Seriously silly sausages
Sydney Morning Herald
Friday March 12, 2010
KRANSKY SISTERS Blue Mountains Music Festival, Katoomba, today to Sunday, 1800 651 322, $45-$175.The clean-living Kransky Sisters eschew fame's perks, writes John Shand. There is an urban myth that the Kransky Sisters - Mourne, Eve and Dawn - are really Annie Lee, Christine Johnston and Carolyn Johns in weird disguises. Of course, it's nonsense. Mourne, the prim, polite, oldest sibling in the darkly quirky music group, explains that Annie is "a sort of friend who pops in unexpectedly - sometimes even when I'm in the bath!"We speak when the Kranskys are at the Adelaide Fringe Festival - which they had assumed was a hairdressers' convention - and Mourne complains bitterly about the cost of haircuts these days."Don't tell anybody," she entreats, "but while I personally go to the hairdresser, I cut Eve's and Dawn's hair myself. It saves money."The seeds of the sisters' unhappy Queensland childhood were sown when their "Polish father and English mother met and did the business," Mourne explains, with evident distaste. Dawn, an apparently traumatised afterthought, has been mute since birth.Asked if there is any truth to the rumour that Dawn murdered her predecessor in the group, Arva, in order to claim the coveted tuba-player's job, Mourne is dismissive. Although Arva routinely stole Dawn's food and stamped on her toes, it was actually Arva's decision to join a military marching band that obliged the sisters to turn to Dawn. It was just fortuitous that their family happened to contain two tuba-playing sisters.The current repertoire runs from the Bee Gees to Grace Jones, from AC/DC to Devo. Mourne plays a primitive keyboard, kitchen pot and guitar, Eve adding tambourine, toilet brush and musical saw. The latter instrument has resulted in sporadic bloodshed - a familiar occurrence for sisters who were punished as children by having their ankles scraped with a cheese grater.The Kranskys go everywhere - even to success at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe - in their beloved Morris Major. How will this ancient vehicle cope with the climb to the Blue Mountains Music Festival, I ask. "Dawn will get out and push if it's too steep," Mourne replies.They may attend other performances at the festival "as long as they're not on too late", says Mourne, with an eye to preparing the next morning's porridge. If they do sneak out, they will find a bill brimming with such talents as Vince Jones, Mikelangelo and the Black Sea Gentlemen and Americans Nanci Griffith and Chris Smither. They may even see Annie, Christine and Carolyn.
© 2010 Sydney Morning Herald
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