Just before I head overseas to the land of my ancestors in Scotland and Ireland, I was lucky enough to stumble into an Irish music session in Brisbane.

The Irish accents flew thick and fast, to the accompaniment of the bodran, Eilean pipes, tin whistle and fiddle.

Jack O’Leary is one of the musicians who makes this weekly quest to reconnect with his homeland.

He tells us on Streets of Your Town, how Irish music and Australian culture have intertwined, to the degree that you can find a similar Irish music session, at most cities and towns throughout Australia.

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It’s not often we get an Australian jazz singer legend on Streets of Your Town, but we are lucky enough to enjoy that on today’s episode.

Vince Jones is well known not only in this country but throughout the world as one of Australia’s most renowned jazz musicians.

He tells us how the love of his craft started young, in the lively jazz surrounds of Scotland.

And after half a century of performing, and a lifetime of loving music, Vince is gladly still on the road, performing and creating his distinctly Australian take on jazz music.

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For Paralympian athlete Gerrard Gosens, taking on the challenge of swimming across the English Channel is more than just a physical one.

It’s also mental, as the blind swimmer confronts the elements and conditions of the day and then figures out how to overcome them.

Gerrard tells us on Streets of Your Town podcast how he is well into an intense training regimen preparing for his attempted channel crossing in August - swimming from the UK to France in his quest to become the first blind person to do so.

It’s a big leap from his previous sport of running - having represented Australia in long distance running in three Paralympic Games and three IPC World Athletic Championships from 1996 to 2011, as well as the Paratriathlon at Tokyo 2022.

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Some people when they visit Australia, simply can’t stop themselves from coming back time and time again.

So it is for Irish performer Ciaran Olohan, who is bringing his show The World of Musicals in Concert back to Australia for the fourth time.

And he’s not just taking it on the well worn route to the capital cities, Ciaran and his crew are doing the big lap of Australia, taking their show that has graced stages across the globe to some of Australia’s most off the beaten track locations as well.

Ciaran tells us on Streets of Your Town, how music has always been a part of his life from his childhood in County Wicklow to today with a career taking him to the US, Canada, Germany, Norway, Spain and China. And he ponders how much Irish music and Australian musical traditions have in common.

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In this episode of Streets of Your Town Elise McCann gives us insights into her creative process, particularly of late in the musical adaptation of Groundhog Day which had a season in Melbourne.

Elise admits that despite her success as a musicals performer, like anyone, there are days that get the better of her, and that’s how she decided to create the stress and motivation app Hey Lemonade.

Together with her fellow performer friend Lucy Durack they hope to turn around people’s woes with the Hey Lemonade app that they designed and built.

As Elise explains, the app offers three-minute talks on various topics, written by a team of writers and psychologists, and delivered by a diverse range of well known voices from the entertainment industry. A bit like a portable pick me up in your pocket.

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Broken Hill-born country singer-songwriter Raechel Whitchurch spent most of her childhood travelling in her family's country music band, before establishing herself as one of Aussie music’s most recognisable country artists.

But her path to songwriting was far from guaranteed. In fact, it wasn't until her family saw Kasey Chambers’ family group The Dead Ringer Band perform in Broken Hill that country music became a family career. Her Dad thought it would be a great way to make a living, so they all became self-taught musicians.

After several local talent quests, the Lee family packed their lives into a caravan and hit the road on two laps of Australia and a six-month stint in Arnhem Land performing in their travelling country family band, The Lees. Raechel, the eldest, was aged only 12, but it’s a lifestyle she has taken on as her own into adulthood with her husband Ben and three children on the road as well.

And as Raechel tells us on Streets of Your Town, her songs don’t flinch from telling the hardships as well as the fun times of life in rural and remote Australia.

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New Meanjin/Brisbane band Yirinda is widening the scope of Indigenous music with a unique take blending Aboriginal language and songs with classical genres.

Yirinda combines ancient Aboriginal language performed by Butchulla songman Fred Leone with dramatic soundscapes from Samuel Pankhurst, accompanied by a string quartet, to invoke thousands of generations of story and culture through music.

The band has just released its debut album on vinyl, CD and digital following on from their performance debut at last year’s Brisbane Festival, before going on to play at the Woodford Folk Festival over New Years.

Fred and Samuel tell Streets of Your Town about their unique evocative sound evolved, and their excitement taking Yirinda on the road with a tour up Australia’s east coast, finishing in Cairns on May 31.

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There’s only two people who have made it onto Streets of Your Town podcast more than once. And journo and author extraordinaire Trent Dalton is one of them.

With the Netflix series adaptation of his first breakthrough novel Boy Swallows Universe now number one in Australia and top ten in the US, it’s time to revisit this Brisbane born and bred talent, whose gritty but hopeful representations of the wrong side of town in his novels have thrust beloved Brissie icons such as the Story Bridge onto the worldwide map.

He knows this underworld because he grew up in it, and Trent tells us on Streets of Your Town how he never could have envisioned as a young child how a story he wrote could one day make it onto screens around the country and around the globe.

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