Tim Ross (right) and Kit Warhurst will be in Kiama with their music comedy show Motel. Photo: Derek Swalwell.
Did your childhood family holidays centre on the iconic Aussie motel, with its exposed interior brown brickwork, thick carpet, multicoloured bedspreads and the twin pack of biscuits?
Well, TV and radio personality, comedian and “design nerd” Tim Ross and musician and composer Kit Warhurst are road-tripping down the east coast, performing their live show Motel from old motels … and restored houses and community spaces.
It’s not the first time the two best friends have ditched the usual theatres and sought out architecturally significant buildings and homes to perform in.
“We wrote a song called Motel, which was inspired from seeing my kids jumping up and down on the bed in a funny old motel in Dubbo, and it made me think it’s exactly how I jumped up and down on the bed as a kid,” Ross said.
“There was a lovely and comforting feeling from that.
“In a world full of marvellous electronics and devices, some simple things from the past can still have the same resonance.
“We started doing that song, and then people really loved it.”
Having always performed in architecturally interesting places and with Ross having written architecture books and hosted TV shows such as ABC TV’s Streets Of Your Town, the pair decided to start performing in motels and holiday houses in 2019.
“It seems to be connecting with people now more than ever, which is interesting,” Ross said.
In the Illawarra, three shows will be staged at Kiama’s Radford House, which is usually not accessible to the public.
“A friend of mine was the architect and we’d done a different show at his place and he said, ‘Look, my client has got this great 1960s house and it’s kind of fabulous’,” Ross said.
After looking at photos, Ross said it gave him “all the feels”.
“My perfect world was to do all these shows in old-school motels, but so few of them have places where we can perform,” he said.
“One of the early ones to trial the show, we were actually doing it in a motel room where we pulled out all the beds and put chairs in. I think there was only 25 people.
“Our backstage was the bathroom. Then someone wanted to use the bathroom, so we had to get out of our backstage.”
At Radford House, they will perform in the lounge room, describing the event as “like a house party”.
He said the show was in a couple of parts, including stories about old-school Australian holidays, stories through song, and a modern history of Australian motels and “some of those relatable elements of holidays from the past”.
“Anyone who’s ever been in the back seat of the car with their mum and dad when it’s 40 degrees without air conditioning can certainly find something in common with the content of this show,” he said.
“I might be talking about my family holiday, but it might sound a lot like yours.”
In fact, there are some iconic images that Ross instantly thinks of when it comes to motels from his childhood.
“The ones that I loved were the 1970s motels and a lot of them had brown exposed bricks,” he said.
“Being a kid and sleeping on a single bed next to the wall and rubbing your face against the scratching bricks, people always whinge about that.
“I, of course, find a warm, comforting nostalgia in the idea of scratching walls.
“There’s the individual cakes of soap and the piece of paper superfluously put over the lid of the toilets.”
While every venue was different, he’d particularly loved a 1960s community hall in Queensland, which was run down but caught the attention of an architect who recognised its “good bones”, location and opportunity to serve its community more.
He said the community got together and restored it.
“You can do shows in those sorts of halls and you can bring the ticket price down, which makes it a lot more accessible for everyone,” he said.
Ross said he and Warhurst had been friends since their first year of university in the ’90s, living together with friends and, in their early 20s, performing in a comedy band together.
He said since then, outside their personal projects, they had always done some type of musical comedy act together.
Warhurst, brother of TV and radio personality Myf Warhurst, is known for performing in pop group The Bowers and rock band Rocket Science, and composing soundtracks for TV shows Rosehaven, Fisk and The Merrick and Rosso Show.
Ross encouraged people to come along to the show to get a hit of architecture, gain access to a beautifully renovated and restored ’60s home that they normally couldn’t access, to have a drink and make new friends.
“Then, ultimately, you have a great show where you’re going to have a laugh, you might be moved a little bit, and you certainly learn something in a funny and very accessible way,” he said.
“We’re looking forward to coming along and we’ll be staying in town in one of the motels with two little beds side by side like Bert and Ernie.”
Book tickets now for Motel on 21 September at 3:30 pm and 6 pm and 22 September at 1 pm at Radford House, Kiama.
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