Larry Schwartz
THE FIRST RECORD OWNED BY Ella Thompson was a late-1970s album recorded by one of her favourite singers, Renee Geyer, more than a decade before she was born.
“I suppose to me she was a mentor before I even knew her,” says the 17-year-old Melbourne singer, one of six proteges and their mentors who spoke to A2. Thompson is studying music at the Victorian College of the Arts Secondary School while writing and recording with guitarist Dion
Hirini and supporting artists including Geyer, Joe Camilleri, Archie Roach, Bomba, the Whitlams and Vika and Linda Bull.
“I listened to a lot of her CDs but the first one I got was Blues Licence,” she says. “She chose a lot of blues covers. From there I got to know all the old blues people like B. B. King.
“I think, usually when you’re young, you latch onto one particular singer and listen to them for a long time. I suppose Renee was like that for me.”
Thompson in turn so impressed Geyer that the singer took her on tour, performing around Australia with her and Vika and Linda late last year in a show called Voice.
“She is amazing for her age,” says Geyer, “and in my opinion kicks my butt because at her age I don’t think I had quite such a developed voice as Ella’s got. But I had a lot of front. I was unafraid. That was my big forte.”
Thompson, who performs on Wednesday at Veludo, in St Kilda, has had lessons from top singers including Vika Bull and Michelle Nicolle. Her manager arranged classes with Geyer, who also teaches on occasion. “We went to her house,” says Thompson. “I was so scared because I’d been
listening to her for so long. And she was lovely.
“She took me on tour, which was also a big learning experience. She’s very generous, introducing me to all the people I would never have met.”
Generous? Not so, says Geyer, whose new album is due for release in September. “Everyone says to me I was so generous and kind, and I just find that extraordinary. Having Ella on the show wasn’t me being generous. It was me thinking, ‘Am I clever, finding this great girl and putting her
on the show and making it even better?’ So it was kind of selfish.”
Geyer remembers their first meeting. “I loved her outfit and she reminded me, with her black ladder-torn stockings, of me at that age.
“What struck me about Ella was she’s not dissimilar to me as a young girl. She is a little bit stubborn and I thought, ‘There goes me again’. And, if anything, my thought was, ‘Oh you poor little sap. Because I know what’s ahead of you because of your youth and talent’.”
She is encouraged by Thompson’s passion for music but tells her she has a long way to go before she too is “a difficult woman,” as Paul Kelly described Geyer in his song of the same name.
Geyer had no such elder figure to guide her at that age. “I had nobody like me,” Geyer says, “and I wish I had a me.”
The Age, 14th of July 2007
Larry Schwartz Writer 