Interview with Katie Noonan, Angie Hart, Martha Marlow and Abby Dobson

I’m nervously tapping my pen on the nearly empty table for four, in the café at the Docklands. Changing positions in my seat from formal to nonchalant and back again. Sunglasses off, sophisticated glasses on; glasses off, sunnies back on. The waiter throws me a pitying glance, a lonely heart being stood up. I try to gesture that I’m still waiting on company, but I make no sense and end up looking stupid. Suddenly, my phone rings…

Katie Noonan: ‘How do I get to Prahran?’ are the first words I hear from Katie Noonan, who’s music I’ve been a fan of for about 10 years. ‘I’m driving a van, the girls are in the back and I’m rushing to meet the photographer. Here….I’ll pass you on to Angie…’

Angie Hart: ‘Hello?’ The phone reception is really bad, and her mellow voice is competing with the human and vehicular sounds from inside the van. ‘I feel very blessed to be here. I feel the four of us are connected through the honesty we bring through our music.’

The waiter approaches me, asking me if I’m okay. I smile apologetically and get back to Angie, whom I am suspecting by her warmth and sweetness is the “hart” of the group.  ‘Angie, it’s a rough road for a musician. What compels you to keep creating?’

Angie Hart: ‘You can’t not! I’ve tried to give up music a couple of times but it keeps calling me back. My life is at a loss without it…Music is a part of me that I can’t access any other way. It’s like, you’re all in a room together and feel something and can’t name it, yet can’t deny it.’

Angie invites me to come on stage and give them all a hug…I blush. ‘Can I speak to Martha?’

Martha Marlow: ‘There are quite a few people out there who want change in this world and I think that’s who you play for, that’s who you write music for. At the end of the day, you write a song and it’s yours, but it becomes theirs when they listen to it. It’s their song, because they put themselves in it. That’s what you’ve got to remember, that someone out there needs your song.’

Growing up in a musical family, was it a conscious choice to be a musician or was there no question about it?’

Martha: ‘It’s like when you fall in love with somebody. You don’t expect it to happen, it just happens. It is beautiful but it can be hard. It’s worth it because you love it so much.’

 

I leave the café in the same whirlwind fashion in which I came. I’m chasing after Katie Noonan on the phone who hangs up to take a picture of her friend on a bike.

 

Katie Noonan: ‘It’s a magical thing when music makes people who are strangers feel like they know each other straight away. You can be in a gig and be next to someone you’ve never met and all of a sudden put your arms around them coz you’re having a great time. Ultimately, the human experience is about being connected.’

It’s 8:00pm. I’m so excited. Abby Dobson is about to call and I’m frantically going over my notes. Ok. Be cool…

Abby Dobson: ‘I used to think that love was a magic pudding. You’d take a slice out and it would be instantly replenished. I put so much of myself in my music, I put so much love in my work. I got very tired and became unwell. I had a long time questioning whether to continue doing it, because it was so physically taxing.’

What are the life lessons you’d like to share with your audience?’

Abby: ‘I’m able to have a stronger voice in saying what I will and won’t do. I had to learn not be swayed by the wills of other people. I had to develop deep roots within so that I was making good decisions for me. Also I was learning to trust that I knew what was best for me. The best relationship I developed was learning to trust my own instincts. I realised the wisdom I was seeking is within me. I was becoming my own best friend.’

I think I’m a little changed by this encounter. I never knew Katie was so quirky, or how much heart Angie brings to the group. I expect to hear someone quoting Martha Marlow’s wisdom someday, and I’d never known a gentle warrior spirit such as Abby Dobson. As I’m writing this, I reflect on all these beautiful women and their songs that made me.