WAX Lyrical, the Australian Songwriters Association and CanberraWAX
A history of Australia's WAX Lyrical songwriting network and the Canberra songwriting community
CanberraWAX is a community hub for original songwriters and songwriters' activities in Canberra and the ACT. It brings together songwriters, listeners, performers, events, songwriting groups and local music projects and part of the Australian Songwriters Association’s (ASA) and its long-running WAX Lyrical network.
The Australian Songwriters Association
The history of WAX Lyrical begins with the Australian Songwriters Association (ASA), Australia's long-established national organisation dedicated specifically to supporting songwriters and original songwriting.
The ASA was founded in Melbourne in August 1979 by Tom Louch and Rudy Brandsma, who recognised the need for an organisation that could bring Australian songwriters together. The organisation's stated aims included celebrating songwriting, encouraging developing Australian songwriters, creating performance opportunities, supporting professional development, enabling songwriters to exchange ideas and information, and helping connect songwriters with the established music industry.
Those aims remain remarkably relevant to the WAX Lyrical tradition.
Rather than being centred only on established recording artists, the ASA has historically provided opportunities for songwriters at different stages of their development. Its membership and activities have encompassed a wide range of musical styles and experience levels, from developing amateur songwriters through to experienced and published writers.
One of the ways the ASA has carried this mission into local communities is through its network of WAX Lyrical events.
What is WAX Lyrical?
WAX Lyrical developed as the ASA's regional performance and songwriter gathering network.
The format has varied between locations and over time, but the central idea has remained consistent: provide songwriters with somewhere to perform original songs, hear other writers, meet fellow songwriters and develop their work in front of a supportive audience.
ASA publications have described WAX Lyrical events as open-mic events operated by the organisation's Regional Coordinators. By the early 2010s, ASA publications were already listing WAX Lyrical nights being run by Regional Coordinators in different parts of Australia.
The regional model was important.
Rather than requiring every songwriter in Australia to travel to a central national event, the ASA established a network of local songwriting communities. Regional Coordinators worked with venues and local songwriters to create regular opportunities for original music.
Over time, WAX Lyrical events appeared across a range of cities and town centres including:
Perth
Ballarat and the Goldfields
Adelaide
Toowoomba
WAX Lyrical became a network. Visit the ASA’s event page to see a calendar of upcoming WAX Lyrical Events across Australia.
That network could move between venues, cities and regional communities while retaining a common identity and purpose.
A national network rather than a single event
The regional nature of WAX Lyrical is one of the most important parts of its history.
ASA's publications repeatedly documented Regional Coordinators establishing, moving, expanding and adapting WAX Lyrical events in their own communities.
For example, in Western Australia, Mike Cardy incorporated ASA WAX Lyrical into the established Tunesmiths Café songwriting community in Perth. The Tunesmiths group had grown from a desire to create a regular venue where songwriters could perform their songs, develop their skills, interact with other writers and discuss songwriting.
In Sydney, WAX Lyrical operated through venues including the Bald Faced Stag Hotel in Leichhardt, with Regional Coordinator Mark Ellis running regular songwriter open-mic nights.
In regional Queensland, ASA Coordinators established WAX Lyrical events in places such as Toowoomba and Dalby.
In Tasmania, the WAX Lyrical model has similarly been adapted to local circumstances. More recently, Regional Coordinator Katherine Bright developed regular events at the Fern Tree Tavern and extended opportunities into other parts of the state, including an additional event in north-east Tasmania. ASA's account of her work describes the purpose explicitly in terms of creating opportunities for songwriters and helping new artists obtain performance experience.
This flexibility is part of what allowed WAX Lyrical to spread.
The event did not require every community to look identical. The underlying purpose could be retained while the local coordinator shaped the event around the available venue, musicians and audience.
WAX Lyrical and the development of local songwriting communities
The historical significance of WAX Lyrical is therefore larger than the individual events themselves.
A recurring songwriter gathering creates something that an ordinary concert does not necessarily provide: a community of people who write songs.
Songwriters can return month after month.
They can hear unfinished ideas become finished songs.
They can meet writers at different stages of their development.
They can form collaborations.
They can discover local performers.
They can develop confidence performing original material.
And they can become part of a network that exists independently of any single artist or venue.
That community-building function has remained central to the ASA's wider mission. The ASA describes its membership benefits as including contact with other songwriters, opportunities for collaboration and networking, live performance opportunities and a nationwide network of WAX Lyrical events.
WAX Lyrical during COVID-19
The history of WAX Lyrical also includes an unusual chapter during the COVID-19 pandemic.
When many physical venues could no longer operate normally, ASA Regional Coordinators began experimenting with online WAX Lyrical sessions.
The ASA's 2020 publications document virtual WAX Lyricals from a number of regions. In Canberra, Ana Key held an online WAX Lyrical on 19 April 2020, featuring Canberra-area songwriters including Lachlan Irvine and Stephen Sarre.
The national organisation also established an online WAX Lyrical format. In September 2021, ASA reported its first national online WAX Lyrical via Zoom, with around 45 people attending and 34 original songs performed by songwriters from Australia and beyond. The event was described as the inaugural National Wax Lyrical Night.
The transition online demonstrated something important about the WAX Lyrical network: its identity was not dependent on one particular room.
The purpose was the connection between songwriters.
When physical gatherings became possible again, regional WAX Lyricals began reopening.
WAX Lyrical in Canberra and the ACT
The Canberra story forms part of this broader national history.
The ASA's historical records show that the ACT has had an established connection with the organisation's regional songwriting network for many years.
In the mid-2010s, Kieran Roberts was listed by the ASA as its Canberra ACT Regional Coordinator. The ASA's publications from this period identify Canberra as part of the organisation's national Regional Coordinator network.
The Canberra connection is also visible in the ASA's songwriting history more broadly. ACT songwriters have appeared prominently in ASA competitions and awards, including Kieran Roberts, who was a joint winner of the Lyrics Category in the 2018 Australian Songwriting Contest.
By 2019, the ASA's national magazine was documenting a Canberra ACT WAX Lyrical at the Irish Club on 24 March 2019, alongside WAX Lyricals being held in Yarra Valley, Dalby, Northern Rivers, Newcastle, Sunshine Coast, Cairns, Central Coast and Sydney.
The Canberra WAX Lyrical community through 2020 and 2021
The Canberra WAX Lyrical community continued through the disruption of the pandemic.
As noted above, Ana Key represented the ASA in Canberra and held an online WAX Lyrical in April 2020. The ASA subsequently recognised her as its 2020 Regional Coordinator of the Year, specifically noting her work representing the organisation in Canberra throughout that difficult year.
When physical events began returning, Canberra WAX Lyrical was among them.
ASA's late-2020 magazine documents a Canberra WAX Lyrical at The Boardwalk on 22 November 2020, alongside WAX Lyricals reopening in Newcastle, Hobart, Northern Rivers, Sunbury, Cairns and Ballarat/Goldfields.
The following year, ASA records continued to list Canberra WAX Lyrical activity, including a Canberra event at the Boardwalk Bar in February 2021 and an online Canberra WAX Lyrical in October 2021.
Ian Paulin and the Canberra WAX Lyrical tradition
A more recent figure in the more recent Canberra chapter is current ASA’s ACT Regional Coordinator Ian Paulin.
Ian has a long association with the Australian Songwriters Association. The ASA's historical records list Ian Paulin as the 1990 APRA/ASA Australian Songwriter of the Year.
He subsequently became deeply involved in Canberra's songwriting community.
His own music history extends across performance, songwriting, community work and arts activity, while his Canberra work has included developing opportunities for local original songwriters.
WAX Lyrical at Smith's Alternative
In its current form, Canberra's WAX Lyrical community has found a regular home at Smith's Alternative in the Canberra CBD.
The WAX Lyrical tradition is fundamentally about original songwriting, rather than a particular genre.
Folk, country, rock, pop, blues, experimental music, spoken-word-influenced songwriting and everything between can sit within the same songwriting community.
CanberraWAX is the local community expression and connecting hub around this wider songwriting tradition.
The name CanberraWAX brings together two ideas:
Canberra — the local community, artists, venues, audiences and songwriting activity of the ACT.
WAX — the Australian Songwriters Association WAX Lyrical tradition and the songwriter community that has developed around it.
A connecting hub for Canberra songwriters
While the WAX Lyrical Song Circle remains an important part of CanberraWAX, the community extends beyond the monthly gathering itself.
CanberraWAX connects songwriters through:
collaborations
songwriting projects
songwriter news and interviews
connections with venues and other Canberra music organisations
opportunities for emerging and established songwriters to meet
This means CanberraWAX functions as both a community gathering point and a connecting hub.
A songwriter may first encounter WAX at a Song Circle.
Another may discover a local songwriter through a CanberraWAX profile.
Someone else may come across a CanberraWAX playlist, event or showcase concert.
Connecting Canberra's wider songwriting community
CanberraWAX is also not intended to exist in isolation from the rest of Canberra's music community.
Canberra has a wide range of songwriters, performers, venues, music organisations, workshops, showcases, recording projects and community initiatives.
A healthy songwriting community benefits from these different parts working alongside one another.
CanberraWAX therefore aims to connect, collaborate with, promote and support other organisations and groups that share an interest in original music and songwriting.
That may mean directing audiences towards another songwriter's concert, promoting a local release, connecting artists with a relevant workshop, highlighting another songwriting group, sharing opportunities, or helping listeners discover music beyond the WAX Song Circle itself.
The objective is simple:
more connections between Canberra songwriters, more opportunities to hear original music, and a stronger local audience for the people who make it.
The Canberra songwriting community today
Today, CanberraWAX continues the basic principle that has underpinned the ASA's work for decades:
songwriters need somewhere to meet, perform, listen, learn, collaborate and belong.
The monthly WAX Song Circle provides one physical meeting point.
The wider CanberraWAX network provides many more connections around it.
Songwriters can be discovered through the Canberra Songwriters Directory, heard through local playlists, encountered at feature concerts, followed through their individual profiles, discovered through WAX events and supported through the wider Canberra music community.
For listeners, CanberraWAX provides a way into Canberra's original music scene.
For songwriters, it provides a way into a community.
For the Canberra songwriting community as a whole, it provides a place where those connections can be recorded, shared and strengthened.
Been writing over 50 years, enjoy lots of variety, need to get stuff out of my head to preserve a semblance of sanity.