If I was a robot, the last couple of days would have been spent with all the red warning lights flashing, robot limbs flailing, coolant shooting from ruptured hydraulic feeds – and all to the accompaniment of one of those automated voices that warn of imminent destruction.

Sadly, I’m not a robot.

Instead I have spent the last couple of days pinned to the bathroom floor with a wicked bout of food poisoning. And these long dark nights of the soul (and intestines) have miraculously injected all the old, niggling demons with new strength. While I’ve come to be proud of the fact that my music has somehow circumnavigated the Australian music industry, (in fact it has become something of an advertisement) it still burns at me that there is little real support or even comprehension of King Curly beyond the faithful listeners themselves.

I can hear the party next door but have never been invited – but then I generally hate parties.

On a more positive note – back to my horrific food poisoning all-nighter . As I shivered on the bathroom floor between dry retches and the rest of it, I started hearing weird but incredibly wonderful music in my head. I imagined it was like what divers and sailors call the rhapsody of the deep, or even the dreaded Calenture.

It made me feel kind of inspired about the future.

‘The Force’ is very strong with me, and is an invaluable asset to the King Curly tour-team. Here are some examples of how correct application of The Force has served King Curly in Woodford as it has on all our tours:

* Navigation.
The most common use of the force. Very handy when dealing with NO-MAPS, LOST-MAPS, or someone’s DODGY-MAPS-IN-THEIR-HEAD.
Problem:For example: John seemed to be having trouble locating the waterhole, despite having been there numerous times.
Solution:I sit patiently in the back of the car, with The Force turned off. After the third U-banger, I am forced to ENGAGE The Force, always hoping not to steal John’s thunder. I successfully navigate our way to the waterhole despite never having been there. Incredible.

* Finding Anything or Anyone.
This is useful when the King Curly team are spread over a very large area, or very drunk. It also works well in locating pot/alcohol/food – often for free.

* Free Stuff
This Woodford, use of The Force resulted in these excellent gifts from strangers:
1. A Mango
2. Bottle of Jamesons
3. Many joints of varying competency
4. A T-Shirt
5. A CD.

Not bad.

I feel it’s important for me to thank the King for always supporting and trusting in my use of the force.

John, on the other hand, is a Map Man, and finds it extremely hard to let go of his foolish faith in maps, even though they have brought him nothing but pain. Still, he is slowly learning to trust my razor-sharp instincts and use of The Force, and I hope that one day I may even be able to take him on as an apprentice. He has untapped potential.

The Woodford Hangover lasts longer than the time it takes for all the alcohol and blaze to leave the system. It lasts after you’ve torn off that yellow wristband. It even lasts longer than it takes for your sleep patterns to return to some vestige of normality. This hangover is a result of spending a week in a place where people come up regularly and tell you how much they love your music, where there’s twelve bars and at least one is open ’til four. Where the closing ceremony is attended by EVERYONE onsite, some twenty thousand people, and invariably contains so much bizarre and confounding symbolism that people are left mulling it over for days afterwards.

It’s a massive circuit of dusty roads and milling crowds of all types of people, but still, there’s one road that leads out into the hills to a beautiful and somewhat unknown waterhole, always at a slightly chilly but supremely refreshing temperature. Woodford is a place where you can rub shoulders with some truly entertaining performers that think the way you do and drink the way you do (hands up, Stoneking and band!) and where the festival shop sells tea tree infused chewing sticks as if it’s the most natural thing in the world. It’s even a place you can get a decent coffee or two, a great pizza and apparently some ok wine, if you know where to look.

This is some of what Woodford stands for, and if I wasn’t so drunk for most of it, I could have told you a bit about the music too.

Needless to say, King Curly was the best thing there. I’m off to bed.

Well, we’re back from six days and nights playing at the Woodford festival. Zoe tells me we kicked arse, which I believe to be true. It may not be possible for a band that features the ukulele to administer an arse kicking in the classic sense, but I am certain that any arses we kicked stayed kicked.

The festival was great fun, and superior to others we’ve played – a true festival of the arts as opposed to an exhibition of the usual frauds and charlatans who huddle under the bullshit moniker of “world music”. The absence of big name acts was positive; in the past I’ve noticed their presence tends to devour things and spoil the festival atmosphere. Which is our job. (Ben Harper, I am observing you with Olympian disapproval).

During our stay, John celebrated his birthday by getting so drunk he was able to successfully forget his own name. Zoë cut a cruel swathe through hordes of besotted men folk. It was like a deranged experiment in social Darwinism, or a particularly terrifying nature documentary. Her sweet appearance and deceptively kind eyes are camouflage that mask a predator at the top of the food chain. But I should hasten to add that Zoe was an innocent bystander – like a light-house in reverse she had merely to stand there whilst men dashed themselves upon the rocks. God bless her heart.

For my part, I was enjoying the antics of the ‘Twisty Twins’, identical twin acrobats who dressed as bumblebees. Also the wonderful “Perch Creek Family Jug Band”,a real-life family that included a boy with a peg leg and a tap-dancing daughter with thick glasses. The pleasingly thuggish dad boasted that he’d spent the last 15 months in gaol and that under a Howard government anyone who didn’t go to gaol at least once “just wasn’t trying hard enough”.

Without a doubt, the highlight was the closing Fire Ceremony attended by 20 thousand bewildered onlookers. Whilst I have some experience in deciphering perplexing existential themes and symbolism in theatre (my children go to a Steiner school), I couldn’t make head nor tail of the thing. It came gravely close to deadly dull, up until the moment where a giant mouse appeared, pulled by a multitude of slaves. Then the giant mouse and its slaves set fire to an equally giant house of cards, whereupon the audience leapt to their feet as flames mercifully consumed just about everything remaining on stage, proving once again that meaning and plot can be overrated in theatre and that crackers win every time.

Zoe and John will be posting their observations of the festival soon, so from henceforth it is advisable keep your connection to the internet on at all times.

Here is a new years gift for you all.

Download “It’s Alright” MP3.

A jumping little exhortation to mayhem through song, currently unavailable on disc. It features Greg Walker on honkytonk piano and Elmo on electrical guitar. I particularly like Elmo and Greg’s backing vocal. We recorded this at Brendan Gallagher’s place actually – all very quickly done like many good things. It should also be noted that even though the song “It’s Alright” tells you to be unkind to your grandma, it is neither wise nor kind to act thusly in real life.

“King Curly” was born of the desire to right wrongs and to punish evil. In that respect, his spiritual forefathers are Robin Hood, Batman, Moses and all of the rest of that head-kicking crew. When I first conceived the character – in the songs “King Curly” and “Curly and Sue” – Evil was enjoying a stronger-than-usual stranglehold on the world and I was working in the public service. King Curly was a drab little man in a drab little job – circumstances curiously similar to my own. But unlike me, King Curly had a dangerous and wonderful secret: on his R.D.O’s he was raising an army of outsiders – lepers, failed artists, amputees, frustrated adult film producers and marginalised school bullies to set right the many wrongs of the world.

Seven years down the track, and as far as I know, King Curly is yet to chart anywhere. He hasn’t been invited (or even nominated) to an awards night either – and I’m reasonably confident he would do badly if he ever competed on ‘Australian Idol’. And yet King Curly records have found their way into people’s houses all over the big wide world and folks sing along at shows.

Like other artists, I’ve grown used to the feeling of operating in an alternative dimension that runs parallel to the one shown in mass media. Happily, the current word on the street is that the music industry has finally bloated and popped itself, and that cockroaches like me will have our day. I find that exciting and strangely in keeping with the original King Curly fantasy. Perhaps it’s already happening – I’ve recently become a reluctant member of ‘MySpace’ where droves of cockroaches just like me want to be my “friend”…and I have come to like them too.

King Curly has become a Lost Dog’s Home for all those bum-notes digitally shifted out of existence, a safe haven where the awkward and the ugly lie down with the beautiful and the damned. But let’s not get too carried away – King Curly was never intended as anything but a half-baked expression of myself and the people who play in it.

Here’s a brief précis of the many incarnations of King Curly:

In the beginning Greg J Walker (now of Machine Translations) and I worked together in his little shack by the sea to record the original ‘Familyman’ series of songs. We were both very sure of our genius and smugly heckled just about everyone from a safe distance. Elmo Reed and Jon Nix were solid as Incan pyramids throughout this period; multi instrumentalists with music stamped into their DNA. Greg is now rightly feted by the industry as a gun producer, Jon’s skills as an animator are much in demand and Mr Reed is currently the world’s best guitarist. He also finds time to occasionally pen books about Intelligent Design and lords it over the world as a Doctor of Philosophy.

Two years later the songs that became ‘Lullaby’ marked my defection from Sydney. They were recorded in a single run at a local school hall near where I now live in the Blue Mountains. ‘Lullaby’ sounds different to what I had done before because I had played a good deal of live shows and was keen to capture that spontaneity. I’m very proud of “Lullaby”, and the distinctive sound we were able to briefly hold. The album featured just myself, Elmo and Ritchie Bray on drums. I can offer no explanation for the weird dreamy feel of that record except that it was a time and a place, I suppose.

Then, in collaboration with the brilliant underground Sydney writer Dan Creighton “Doomsday Piano” came to be – featuring a boot-camp of academy trained musicians; John Hibbard and the Uncanny Hauptmann Triplets Zoe, Ben & James – all intentionally hobbled by instruments made from fencing wire, driftwood and iron. It’s a sinewy taut motherfucker of an album now making its way into the wide world.

Prognosis for the future: that’s a hard one. There’s a hardening of the arteries and a thickening of fatty tissue around the soul that I worry will eventually take away my song writing. I’ve been blessed with a young family and sometimes late at night as I prowl about the house turning off lights – I realise I’m no longer scared of the dark. On the contrary: it’s somehow comforting – and I wonder if I’ve become the very thing I used to fear lurked there.