WHOOPEE BLUES

SYNOPSIS

Brothers Mic & Jim Conway have been playing music since school days, when they  started the Jellybean Jug Band together, which subsequently morphed into the Captain Matchbox Whoopee Band. In the early 1970s Captain Matchbox were a tearaway  success with My Canary Has Circles Under His Eyes and Fats Waller classics and  comical tunes of their own, like Wangaratta Wahine.

  Mic loves visual entertainment and vaudeville, and creating instruments out of anything  to hand. He has been in numerous band line-ups over the last 40 years, has performed  many hundreds of children’s shows, and then formed the National Junk Band which  lasted for 20 years (until COVID). All of these bands demonstrate his unique vision  of performance, circus and vaudeville.

  Jim on the other hand is a natural musician and a blues one at that. He found his  instrument early on in Captain Matchbox with the harmonica, proceeding to become  one of Australia’s foremost blues harp players, playing with the likes of Brownie  McGhee as well as long-term bands The Backsliders and Jim Conway’s Big Wheel.

  At the age of 30 Jim was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis (MS), and this has  gradually progressed over the last 40 years to the point where Jim is now confined  to a wheelchair and can no longer play harmonica.

  It has been said of them that the Conway brothers make sibling rivalry an art form,  but they are also very close.  Although their musical paths diverged for a while they have remained firmly side by side throughout the years in their personal lives.

Trailer: https://vimeo.com/1042895050?share=copy#t=0

Premiering at 2025 Antenna Documentary Film Festival, Australia

CREATIVE TEAM 

Producer/ Director – Fiona Cochrane

Editor – Sioux Currie

Cinematographer –Mark Street

Sound – David Muir, Mark Street, Keith Thomas.

Music – Jim and Mic Conway in one band or another

To be distributed by Ronin Films