XPress Mag, 17 Sept 1998

Joy Howard has been looking forward to this week for a hell of a long time.

The girl from Bicton left Perth soon after finishing at John Curtin High and despite having carved out a successful career on the East Coast, this week's visit will be the first time she's performed in her home town in over 15 years.

After a short stint in local band Billy Orphan's Tears (along with future Manikins member Bradley Clark) Joy, together with her sisters Sue and Lynn, headed for the bright lights of Sydney. There, as the Howard Sisters, they provided live and studio harmony vocals for the likes of the Hoodoo Gurus, the Saints and Paul Kelly.

The older siblings eventually drifted back to Perth, Joy staying on to form the highly respected Whipper Snappers with friend Annette Crowe. They released a handful of sharp singles and the successful EP, See My Finger, See My Thumb, before Howard decided to move on.

Joy's place in the Snappers was taken by Lara Goodridge, nowadays her partner in the duo JOY & LARA. "She was my replacement," Howard told Off The Air last week. "Iwent and saw her on the first night - to see what the new girl was like - and she was absolutely fantastic. I was really, really impressed."

The pair actually met later when Joy, while back at Uni, took on a gig as a backing singer with David Mason-Cox & the Wild Armadillos. As it turned out Lara was the other harmony singer. "Our voices just clicked immediately," says Howard, "and we've become really close friends as well."

Earlier this year JOY & LARA released their debut album 'These Strange Days', a tasty collection of melodic songs including a couple of recently written ones, Papa Luigi's and Western Wine, that somewhat surprisingly reveal Howard's WA roots.

"I guess they just reflect my strong feelings towards Perth these days," says the writer. "It's funny. When you leave as a teenager it's kind of the last place you want to be and coming to Sydney was so exciting and the music scene was really happening. For many years I wasn't really interested in returning to Perth, but at some point in time I started going back more regularly and began to really appreciate the lifestyle. And it does have a strong musical and arts culture over there as well, especially in Fremantle."

Another song, Emily, is directed to the Indigo Girls' Emily Saliers, expressing gratitude to her for unknowingly providing some occasionally needed inspiration. The outstanding US duo are obviously a prime influence ("Closer to Fine was probably the first song we learned together," says Joy) for their Aussie counterparts.

This week JOY & LARA will be opening shows in Perth and Bunbury for Irish crooner Daniel O'Donnell, as well as doing the support at Friday's album launch for the Sensitive New Age Cowpersons at the Fly By Night. Then on Saturday, September 19 they headline their own gig, also at the Fly.

"We play as a duo. Even though the album has been augmented with a band we haven't yet felt the need to do that live. I mean, we were just a duo before the recording and we're happy to continue that way."

Listening to the record it's easy to hear why. The real strength in the pair's music is in the combination of the two voices and the beautiful melodies they come up with. "I think that's true. The starkness of just the two of you on stage, just featuring two voices, has its own strengths. It has a different strength to an entire band."

As well as her vocal prowess, Lara Goodridge is a talented, classically trained musician. "She's a brilliant violinist," enthuses Howard. "In the live show it's primarily me on acoustic guitar and Lara on violin, although she plays acoustic guitar as well on a few songs and we have some percussiona and stuff too."

As an arranger Lara contributed strings to the Whitlams album, Eternal Nightcap, and has her own performing string quartet, Fourplay.

"Fourplay are huge over here" says Howard. "They're like... a phenomenon. They're packing out venues wherever they go in Sydney, Melbourne and Adelaide because their CD has been really, really plugged on Triple J for most of this year. They all come from the Australian Youth Orchestra and the like, so they're really brilliant, young, classically trained musicians. They play Metallica and Nirvana and stuff like that and they do it fantastically. Their arrangements are really, really clever. They're basically a string quartet with a rock attitude, you know, they use distortion pedals and all that."

As if that's not enough, Joy and Lara are also members of another highly regarded Sydney band called Peccadillo, laying down their pristine harmonies behind lead singer and songwriter Greta Gertler. The band's debut album, Little Sins, came out late last year.

So, when are they going to find the time for another JOY & LARA record?

"We were just talking about that the other day. We've got enough new originals for another record but I think we'll still be working this album up until the end of the year and then we'll look at recording a follow up.We did this one completely independently and have really enjoyed that grass roots process. It's been really nice making all the contacts and getting all the direct feedback from handling the whole thing yourself, but there are limitations on how far you can go without the 'big guns' behind you. We might look around for a label in the future but this time we wanted to have all the control, to make all the decisions in the recording and packaging. It was a total indulgence and a complete labour of love as far as we were concerned."

If you enjoy good harmony singing, if you like the Indigo Girls, the Beatles or the Everley Brothers, or maybe remember Club Hoy, I'd be very surprised if you don't enjoy JOY & LARA's music.

Catch 'em while you can.

Steve Gordon

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Fremantle Herald, June 1998

Those strange days

by LES EVERETT

BICTON girl Joy Howard is a veteran of the volatile 1980s music scene in Perth. When she spoke to the Herald recently she revived memories of some of the great bands - Mannikins, Victims, Scientists.

She was a member of Billy Orphan's Tears, a band that played a dozen or so shows before ending eighties style with a punch up. Like many of her contemporaries Howard headed east: " I've seen the growth (in bands) and been part of the mass exodus (that takes place every few years)" she said, "I suppose we just got tired of playing in the same three venues."

Now based in Sydney, Howard has contributed harmonies to acts including The Saints, Hoodoo Gurus and Paul Kelly, was part of the pop group The Whipper Snappers and provided a version of "Stairway to Heaven" on Andrew Denton's ABC TV series "The Money or the Gun".

Howard's latest project has been as half of the duo Joy & Lara who recently released their debut CD "These Strange Days". Included on the CD is the song "Papa Luigi's" which recalls Howard's days as a student at John Curtin Senior High School and also the joy of returning home:

"Nowadays trying to capture some truth, I go back to Fremantle chasing my youth, through the wild, windy streets where I let my hair down, and back to Ciccerello's waving hellos to one and all, along the esplanade amid the new facades I hear the call back to Papa Luigi's..."

The Lara of the pair is Lara Goodridge whose credits include string arrangements for the Whitlams album "Eternal Nightcap".

Joy & Lara recently supported Bruce Cockburn on the east coast: "It was sensational and a privilege," but Howard says she has a real ambition to play in Fremantle, "That would be a wonderful thing."

"These Strange Days" by Joy & Lara is an extremely impressive independent release - ask for it at Mills.