The New Documentary
"Ship of Dreams"
There are many hours of out-takes and interviews from the
2000 Documentary "A Night At Sea" still UNSEEN
which would make interesting viewing
and would add to the collection for the National Film and Sound Archives,
for context to the Louis Tillett collection.
(Read on for the Video Trailer for that)
This extra material could be included in the proposed Part 2...
which is the brighter, positive sequel to this story.
As touched on in the first Doco, Louis has always been able to find peace, and mastery
over his mind when Sailing. After a long-fought private battle with an estranged family,
and with the love and support of his fans, he has found his way
onto a Sea-Going Vessel,
on which he has
set his mind to
SAIL and CREATE
at the same time.
2000 Documentary "A Night At Sea" still UNSEEN
which would make interesting viewing
and would add to the collection for the National Film and Sound Archives,
for context to the Louis Tillett collection.
(Read on for the Video Trailer for that)
This extra material could be included in the proposed Part 2...
which is the brighter, positive sequel to this story.
As touched on in the first Doco, Louis has always been able to find peace, and mastery
over his mind when Sailing. After a long-fought private battle with an estranged family,
and with the love and support of his fans, he has found his way
onto a Sea-Going Vessel,
on which he has
set his mind to
SAIL and CREATE
at the same time.
You can become a Patron of this next project, and gain exclusive access to the making of a unique documentary which involves Louis' sailing adventure, as the skipper of a purpose built Antarctic expedition sailing boat.
He is writing a book, and a new album, as well as recording podcasts and an Audiobook, on board his own "Ship of Dreams".
Parts of the resulting footage will be edited into
a follow-up Documentary......to reflect
the very essence of his MUSIC -
finding a way to the LIGHT from DARKNESS.
He is writing a book, and a new album, as well as recording podcasts and an Audiobook, on board his own "Ship of Dreams".
Parts of the resulting footage will be edited into
a follow-up Documentary......to reflect
the very essence of his MUSIC -
finding a way to the LIGHT from DARKNESS.
(Click on the Picture Link BELOW to Read About the Patreon Project)
Join him on PATREON,
to become a credited Patron,
and enjoy intimate access
and community directly with the Artist.
Rewards vary depending
on the level of subscription.
But ALL patrons
(from $1/month)
are able to experience
Photos, Film, Journals and regular posts
of this unfolding journey, with what is
in fact already a "real-time" documentary, in itself.
to become a credited Patron,
and enjoy intimate access
and community directly with the Artist.
Rewards vary depending
on the level of subscription.
But ALL patrons
(from $1/month)
are able to experience
Photos, Film, Journals and regular posts
of this unfolding journey, with what is
in fact already a "real-time" documentary, in itself.
The 1999/2000 Documentary
"A Night At Sea with Louis Tillett"
|
The Soundtrack
Featuring music which was recorded and released as the soundtrack
"Live At The Basement" |
Watch the Trailer or Rent/Buy
"Video on Demand"
Cast: Mark Mordue, Louis Tillett, Don Walker, Damien Lovelock and more...
Directors/DOP
Carolyn Constantine
Anna Craney Mark Mordue Lisa Nicol
Writers
Mark Mordue Lisa Nicol
Producer
Lisa Nicol
Production Company/International Sales:
ROUND THE OUTSIDE PRODUCTIONS
ROUND THE OUTSIDE PRODUCTIONS
Interviews regarding "A Night At Sea"
REDEMPTION IN SONG AND THE SEA
Author: Bernard Zuel
Date: 25/06/2001
Publication: Sydney Morning Herald
Why does a wave break? Why does a man break? How does one heal the other, asks Bernard Zuel.
"I don't subscribe to the image of being a f---ed up alcoholic psychiatric maniac but I do subscribe to the image of someone who's had difficulties. And I enjoy sharing those things with people. The difficulties are just as important, no more or less, than the good things."
Louis Tillett, a big man with a soft voice, is remarkably clear-eyed and healthy for a 42-year-old pianist with a tortured past. Sure, the fingers are deeply stained with nicotine ("It's my only vice now," he says) and he will always be under some medication. But beneath his black fedora a smile dances at the corner of his mouth as he talks about returning to perform his bluesy soul songs in Sydney, two years after his last shows here and more than 20 years since he took to pounding out garage punk songs with the long-defunct band Wet Taxis.
Those last shows in Sydney were filmed and broadcast last year as part of A Night At Sea With Louis Tillett, a documentary that explored the dark nights of the soul of a man who has had a lifelong struggle with mental illness, occasional bouts of substance abuse and some of the most poetic and confessional songs written by an Australian.
The documentary reawakened interest in Tillett, a musician who is better known in Europe than here, so it's appropriate that he will screen the film before each of his two performances on Thursday. It means you can go from images of Tillett at the helm of a small boat on Sydney Harbour to live versions of songs that are filled with his love of the sea. Love, however, probably understates the importance of the sea to Tillett who, when he is in his new home of Athens, makes a point of travelling by train to the port city of Piraeus to be closer to the water.
"The sea is magic to me," he says. "It's a strange thing because the sea has a lot in common with the desert. I've only been out to the desert a few times but my father was a flying doctor out of Broken Hill and my mother was the base nurse in Tibooburra. I went out there and it was so much like being on a boat at sea. It was so beautiful isolation and difficult to survive."
What is it about the sea?
"I get away from preconceptions and expectations and restrictions and demands. Those things still happen at sea but they're more honest, more open. It's away from the bullshit. Everything is somehow truer and clearer. [I'm] face to face with myself and I honestly see myself."
Does he like what he sees?
"It's also very humbling, so what I see isn't very important," he says.
Honesty, sometimes raw and brutal, is a feature of Tillett's songs as they document his troubled years, including periods in psychiatric hospitals. They also feature moments of great love. "A favourite saying of mine is `a problem shared is a problem halved' and if I can share some of these problems with people it might help them through their difficulties.
"It's wonderful. I can sit in my little bedsit in Chippendale, going through something and write a song about it and hop on a plane to the other side of the world and someone will come up to me and say I was going through the same thing. It's a wondrous thing."
A Night At Sea Live With Louis Tillett is on at the Chauvel Cinema, Paddington Town Hall, on Thursday, two shows, 7pm and 9pm.
Author: Bernard Zuel
Date: 25/06/2001
Publication: Sydney Morning Herald
Why does a wave break? Why does a man break? How does one heal the other, asks Bernard Zuel.
"I don't subscribe to the image of being a f---ed up alcoholic psychiatric maniac but I do subscribe to the image of someone who's had difficulties. And I enjoy sharing those things with people. The difficulties are just as important, no more or less, than the good things."
Louis Tillett, a big man with a soft voice, is remarkably clear-eyed and healthy for a 42-year-old pianist with a tortured past. Sure, the fingers are deeply stained with nicotine ("It's my only vice now," he says) and he will always be under some medication. But beneath his black fedora a smile dances at the corner of his mouth as he talks about returning to perform his bluesy soul songs in Sydney, two years after his last shows here and more than 20 years since he took to pounding out garage punk songs with the long-defunct band Wet Taxis.
Those last shows in Sydney were filmed and broadcast last year as part of A Night At Sea With Louis Tillett, a documentary that explored the dark nights of the soul of a man who has had a lifelong struggle with mental illness, occasional bouts of substance abuse and some of the most poetic and confessional songs written by an Australian.
The documentary reawakened interest in Tillett, a musician who is better known in Europe than here, so it's appropriate that he will screen the film before each of his two performances on Thursday. It means you can go from images of Tillett at the helm of a small boat on Sydney Harbour to live versions of songs that are filled with his love of the sea. Love, however, probably understates the importance of the sea to Tillett who, when he is in his new home of Athens, makes a point of travelling by train to the port city of Piraeus to be closer to the water.
"The sea is magic to me," he says. "It's a strange thing because the sea has a lot in common with the desert. I've only been out to the desert a few times but my father was a flying doctor out of Broken Hill and my mother was the base nurse in Tibooburra. I went out there and it was so much like being on a boat at sea. It was so beautiful isolation and difficult to survive."
What is it about the sea?
"I get away from preconceptions and expectations and restrictions and demands. Those things still happen at sea but they're more honest, more open. It's away from the bullshit. Everything is somehow truer and clearer. [I'm] face to face with myself and I honestly see myself."
Does he like what he sees?
"It's also very humbling, so what I see isn't very important," he says.
Honesty, sometimes raw and brutal, is a feature of Tillett's songs as they document his troubled years, including periods in psychiatric hospitals. They also feature moments of great love. "A favourite saying of mine is `a problem shared is a problem halved' and if I can share some of these problems with people it might help them through their difficulties.
"It's wonderful. I can sit in my little bedsit in Chippendale, going through something and write a song about it and hop on a plane to the other side of the world and someone will come up to me and say I was going through the same thing. It's a wondrous thing."
A Night At Sea Live With Louis Tillett is on at the Chauvel Cinema, Paddington Town Hall, on Thursday, two shows, 7pm and 9pm.
SOUL SURVIVOR
Author: By DENISE EVERTON
Date: 16/08/2001
Publication: Illawarra Mercury
The Australian music industry has often been bemused by Louis Tillett's style so it's no surprise he's taking his work overseas.
The 42-year-old whose work has tripped across everything from rock, jazz and blues to deep, soul-searching ballads will leave for Europe in October, basing himself in Greece.
"I can't really survive in Australia. The market is too small for what I'm doing," he said.
"Europe is more open and while it's hard to tell how it will go, I'll be playing in jazz clubs and places like that where people are there to hear what I'm doing rather than just blowing in off the street for a good night."
Tillett believes people still associate him with the garage rock of his youth and have found it hard to accept his changing approach to music in which he seeks a "more poetic, intense" style.
His last album Learning To Die is doing well in Europe but has yet to be given a release date in Australia, something Tillett accepts with a resigned understanding.
"I've tried very hard with it and I think the quality is there but it's just not within the cliche needed by the studios," he said.
"I'm feeling more comfortable in myself now knowing that's the way it is and I'll always prefer to play to 20 people who I know are there to listen to my music rather than 500 people who are there because someone's told them it's the place to be."
With his departure from Australia rapidly approaching, Tillett is making just two more concert performances - one in Wollongong and one for a charity benefit night in Sydney.
The Wollongong performance will feature a screening of the acclaimed documentary A Night at Sea With Louis Tillett followed by a solo, live performance from the singer/songwriter.
The documentary, produced in 1999 by Mark Mordue, features footage from Tillett's last three major performances at The Basement with his band The Aspersion Caste.
The concert footage is interspersed with interviews with the performer and his closest associates and reveals his struggle with mental illness, his bouts of substance abuse and his determination to produce music with meaning.
"I try to put as much of myself in my music as I can," he said. "I think it's quite cathartic. Some people tend to say the music is gloomy or depressing but when I delve in to something I'm going on the saying that a problem shared is a problem halved and I've been rewarded by how many people respond to that."
If you want to hear Tillett perform live, this week may be your last chance.
Author: By DENISE EVERTON
Date: 16/08/2001
Publication: Illawarra Mercury
The Australian music industry has often been bemused by Louis Tillett's style so it's no surprise he's taking his work overseas.
The 42-year-old whose work has tripped across everything from rock, jazz and blues to deep, soul-searching ballads will leave for Europe in October, basing himself in Greece.
"I can't really survive in Australia. The market is too small for what I'm doing," he said.
"Europe is more open and while it's hard to tell how it will go, I'll be playing in jazz clubs and places like that where people are there to hear what I'm doing rather than just blowing in off the street for a good night."
Tillett believes people still associate him with the garage rock of his youth and have found it hard to accept his changing approach to music in which he seeks a "more poetic, intense" style.
His last album Learning To Die is doing well in Europe but has yet to be given a release date in Australia, something Tillett accepts with a resigned understanding.
"I've tried very hard with it and I think the quality is there but it's just not within the cliche needed by the studios," he said.
"I'm feeling more comfortable in myself now knowing that's the way it is and I'll always prefer to play to 20 people who I know are there to listen to my music rather than 500 people who are there because someone's told them it's the place to be."
With his departure from Australia rapidly approaching, Tillett is making just two more concert performances - one in Wollongong and one for a charity benefit night in Sydney.
The Wollongong performance will feature a screening of the acclaimed documentary A Night at Sea With Louis Tillett followed by a solo, live performance from the singer/songwriter.
The documentary, produced in 1999 by Mark Mordue, features footage from Tillett's last three major performances at The Basement with his band The Aspersion Caste.
The concert footage is interspersed with interviews with the performer and his closest associates and reveals his struggle with mental illness, his bouts of substance abuse and his determination to produce music with meaning.
"I try to put as much of myself in my music as I can," he said. "I think it's quite cathartic. Some people tend to say the music is gloomy or depressing but when I delve in to something I'm going on the saying that a problem shared is a problem halved and I've been rewarded by how many people respond to that."
If you want to hear Tillett perform live, this week may be your last chance.
DARK VISIONS
Author: Chad Watson & Linda Barnier
Date: 10/08/2001
Publication: Newcastle Herald
TO call Louis Tillett a cult figure would not do him justice.
The brilliant songwriter and pianist, making a rare live appearance this evening at Newcastle University, has been an almost mythical character on the Australian underground music scene for over two decades.
The solo concert will be preceded by the screening of A Night At Sea, an extraordinary documentary about his art, life and struggle with mental illness.
The film, narrated and directed by former Novocastrian Mark Mordue, revolves around a sold-out show he did at The Basement in Sydney. After the performance,
Tillett checks himself into a psychiatric hopsital.
Mordue and producer Lisa Nicol describe it as a `portrait of troubled man' during which the audience becomes aware that Tillett, whose black humour comes shining through, is `literally kept alive by the music he makes'.
A Night At Sea screened on national TV in February but Tillett only saw it right through for the first time about two weeks go.
`It was very well shot,' said Tillett, who has spent most of this year touring Europe.
`I like the camerawork and the interviews cover a vast range of topics, but it's a bit dark.'
Mordue is currently in China, completing a writer-in-residence scholarship at Beijing University.
But the Word managed to track him down, passing on Tillett's observations.
`It's tough watching yourself on screen, let alone when you have been as open and raw as he was during filming,' he said. `I don't say it's definitive of him, but I do think we caught a moment honestly.'
Tillett is now going through the `misery' of releasing an album, Learning To Die, which the 42-year-old calls a celebration of life.
`Let's face it, we're all going to die some time,' he said. `I have a belief in a day of reckoning and I don't want to say anymore.'
Author: Chad Watson & Linda Barnier
Date: 10/08/2001
Publication: Newcastle Herald
TO call Louis Tillett a cult figure would not do him justice.
The brilliant songwriter and pianist, making a rare live appearance this evening at Newcastle University, has been an almost mythical character on the Australian underground music scene for over two decades.
The solo concert will be preceded by the screening of A Night At Sea, an extraordinary documentary about his art, life and struggle with mental illness.
The film, narrated and directed by former Novocastrian Mark Mordue, revolves around a sold-out show he did at The Basement in Sydney. After the performance,
Tillett checks himself into a psychiatric hopsital.
Mordue and producer Lisa Nicol describe it as a `portrait of troubled man' during which the audience becomes aware that Tillett, whose black humour comes shining through, is `literally kept alive by the music he makes'.
A Night At Sea screened on national TV in February but Tillett only saw it right through for the first time about two weeks go.
`It was very well shot,' said Tillett, who has spent most of this year touring Europe.
`I like the camerawork and the interviews cover a vast range of topics, but it's a bit dark.'
Mordue is currently in China, completing a writer-in-residence scholarship at Beijing University.
But the Word managed to track him down, passing on Tillett's observations.
`It's tough watching yourself on screen, let alone when you have been as open and raw as he was during filming,' he said. `I don't say it's definitive of him, but I do think we caught a moment honestly.'
Tillett is now going through the `misery' of releasing an album, Learning To Die, which the 42-year-old calls a celebration of life.
`Let's face it, we're all going to die some time,' he said. `I have a belief in a day of reckoning and I don't want to say anymore.'
LOUIS THE FLY GUY
Author: ANDREW KHEDOORI
Date: 16/07/1999
Publication: Sydney Morning Herald
ANDREW KHEDOORI meets a Sydney storyteller inspired by a timeless culture.
"I'm not a careerist," says Louis Tillett. "I'm just someone who enjoys sharing experiences with people."
Tillett is a forceful and moving performer, whether it be solo at piano, or with a full band that rolls out the jazz-influenced rock that has become his specialty. An evocative storyteller, he's able to reach the same scope as the likes of Nick Cave and Paul Kelly, though, unfortunately, without even half as much recognition.
"That's fine by me," he says without any major lament. "I'm not particularly after my six months in the sunshine. I'd rather each record and show be as special as possible."
Tillett, who removed himself from his homeland through necessity ("I've been disillusioned by Australian audiences for a while"), has found an odd state of comfort in Greece. "It's a timeless culture," he says. "Emotion and the expression of emotion is the same, whether you read the Ancient Greek poets or listen to contemporary music. It's very big on passion and self-expression. People, whether they were born 10 years or 50 years ago, all laugh and cry in the same language."
Tillett has stayed in Greece six times since 1990 to write, returning to Australia to record. On those occasions he has collaborated with some of the country's most imaginative musicians. He thinks that now there's more reasons for him to give Australia another shot. "A lot of people who grew up with punk rock are a bit older now and a bit more interested in music as a form of expression [rather] than a soundtrack to getting drunk."
Louis Tillett is playing at The Basement tonight with the Aspersion Caste featuring Charlie Owen.
Author: ANDREW KHEDOORI
Date: 16/07/1999
Publication: Sydney Morning Herald
ANDREW KHEDOORI meets a Sydney storyteller inspired by a timeless culture.
"I'm not a careerist," says Louis Tillett. "I'm just someone who enjoys sharing experiences with people."
Tillett is a forceful and moving performer, whether it be solo at piano, or with a full band that rolls out the jazz-influenced rock that has become his specialty. An evocative storyteller, he's able to reach the same scope as the likes of Nick Cave and Paul Kelly, though, unfortunately, without even half as much recognition.
"That's fine by me," he says without any major lament. "I'm not particularly after my six months in the sunshine. I'd rather each record and show be as special as possible."
Tillett, who removed himself from his homeland through necessity ("I've been disillusioned by Australian audiences for a while"), has found an odd state of comfort in Greece. "It's a timeless culture," he says. "Emotion and the expression of emotion is the same, whether you read the Ancient Greek poets or listen to contemporary music. It's very big on passion and self-expression. People, whether they were born 10 years or 50 years ago, all laugh and cry in the same language."
Tillett has stayed in Greece six times since 1990 to write, returning to Australia to record. On those occasions he has collaborated with some of the country's most imaginative musicians. He thinks that now there's more reasons for him to give Australia another shot. "A lot of people who grew up with punk rock are a bit older now and a bit more interested in music as a form of expression [rather] than a soundtrack to getting drunk."
Louis Tillett is playing at The Basement tonight with the Aspersion Caste featuring Charlie Owen.
The Documentary
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