This is Mørgân, the automated, email writing humanoid replica of Morgan the Mimosa Duo guitarist. Morgan is strumming sweet nothings in my ear as I type. Unfortunately, I have not been programmed to hear, only to type, so the music is not being heard.

Efficiency is my goal so now the introductory patter is out of the way here is where the Mimosa Duo can be found in the upcoming months:

Tomorrow, the 12th of May 2018: ‘The Cow Shed’ – Wollombi.
A 6 course meal accompanied by us earlier on and a dance band ‘Slam Tango’ later on. The Cow Shed is an award winning venue in Wollombi. Tickets are $110 which includes food (and I presume drink). More info on how to get in touch with the organisers here: Click Me

Sunday the 13th of May 2018: Bombini – Avoca.
Phoebe has been eyeing this place off ever since we moved up to the central coast. Morgan very smartly took her to dinner there for her birthday, it was a great success. Now, they have a gig there, marvellous! Happy Mothers Day mothers! The Duo will be on from 4pm to 7pm.

Friday 25th of May 2018: Avoca Theatre – Avoca (obviously).
A French soiree is on offer this eve at the mighty Avoca Theatre. A 50 min set from the Mimosa Duo then a movie with Omar Sy (the actor from ‘The Intouchables’ ) called ‘Dr. Knock’. Tickets are $25. More info here: Click Me

Sunday 27th of May 2018: Settlers Arms Inn – St Albans.
This has become a monthly gig for the Mimosa Duo. If you keen for a drive its a rather lovely destination to grab a beer some tucker and listen to some gypsy jazz. The Duo is on from 12:30pm to 3:30pm

Friday 29th June 2018: The Manly Fig – Balgowla Heights.
The Manly Fig is a wonderful gig! On once a month, the lovely volunteer organisers put on 3 different acts and the night is always has a fun community feel and the crowd is full of music lovers. The regular and loyal patrons used to be able to bring their own dinner and drinks although that may have changed with the new venue… Anyway, Mimosa will be one of the 3 acts this time and will be performing with their ensemble which adds a second guitar, bass and the most sensual of saxes. Looking forward to this! More info here: Byte Me

Something Morgan forgot to add last email was this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SjmRroztlrU . A new YouTube video for you all. Both Morgan and Phoebe have acknowledged to me that they are rather poor in the area of promotion and marketing so this is their feeble attempt to try and resurrect their internet presence. Every new view puts a radiant smile on their sweet faces.

Morgan is whispering in my ear to say happy birthday to Rodger and thanks for the cake?

001000000111110100101010000111000101000001
(this is binary for ‘Love youse all, cya next time, Mørgân’)

Joyeux Noël, Bonne Année et Joyeux Paques! And while I’m at it for those of you who have had a birthday in the first quarter of the year Bonne Anniversaire!

Well, since I last magically appeared in your inbox, Pheebs and I have been in and out of the country 3 times and are going to do so again on Wednesday (4th of April). I haven’t emailed as I didn’t want to harass you all constantly, letting you all know every time we live it up and jet set across the Asia Pacific, but, on the other hand, I don’t want you to think we have spontaneously combusted or anything silly like that. So here I am, reporting that we are indeed alive and well, and that we have had a busy yet positive Summer!

First things first, we are heading to NZ on Wednesday for the second time to do a string of gigs in the North of the South Island. Nelson, Blenheim and Havelock we love you and are coming back! Details of the gigs are up on our website. A big thanks to Liz who is the wonder woman who puts this all together.

For those of you who are wondering if you should ever go to Norfolk Island the answer is most definitely yes! Pheebs and I haven’t had a greater gig than that. Beautiful spot, beautiful people and a great line up for last years Jazz Festival. We got to meet and play with some incredible musos who we have and continue to look up to, all the whilst, being on a stunning island surrounded by crystal clear water! Perfect!

We stuck out Tamworth for the full 10 or 11 or however many days it is this year. It hot, sweaty, crowded and slightly crazed, there is music everywhere both fantastic and awful, quiet, loud, obnoxious and sweet. Its not much of a sales pitch but I’m telling you, there is something about this combination of things that makes the Tamworth Festival great beyond words. We are hooked! Thanks to everyone who came to our shows, it was a pleasure to meet you all.

I feel a bit guilty… But I missed out emailing you all about the Kiama Jazz Festival, we fit it in between two cruise contracts and forethought escaped me. Anyway, if we have anything to say about it we will be back next year. It was great! Different to Tamworth in that it was intimate, a pleasant 27º, well organised and by the sea with green grass and trees stretching out as far as the eye can see. There were plenty of quality acts split over a 3 day festival. Nows thats a sales pitch. Hope to see you there next year!

We were camping with some old buddies of our this weekend, which was glorious, but on Sunday a cute little gig popped up so we went out to St Albans for the day. We playing at the Settlers Inn which was a classic old stone pub with a chimney and a spacious backyard area for everyone to sit, eat and drink. It was a nice little gig and it looks as though we might be playing there semi regularly. The next one could well be on the 22nd of April but keep your eyes on our website or email us to double check if you are interested.

That all folks. If you are ever looking for something fun to do at an event with 10 or more people, check out the game two rooms and a boom…

Au revoir

Good afternoon.

Can I do this in 20 mins?! I reckon not… Phoebe is telling me that I smell like an onion and need to, at the very least, deodorise before we go out to dinner, exiting the building at 6pm sharp. Sigh. I always liked onions.

Anyway the reason for the stagnantness is that I have been simmering in my little study setting up a reviews page for our website. 3.5 hours, 59USD, my long sightedness and a part of my sanity have all been lost in the process, but it is done and I have earned myself the last beer in the fridge for the walk to dinner. Hoorah!

So before any further ado, if you have ever hired us for an event, your wedding perhaps, or even if you would like to review a concert we have done or one of our CDs, please head along to our new sparkling reviews page where you can submit a review. We would really appreciate you taking the time to do so, thanks in advance! https://www.mimosaduo.com/reviews/

Sorry Mum and Nanna, family reviews are kind of lame so if you could just keep them as face to face that would be great. And Dad I don’t want all our mistakes mentioned in a review either so your out as well.

While it appears that no time has passed, you are deceived! I failed my 20 minute mission, and now it is tomorrow morning. And what a morning it is! In a week we will be flying out to Norfolk Island for their annual Jazz Festival (which starts the next week on Mon the 4th). Really looking forward to that, its reportedly a great festival and a beautiful island. Thanks to those of you who are taking the time to come over!

A friend of our told us recently that the good old Aussy government are meddling too hard with Norfolk affairs, which sounds fairly typical of them, yet frustrating and potentially quite damaging for the locals. Here is an article if you are interested: http://www.theaustralian.com.au/opinion/so-why-do-we-fell-this-independent-pine-of-norfolk-island/news-story/f356799df98eeedc720ce2645ba25e3e

As I’m sure most of you are aware the xmas season if fast approaching. I have been diligently learning ‘Oh Come All Ye Faithful’ on the trumpet with the vision of using it to wake everyone up at 6am on xmas morning. I really do, do a beautiful rendition. Moving on, we have been asked to be the support for a gig that a singer songwriter friend of ours, Mark Wilkinson, is doing at the Basement in Syd on Wednesday the 20th of December. It is primarily Mark’s show so I imagine we will be playing for 45 mins tops then he will be on for longer but it should be a great night. Alongside being a humble and loveable person Mark is a great songwriter so if your into that style of music he is definitely worth your time. Tickets are on sale here: http://www.moshtix.com.au/v2/event/mark-wilkinson-annual-end-of-year-show/98898

Then to keep the festival spirit alive we will be hitting up the chaos that is the Tamworth festival again for the 4th year in a row. We must like it I guess?! We wont be there for the whole time but will give it a good whack and are playing multiple times everyday between the 19th and 27th of Jan. You can see where on our website. https://www.mimosaduo.com/gigs/tamworth-festival/

It always bring me great joy hearing that people actually read this dribble! haha! So thanks for getting thus far, and i’m not even finished!

We wanted to say thanks to everyone who came to our CD launch at the Avoca Theatre on the 20th of Oct. We were really humbled by the turn out and had a great time! We hope you are enjoying the CD if you bought it! Also, we finally made it down to Melbourne since the last email and got a chance to play at the Paris Cat in town which was fantastic! The room was full and a good time was had by all. But even more importantly we stopped of at Braidwood on the way back to play for some friends of ours. These guys run a jewellery business and are responsible for our copper wedding rings which we love. I loved mine so much that I never wanted to take it off even when bodysurfing a heavy shorey… Sooo… I lost the first one. But since Braidwood on the way home I have been reinstated with a new one that fits to perfection! So now I can remain visibly married and body surf at the same time until my heart in content! Check out Vetro E Metallo’s jewellery here: https://vetroemetallo.com.au/

Merry xmas if your into that, otherwise happy summer!

Love,
The Grinches trumpet bearing Bannerman.

Salutations my friends!

In breaking news, the mighty Warlocks, my table tennis team, have blitzed there way into the A2 finals at the Central Coast Table Tennis Association (CCTTA), having remained undefeated during the entire competition! Thank you all, thank you, thank you.

Even more excitingly our 3rd CD is being printed as we speak! About bloody time, I know. We are due to pick them up early next week in time for our CD launch at the Avoca Theatre next Friday the 20th of October. We love playing at the Theatre and really looking forward to the gig. We hope you can make it! Tickets are for sale via the theatre site below, I have also just spoken to the owners and as of tonight there will be an under 18 year old ticket option that has a bit of a discount:

https://www.avocabeachpicturetheatre.com.au/mimosa-duo

My wonderfully hospitable father is always concerned about keeping guests refreshed, generally with alcoholic beverages. On his request, you can think him for this at the gig, I will let you all know now that there are drinks (local beer and wine among other things) and nibbles available at at the theatre. There is a nice outdoor seating area and plenty of things to stickybeak at inside, so if you get there a bit early which would be recommended you can appease yourselves at the bar and find somewhere to hang out before the show. The show will be a sit down affair in the actual theatre where the movies are shown. We will be performing 2 sets with an intermission and then, of course, selling our CDs at the end. Wunderbar!

For those Melbournites out there, I am not sure if I will get a chance to email again before we perform at the Paris Cat on the 9th of November. This will be our first ever musical sojourn to Melbourne so we will come down with guns blazing and set the night on fire! In our minds anyway… Tickets and more info are available here:

https://www.rollerdigital.com/pariscat/product/134943?date=20171109#/sessions

By the way did you know we have a new CD coming out??

As I have mentioned previously we will also be performing at the Norfolk Island Jazz fest in early December, could just be the opportunity you have been looking for to surprise your spouse/partner/sibling/parents with a romantic/nourishing/spark inducing/music hunting get away adventure?! Here is a link to the main site below and if you are interested in going you may be interested in the package they have put together for us. For an information pack and further information contact Christan Davies at christan@travelcentre.nf or freecall her on 1800 1400 66.

Home

Its been an absolute joy as always! We are about to head off to perform at a wedding in the Blue Mountains this arvo then off to the outrageous and loveable district of Gulgong tomorrow for a gig that I think if for the public but I am not sure… If you from Gulgong you probably know more of it that I so hopefully cya there Gulgians!

Arrivederci .

Why hello,

My wonderful wife, the one and only, Phoebe Haselden, second of her name, master of the violin, defender of antique goods, exterminator of dust, singer of vintage melodies, care taker of all living things (on our block) and creator of my dinner says that dinner is in deed only 10 minutes away. Could this be the speediest email write up I have ever done!? I fear that the answer is no and that I will have to rejoin you after I have supped on some delicious veggie curry. But until then, write I will with the vigor of a cautious yet speedy antechinus!

As much a I dearly love our emails I often put writing them off, as to write I need to get in the zone and sometime the zone eludes me… but tonight there is not more time to procrastinate! The Newcastle Jazz Fest is this very weekend! We have been scheduled to perform from 12:20 to 1:20 in the Marble Bar at Wests, New Hampton. We have been feeling the need for some new repertoire of late so we will be trying a few new things which we look forward to! Here is a link to further info on the festival:

http://newcastlejazz.com.au/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=58&Itemid=74

Over the past few months I have spent more time in front of a computer screen than ever before! I have been judiciously mixing our 3rd CD and we are nearly ready to send it to the printers! Woo! The CD will be a double disk with 23 tracks which is our longest CD yet. Whats more, the wonderful family at Avoca Theater have booked us in for the CD release concert on the 20th of October so we are well on track to having it ready by then! Phew… Its never too early to book tickets so if you are keen to come please give the theater a call! Also which if babbling, if you are at all interested in editing audio have a little look up of Izotope RX 6 which is a spectral editing program which I have used to get rid of a few coughs and things that we picked up in our live recordings. Its a pretty amazing program!

Now, I know that I mentioned this last email but unfortunately I have promised to harass you all every email about the Norfolk Island Jazz Festival 2017. Even if I hadn’t promised I would be mentioning it though as we are both very much looking forward to it. The festival goes for around 5 days and will be full of music we will be playing multiple times as will a number of other well versed acts. If your looking to treat yourself with a bit of a musical get away consider this as a good option! A travel agent on the island has set us up with a package deal so if you are interested in that here is a brochure:

https://www.mimosaduo.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/Mimosa-Duo-Jazz-2017.pdf

Other things to keep in mind are that we will be playing our first gig ever in Melbourne! It will be at the Paris Cat which we have heard a lot about on Thursday the 9th of November. We will the be playing at a house concert in Braidwood on the way home on Sat the 11th. I will tell you more about those next times. I will also put up some more gig on the site tomorrow as we have booked a few local gigs around the traps too.

Guess what! I havent even had dinner yet! I manage to smooth talk Pheebs into waiting a while but she is content to wait no longer now I must bid you a hasty goodbye! Please forgive me for any spelling mistakes that eluded me!

Hopefully cya soon!

Love,
Morg.

Good afternoon dearest Mimosa Newsletter readers, it is I, Morgan, writer of emails, maker of rosemary sourdough, swimmer of the ocean, trainer of grape vines, drinker of tea, hack job of the bugle and of course lover and player of the worlds finest instrument, the guitar. So far its been a good Friday.

I have plenty of news today fellow earth bound homo sapiens! Where to start is the main issue… hmmm…

For those of you who want a quick fix, jump in the car in a few hours and head off to Avoca Cinema. We will be performing there tonight as part of their French Soirée. Wine, canapés, a mini Mimosa performance and a French movie “The Country Doctor”. I for one am looking forward to it!

For those of you who are more long term planners add this to your monthly musings. We have been asked to perform for the Norfolk Island Jazz Festival in December, to which we said “yes please”! Gotta love checking out new places especially when a music festival is involved. This obviously isn’t a normal gig and it would involve considerably more expense to come, but if you are up for a bit of a get away it may be a nice option. A travel agent on the island who sponsors the festival has organised a little package deal for any Mimosians who would like to come. Here is a link to the brochure for the package deal: https://www.mimosaduo.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/Mimosa-Duo-Jazz-2017.pdf

For those neighbours of ours in NZ we will be doing a mini tour of the North of the South Island. A wonderful lady from Havelock got in touch with us to see if she could organise an NZ tour for us. We were thinking of doing so anyway, so that just made things definite. I booked flights today. Despite recommendations we will be doing it in winter… it will be 4 cute little cozy winter gigs in Picton, Nelson, Havelock and Blenheim on the 6th, 7th, 8th and 9th of July.

You would think that was about it though right? Wrong! There’s more. After a cruise ship contract in early May, that I don’t believe I am allowed to name, we will be playing up in Murrurundi for a local gig at ‘The Barn’. This is one of those ultra special community organised gig venues that comes alive once a month or so. We always feel privileged to play for these sorts of things. That gig is on Sat May 20th.

The week after that we will be playing for the Newcastle Jazz Club on Sun the 28th with Derek Koo. We have done this once before and it was a great afternoon! The week after that we will be down for round 2 at the Bowral Bowling Club for a roast and concert combo! Thats on Sun the 4th of June.
Waiter: Would you like a concert with that roast ma’am?
Margaret: Yes, I would love.

Any further info on these gig can be found in this corner of cyberspace: https://www.mimosaduo.com/gigs/

In further news here is a quote from one of the members of the Mimosa Duo in regards to their live concert recording on the 18th of March:

“A fantastic night was had by all! Well, we had fun. Ha! We are really happy with the turn out and a big thanks to everyone that made the effort to come. After a fews days of mental relaxation we braved our first listen to the concert and were really happy with it. The quality of the actual recording was top notch so we are very happy with our sound man and we were pleased with the playing on the CD and currently plan to use every piece we performed on the night. Now we just need to sit down in front of the computer for hours and mix it! Well, we also will get it mastered and need to get a nice CD cover sorted too but its a good start and we are enthused about the whole process. Bring on CD number 3!”

Thats it for another month or two.

Feel free to write back with whatever is on your mind.

Cheers,
Morgan.

Bonjour mes amis!

Did you know it has been 58 days, 20 hours and 12 minutes since the last time we spoke in this one directional way. Bust that one out at your next trivia night.

Number 1 on the agenda and by far the most important. We are going to start the process of our 3rd CD very soon! It will be a live recording at a concert we are doing at the Central Coast Conservatorium in Gosford. It will be in 2 weeks on Sat the 18th of March. We will be doing 2 sets and hope to get enough good stuff for a double disk live album! We are very excited to have finally locked down what we want to do for our next CD and we hope that you can be there to share it with us. If we can pack out the room with as many people as possible that would be fantastic! Tickets are available through this link:
http://centralcoastconservatorium.com.au/concerts/mimosa-duo
If you are interested please book your tickets in advance so you don’t miss out and so that we can have an idea about how many people will be coming.

We will also be up at our favourite Blue Mountains hotel, Hotel Blue, for our annual Blues and Roots fringe Friday night on the 17th. This pleasant little gig was a spontaneous creation 2 years ago when we happened to be in town so this will be the 3rd year running. Woo woo!

Here is something I learnt the other day. Ahem. A banana is a herb. There you go.

Hopefully see you all soon.

Cheers,
Morgan.

Good afternoon earthlings.

The day has crept up on me but I have to get this out before a gig this evening at the mighty Avoca Cinema. We will be their live French music and are playing from 8pm to 8:45pm. There will be French canapés beforehand and a French movie on the big screen afterhand! I have just checked and tickets are sold out soooo… how about this for some new age promo?! Come to our gig, but you cant come. Not to worry we hope to be back there someday not too far away. They are good folks at the cinema and its great to support small family owned local businesses that provide high quality services!

Next Thursday we will be heading back up to the Tamworth Music Festival for the 3rd year in a row. This year we wont be busking though. We instead have organised a few regular venues for the 5 days we are there. Ruby’s Cafe in the morning, Pig and Tinderbox at mid day and the Atrium Shopping Center Stage in the arvos. You can check exact times on our website, the link is below. We have met a great bunch of people through doing the festival so we are looking forward to catching up with all of them up there!

We are cutting our stay at Tamworth short this year because we have a gig as guest entertainers aboard a cruse ship from the 26th! This has been a working project for the past year or so, so it is great that it has beared some fruit. Unfortunately we have just signed a contract and one of the things on it, in contract style gibberish, was that we couldn’t advertise for the gig. So another useless gig to advertise… What a productive email this has been!

Something you can come to though is a gig for the Newcastle Folk Club on the 25th of February! We haven’t played there before and I literally have to run out the door and eat an egg wrap at the same time so i’m not going to try find out right now. I will put details up on the website for this one over the weekend.

Thanks for reading! Hopefully cya all soon. Here is the link to our gigs page so you can see them all lined up neatly: https://www.mimosaduo.com/gigs/ 

Oh yeah, Happy New Year!

Morg.

Happy Monday Funday one and all!

I am sitting a whole 50cm away from a freshly painted wall (in chalkboard paint) that smells particularly toxic so today I have a good excuse, that is, being high on fumes, for seplling mitsakes.

The bulk of our wedding season is over, brides and grooms are presumedly on honey moons and we are preparing for this years OzManouche Festival in Brisbane at the end of the month! We often practice locked away in seperate rooms but of late we have been turning up the ‘together’ practice to work on some exciting new bits we have been arranging for our performances at the festival. Its going well and we are excited about it!

We are fortunate enough to be performing twice at the festival this year once on Friday the 25th before two Australian greats, George Washing Machine and Ian Date. The other will be on Sat the 26th before of one of the worlds current gypsy jazz masters, Sebastien Giniaux (de France). Woo hoo! It is a tribute to the festival that they have been able to get Sebastien out! Thanks to the OzManouche team and to Sebastien for making the effort.

We have made a little tour starting with OzManouche in Brisbane then heading back down the coast stopping in at Byron, Ocean Shores and Bellingen on the way home. We play at Byron every year and this year we will be performing at ‘The Farm’ on Dec 2nd. We however, have never played in Bellingen before and we are looking forward to playing at their local gig venue ‘5 Church St’ on Sat Dec 3rd.

The gig in Ocean Shores is a house concert. We have played in many a house before but not as a ticketed concert like this. Tickets are $10 I believe (Pheebs is out again and she is the knower of this information) but if you want more info please ask and we can let you know where it is and put you in touch with the host.

In the mean time we are playing at the Erina Foghorn Brewhouse this Friday night from 8:30 to 11:30 which is always fun and tasty.

Please head along to out website if you want to see all our upcoming gigs www.mimosaduo.com

It was a pleasure as always!

Cheers,
Morgan.

So… yet again Phoebe has left me home alone to write you all this email while she goes galavanting off buying wattles. I nearly went with her, but I get the feeling Pheebs gets sick of me trying to play hide and seek at shops big enough to do so.

We have a weekend of shows coming up!

Firstly, this Friday evening we will be playing at Capers Guest House in Wollombi for a music weekend they are putting on. Each night from Fri to Sun they have a 2 hour show with a 2 course sit down meal, and we are first cab off the ranks. We have been there before for a variety of reasons and it is a stunning spot! If you are looking for something different to do you can book accomodation there. Have a free weekend and want to surprise your partner? This could be a winner… Here is a link to their site:
http://capers.com.au/hunter-valley-events

Then, on Saturday night we will be playing at the Troubadour in Woy Woy. If you haven’t heard of it, it is one of those fantastic initiatives (much like the Manly Fig) that put on regular concerts for a crowd of regular listeners. We love these gigs and the fantastic people who make them happen! We start at 7pm and tickets are between $10 and $15, it is held at the Woy Woy CWA Hall on The Boulevard.

After that wedding season… From now until the end of October we have 9 weddings to attend. I do!

Pheebs has returned! 6 new natives for the garden and a smile on her dial. She really missed out though, we had much more fun here…

Hope you new readers had a good time!

Cheers,
Morgan.