Thursday Lineup: Freya Josephine Hollick & Ryan McGilliam

It was the perfect setting for some mid-week country music. 

Wherever you turned your eyes, a rustic charm was present, with a wooden fit-out and numerous chunky-framed painted portraits. A striking mirror, covered by an illustration of a revolver, stared back at the crowd.

A golden retriever graced the front of the dance floor, encouraging the occasional pat from fellow attendees and the odd comment from the person everyone had come to see, Freya Josephine Hollick.

Despite seeing Hollick’s name on a bunch of gig and festival posters across Naarm over the years, I had never made it out to one of her shows. But Thursday night was the night to break that duck.

In the second week of her four-week residency at Collingwood’s The Gem, the Ballarat-born folk-country – or “cosmic country,” as she has previously described her music – artist wasted little time in introducing the crowd to her humour.

“I had a wet dream and I wrote a song about it, then I realised it’s probably nicer to say that it was about enlightenment,” Hollick explained, before her band kicked into ‘Earthly by and By’.

Shimmering drums were met with lengthy guitar solos and lengthy pedal steel notes, as Hollick’s soft, moving vocals rang out.

“I fear there’s people stopping me / Getting where I need to be / ‘Cause I lay down with the bad men / And I lay down with thee,” Hollick recites to end the song, capped off with a loud “yew!”

Having recorded her 2022 album The Real World in the Mojave Desert alongside Lucinda Williams’ Buick 6 and a number of other accomplished musicians, such as Greg Leisz, it was no surprise that Hollick had assembled a sharp band for her local shows. 

Holly Thomas – also part of Husky, among other bands – was crisp on the drums, the bassist, whose name I unfortunately did not catch, kept a low profile in a long coat and baseball cap as he performed some mesmerising basslines, “Steve” added emotion to the performance with some stellar pedal steel play and Tommy Brooks was assured on the electric guitar and often jumped on vocals, including in an ‘After the Gold Rush’ Neil Young cover.

Introducing The Real World’s opening track ‘Nobody’s No Better Than No One’, Hollick was quick to describe her love-hate relationship with the song. The positive: it was picked up by HBO and included in an episode of The Flight Attendant, providing the cash required for the 2022 album’s publicity. The negative: “it’s a shit song,” as Hollick points out at the track’s end.

“I hate that song… It’s fine for you to like it, but you should start learning how to like some of the other ones a bit more,” she jokes, before continuing to entertain with more songs and accompanying anecdotes.

It was clear to me by the end of the 60-minute set that Hollick is an out-and-out entertainer. How silly I am to have missed out on seeing her for my last five years in this city.

Freya Josephine Hollick’s residency at The Gem continues on Thursday May 16. More info.

Freya Josephine Hollick
Bandcamp | Spotify | Apple Music | YouTube

Opening the night was the moving Ryan McGilliam.

It had been far too long since I had been graced with a performer, a keyboard and nothing more.

McGilliam was raw with his songwriting. Describing his own music as “sad piano music,” McGilliam hit the nail on the head.

His raspy voice, with shades of Nick Cave, added to the sombreness of the keys and gave me another artist to turn to when I’m next mulling over my life’s missteps on a rainy winter’s day.

Ryan McGilliam
Bandcamp

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