For Seeker Keith, the carnival isn’t over 

AT 82, Keith Potger, one of many authentic members of Australian super-group The Seekers, is exhibiting no signal of slowing down.

Quite the opposite, within the subsequent few weeks he’ll be headlining the Canberra Legacy Selection Live performance with a present he’s written, performing with Shortis and Simpson on the opening night time on the Nationwide People Pageant, collectively directing the competition choir with Simpson in a present known as “From Georgia [Stalin’s birthplace] to ‘Georgy Woman’,” then showing with the Royal Navy School Band in “Music at Noon” on April 11.

I caught up lately with Potger on the house in Braidwood, which he shares with artist-photographer Elizabeth Hawkes, to learn how he does it.

“I don’t keep idle, I’m nonetheless writing songs and nonetheless recording them,” Potger says. “It retains me off the streets.”

However lately his focus is on giving again to the group through charitable work and certainly, he says, it was he who initiated his involvement with the Legacy live performance, the proceeds of which is able to go to supporting the widows, widowers and households of Australia’s Defence veterans.

One may think Potger to be a high-living Melburnian or Sydneysider, and so he was for a time, however he’s been dwelling in Braidwood since round 2014, describing the transfer as “an exquisite resolution which felt utterly pure”.

He says he’s been capable of have interaction with the area people in Braidwood, particularly “with the unbelievable Nationwide Theatre proper throughout the street… Elizabeth and I began selling concert events there, and now we consider ourselves as small-town impresarios.”

He even flirted with politics in 2021 for what he described as “about three and a half seconds,” placing up his hand to run for Queanbeyan-Palerang Regional Council, however he was dominated out due to a “defective” nomination course of.

As for the Legacy live performance, Potger had all the time needed to carry out with a military band, so rang his previous mate Barry Morrison, previously of the band Xanadu, asking for a contact. Straightforward. Morrison stated he’d been to highschool in Bundaberg with military band conductor (and “CityNews” music reviewer) Ian McLean and pointed him in the proper route.

McLean, who’s each producer and MC for the Legacy live performance, jumped on the concept and likewise put Potger in contact with Main Matt O’Keeffe, director of the RMC band, who signed him up for the noon live performance on April 11.

Based on Potger, each interactions proved “very agreeable”.

In addition to, he’d already ready a program known as “Celebrating The Seekers”, which he might do both with a band or as a solo efficiency and was looking forward to a NSW solo tour the place he would carry out in cities from Warren to Woy Woy (Spike Milligan is one in all his heroes).

In “Celebrating The Seekers” he’ll discuss loads and carry out his personal variations of favorite Seekers’ songs, together with “I’ll By no means Discover One other You” and the aforementioned “Georgy Woman”.

“I inform anecdotes about six a long time within the music business,” he says.

The six a long time began when he was aged 16 in yr 11 at Melbourne Excessive College, the place he fashioned his first trio, which by yr 12 grew to become a quartet.

“However The Seekers as we all know them started in December 1962, once I was simply 21… they’ve been such an enormous a part of my life.”

Already a grasp of the 12-string guitar, it was Potger who composed the riffs that grew to become a trademark of the Seekers’ chart-topping recordings and he has continued life as a composer down the years.

After crusing for the UK in 1964 and having fun with a global profession, The Seekers had been named Australians of the Yr in 1967, disbanded in 1968, reunited in 1992 to tour internationally for his or her Silver Jubilee, reunited once more in 2013-14 for UK and Australian Golden Anniversary excursions and appeared once more in help of the “Georgy Woman” musical in 2014.

“Judith [Durham] is gone however Athol [Guy] and Bruce [Woodley] nonetheless stay in Victoria and we communicate,” he says.

So, does their music resonate with a youthful era of music lovers?

“It relies on whether or not they heard it at house,” he says.

“So many younger folks write to me and say they’ve listened to the information that their mother and father liked.”

The Legacy present is determinedly aimed on the wider basic public. He’ll be joined by an acoustic group from the Royal Navy School Band, the Sing Australia Choir, Canberra artists, together with jazz vocalist Leisa Eager, cellist Charlotte Winslade, bush poet Laurie McDonald and pianist Sam Row, who will play “The Swan” from “Carnival of the Animals” and the Chopin showstopper, “Polonaise Brillante”.

The present will conclude with all the solid singing a medley of songs, naturally concluding with The Seekers’ classics “Morningtown Experience” and “The Carnival is Over”.

Canberra Legacy Selection Live performance, Royal Theatre, Nationwide Conference Centre, 2 pm, Saturday, April 1. Bookings at Ticketek.