Kris Mizzi on finding beauty in hardship through songwriting
Kris Mizzi is a troubadour and quintessentially Australian singer songwriter, who knew his calling for musical storytelling from an early age.
I was lucky enough to hear him play a couple of sets of his Australian folklore at the Woodford Folk Festival and wanted to share his talents with you, my wonderful Substack supporters and listeners of Streets of Your Town.
“Coming to Woodford has given me a good chance to meet a lot of people, take a lot of names down and just try and build the audience and get in front of new people up here,” Kris said.
“I love it up here. I really do. And they’re proper folkies. It’s really great.
“I have a similar sound to the contemporary folkies from the seventies. I guess I am a folkie storytelling with songs, just me and my guitar.”
It was Kris’s first Woodford Folk Festival, and while the heat of this Queensland summer was a shock to the Victorian born and bred raconteur, he loved having the blank canvas of a rural woodland as the backdrop for his songs of struggle and the country characters he grew up with in Moe.
“Yep, I’m definitely a Gippsland boy, and I would say that most of my work is influenced by the stories that I grew up with,” he said.
“I was very lucky to grow up in that town where there was a real strong sense of community. Moe had its own very unique take on that.
“We did look after each other, but it was a lot of tough love too.
“But I can tell you that most of my songs come from their stories…Stories of people that I’ve met along the way and my family and my friends.”
He tells us on Streets of Your Town how his songwriting is rooted in finding the beauty in the hardships we all go through.
“Someone actually did pull me up on it this week. I usually make a joke, has anyone heard of Moe? And has anyone heard anything good about it?,” he said.
“And everyone usually laughs. But actually, I’m going to start the year out and not say that anymore because I think there’s plenty of good things about it, and they’ve had a rough time as it is, and it’s been really good to me.
“The beauty of these songs and stories that we share with each other does come from those hardships, and some of those things that people go through. It’s really easy to jump on board with the negative stuff, but to find the beauty is…that’s the challenge and that’s where the joy is right?”
Kris’s songs open a window to the beauty in everyday events. The friend encouraging an old friend who’s hit hard times to ring his mum, the dad not allowed to be part of family life with his girlfriend and baby.
“What I try to do with the stories is not necessarily take a side, just paint the picture. And people can just decide for themselves,” he said.
Kris has recently finished an album in Nashville that should be released this year, as well as toured through Ireland and Scotland.
That tour gave him confidence, and he’s loving hitting the road back in Australia, knowing his stories have resonance wherever he goes.
“I’ve been writing songs since I was about, I don’t know, 12 years old, just mucking around with it. I just sort of got the bug,” he said.
“My mum and all her friends used to gather at our place every Friday night, have pre-drinks before they went out dancing, and while they were all getting ready, I would write songs about them all and entertain them all, just dancing on the kitchen table. So it all started there, really. I’m just a show off and I love making up stories and writing songs.
“I think the best way to do it is to come from the heart space and realise that it’s one thing to write your stories down for yourself, but when you’re involving an audience, try and include them in how they hear the story. If people can’t make the connection to their life, then it sort of just falls short.
“They’ve got to be able to superimpose their stories into the song I think, that’s where it really connects.
“We are coming into a time where we are trying to include all races, all creeds, all colours, all people of all over the world, which is a wonderful thing. But now more than ever, I feel like there isn’t too much difference between us.”
Kris has a website where you can join his mailing list and is also on Instagram, Spotify and Bandcamp. He’s urged all Streets of Your Towners to look at his website gig guide to see where he’s going to play next and hit him up for a house concert for you and a few mates if you like his music!
Thank you my ever supportive Streets of Your Towners for keeping me and Mildred the Cantankerous Kombi on the road and getting these stories that will now be kept in the State Library of Queensland collection for generations to come. As one of the librarians so kindly told me when I asked her why they bought the rights, she said that I had captured stories of Queenslanders that in a hundred years no-one would remember—what it was like to be a refugee, to be a struggling actor, or to trek into the Woodford Folk Festival. You can see how to access the State Library collection at the bottom of this previous newsletter!
So thank you all for making this possible!
Please consider taking a paid subscription to Streets of Your Town if you are as passionate about telling these stories in this age of AI as I am.
In an era when we are all craving human connection and it seems to be harder to find, you know you can listen to humans talking to humans—right here.
Love yas!
Nance