He was named Rome’s Ambassador to the world last year, awarded as “Global Icon” by GQ magazine, but he was also barred entry from a suburban Japanese restaurant in Melbourne for not wearing the correct attire, on a Friday, at lunchtime, in 37° heat. A non-story that became global news.
Whether he’s telling the story, or people are telling a story about him, life’s always interesting if you’re Russell Crowe.
In May and June, he’s playing music and bringing his Indoor Garden Party to towns and cities on the east coast.
An “Indoor Garden Party” is, he says “an event, a band, a happening. It’s fluid. The personnel changes, but it’s always big. It’s like a festival where I gather people I admire, musicians and storytellers, and we put on a show.”
Until January this year, with 2 concerts in his home town of Coffs Harbour, Crowe had not performed music in Australia since 2014. Yet, within that same time, he had done announced and unannounced concerts in New York, London, Leeds, Dublin, Stockholm, Reykjavik, LA and released the Indoor Garden Party Album, The Musical.
The concept started in 2009 in a pub outside London owned by the chat show legend, Michael Parkinson, and it has kept going in a haphazard, ad lib way ever since.
With this configuration, Crowe brings to the foreground The Gentlemen Barbers, who he has been quietly tinkering with for the last four years.
“There’s an attitude about this band. It’s got a groove. We do a lot of story songs, but we also know we are here to blow out the cobwebs and give the audience a good night”. Grabbing time between the shoots of films like Unhinged, Thor: Love & Thunder, The Greatest Beer Run and his next movie release, The Pope’s Exorcist, the band have been gathering, sometimes for weeks at a time just playing, recording, talking, gelling. The result went on stage in Coffs Harbour in January to packed houses, and it was decided, as they say, to “take the show on the road”.
The relationships within the band go back 30 years. Dave Kelly (drums) and Stewart Kirwan (trumpet) were members of Thirty Odd Foot of Grunts, as well as playing with Crowe in The Ordinary Fear of God, which included Stu Hunter (piano), and in its touring form also included Chris Kamzelas (guitar). James Hazelwood (bass) has fit right in and shares friendships within the band that go back decades.
Russell Crowe’s Indoor Garden Party
The Northern
9 & 10 May 2023
Tickets available online for 9 May
Tickets available online for 10 May
