Side by side, facing the same way, Maggie and Elsie Rigby of The Maes tackle a new album, self-management, and a release festival.

Maggie and Elsie Rigby are the make up of modern folk front The Maes.

The impressive sibling duo, along with their band, have been at the forefront of folk music in Australia, receiving two Music Victoria Folk Album of the Year Awards, were finalists in the Vanda and Young songwriting competition, and have sold out headline shows around the country and overseas. They have played festivals including Telluride Bluegrass Festival (USA), Edmonton Folk Festival (Canada), Orkney Folk Festival (UK) and Woodford Folk Festival (AU) and supported the likes of Troy Cassar-Daley and Lisa Mitchell.

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They know their songwriting style, they know their sound, and they know what they want out of their music career. That’s why for their new album, Abreast, as released Friday 18 July, the two took on the numerous hat-wearing roles of singer-songwriter, and manager.

“It became clear that this was meant to be the rebirth of our project – we’re just going to do this the way it works for us. That’s been the way we managed the album and the way we’ve managed the project, and it’s given us an intentionality around the whole thing and an understanding, a cognisance of how everything works. It’s been really hard, hard work – we’ve been working really hard on this – I think we’ve done a great job,” explains Elsie Rigby.

Maggie adds, “It’s trying to ground ourselves in community, and ground ourselves in what we know how to do, and ground ourselves in the music we love playing, and try and do the best that we can at all of the rest. Being able to do it on our own terms and at our own pace has been really rewarding for this project.”

Driving the community focus, The Maes embedded their audience and their fellow musicians in the delivery of Abreast. In addition to a whopping 21 date tour to celebrate, Abreast was launched as a one-day festival event, fondly titled Abreastival. Held in the township of Castlemaine, the concert saw The Maes take the stage with supporting sets from Jem Cassar-Daley, Jacob Diamond and Eils and the Drip. 

 

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“It was a vision that I had around trying to bring the experience of making an album to life. Releasing an album on the internet feels like throwing your creative soul over a cliff and into a void and it’s not, that’s not what it is. I wanted to find a way to reimagine and reinvest the experience of releasing an album and making sure we’re flinging it out into a soft landing place of people, and creating a sense of fun and playfulness and occasion, “ explains Maggie.

“So much work goes into it, three years of different kinds of work and investment and thought and its such an insulated process and finally other people get to hear it and you throw open the doors of three years of your life and I just wanted to make that feel really in person and in a space and real life.”

Centred in central Victoria, Castlemaine is just one of the regional towns hosting The Maes between now and December. In Victoria, Upwey, Rainbow, Yackandandah, Red Hill, Anglesea and Port Fairy (for the unmissable Port Fairy Folk Festival), along with a metropolitan stop in Melbourne make the show cut, with regional audiences fuelling the tour tank.   

“Our parents used to be in a band when we were young kids and they would play a lot of regional church halls with an afternoon show and an afternoon tea and passionfruit sponge – that kind of vibe. I think it’s a really traditional folk thing to do, and we love doing it,” laughs Maggie.

 

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It’s a great way to honour an album that was birthed in the central Victorian town of Mollongghip. As engineered by Josh Barber, mixed by Tom Iansek, and with Isaac Gunnoo and Kyrie Anderson rounding out the core band, Abreast features a family of guests including Darrell Scott, Matt Dixon, Gus Rigby, Moses Carr, and a choir of Rowena Wise, Didirri, John Flanagan, Patrick Pheasant, Bec Rigby, and Holly McNamara. Whilst a village fostered the creation of Abreast, the origin of the songs always begins the same – with Maggie and Elsie; the title encompassing the dynamic.

“Maggie and I both write songs separately and then bring them together and present them to the band and the word ‘abreast’ captures that really well. We were thinking about this word ‘abreast’ – it had been floating around in the project for a while. It felt right and then we looked up what it really meant, the definition in a dictionary read “side by side looking the same way” and that just captured what this album is – it’s us coming back together as a band, sharing that musical space, those two voices, and the space in between,” explains Elsie.

Abreast from The Maes is out now as the Rigby siblings’ own independent offering. You can see them play it live on their current national tour.

The duo will be playing Anglesea Sound Doctor on Saturday 15 November. More details and ticketing can be found here.