Award-winning multi-instrumentalist Richelle ‘Bootsie’ Booth hopes a weekly residency at Sean & Dolly’s in Kings Cross will help bring music back to the middle of the week “like it used to be”.
We Be Jammin’ Wednesdays stars the 2024 and 2025 Blues Award winner for brass/woodwind and provides an opportunity for musicians to sit in with pianist Sean Mackenzie, Bootsie and friends.
Bootsie has taken her sax, flute, clarinet and steel drum around the world and to all the important jazz and contemporary music venues in Australia. She plays genres including blues, soul, jazz, rock and roll, and reggae, and has performed with or supported the likes of the Doobie Brothers, Foreigner, Jimmy Barnes, James Blundell and Galapagos Duck.
Having started playing in clubs and concert halls at the age of 12, she now passes on knowledge from her degrees in music and decades of professional experience to her students. She also welcomes those who think they have the chops to join her on stage at Sean & Dolly’s.
Bootsie said it was lovely to be back in the Cross, playing again. “Most of the inner-city is pretty quiet during the week, so it is good that tourists and other visitors to the Cross will be able to find a venue with live music.”
She said it used to be better before the lockout laws, when she would spend afternoons playing traditional jazz, then pack up and move to another gig, repeating it all the next day.
“The music scene in Sydney is very quiet at the moment. It’s not like it used to be. I suppose a lot of the clientele has dropped off the perch. We’re just trying to get people back out again after COVID-19. Away from their screens.”
At Sean & Dolly’s she has been playing jazz, blues, jump and swing … “energetic music to get people up and dancing.”
And Bootsie wants musicians to drop in, get up, and have a play. “Music is not an exclusive club. It’s about getting people up to enjoy themselves. Allowing everyone to express their music (with the proviso that you need to be an accomplished musician if you want to play on the stage).”
She said, “I’d like to see jazz come back a lot more into Sydney, but we need to make it more fun. A lot of audiences have seen musicians stand around, getting into themselves, then letting someone else have a go for four choruses, then someone else has four choruses. It goes on for 15 minutes and then there’s the next song. People don’t have that kind of attention span these days.”
“With music you have to remember that first and foremost we are entertainers as well as artists, and if we don’t entertain, the audience doesn’t come back, the venue doesn’t make any money, and therefore you don’t work. We are there to entertain the people who have come to see us, to take them out of their problems for a while. Give them a good time, then they go home, and come back and do it again. That puts a lot of responsibility on the musicians.”
Part of the craft she learned from playing with big acts like Galapagos Duck was to mix it up.
“You start off with a bang, then bring it down, then take people on a journey of ups and downs, different tempos, different keys, different styles. You play Latin songs, popular blues, fast swing, then change it up again with a ballad.”
And she also mixes the sound up, from tenor saxophone to flute, alto saxophone, clarinet, or singing a song.
One of her favourite saxophone players was Gerry Mulligan, who played baritone sax. Bootsie said he had a unique way of playing, a sense of harmony and melodic approach that was quite startling. “He had the second most popular band in the US in the ’50s, behind Miles Davis. The third most popular band was the Australian Jazz Quartet, with Errol Buddle.”
Bootsie said she had the honour of being taken under the wings of those players and others in what Australian jazz organ and piano player Col Nolan called the “school of the bandstand.”
“That’s where the real education happens. There are no charts. You need a good memory. Your ears have to be open and you have to be aware of what’s going on because music on stage, jazz particularly, is like a conversation between four, five or six people. Everyone has to interject nicely and complement the other people in the ensemble, which is a unique skill. It’s not like a lot of people shouting over the top of each other.”
She said, “It’s not all about me. It’s about everyone in the room. I try to make it like I’m part of the room. I might be up there on the stage but I want to try to make people feel included.”
“If you want to bring the soul back to Sydney – it’s not everything about property and money – it’s about having fun. It’s about building something: connection, energy, the kind of live moments you tell your friends about. Let’s bring people back. There’s so much doom and gloom on the TV. There’s so much negativity, anger and worry.
But what you let in is what you give out. Look around at the beauty of the trees, nature, architecture, people walking by, start a conversation. Improvise … like jazz.”
_______________
What: We Be Jammin’ Wednesday with Bootsie
When: Every Wednesday, 7pm–11pm
Where: Sean & Dolly’s, 220 William Street, Woolloomooloo
Tickets: Walk-ins welcome
