please remember to give us a rating, end review, and of course I can't wait.

45:40 To catch you again next week. I'm crappy to happy