Well it has been a long time in the making. One night in 2015 or 2016, at the end of another ridiculously long gig at a local hotspot, David asked me, “Do you think you could sing for eight hours?” To which I responded, “If you mean eight hours straight, with no breaks, then no I don’t think so.” “What about six hours?” he replied. With some hesitation, I said, “Yeah, probably. Why do you ask?” I recall him shrugging his shoulders and saying something like, “Just curious.” But it stuck in my head. A few years later I asked David if he remembered that conversation. Of course he did, but there was no further clarity on what he’d been thinking at the time and so I was left to ruminate.

Fast forward to a Sunday afternoon in September 2024. David was walking past a venue where I happened to be performing. He stopped to listen to “just a few songs”. Several hours later when I finished my set, David was still there so we had a bit of a chat over a glass of red, or two. My curiosity finally got the better of me and I once again raised the subject of the six-hour set from all those years earlier. I’d always wondered if, maybe, he’d intended to have me perform a marathon set at Mona, with minimal or no breaks. A test of both musicianship and endurance. Whether or not this had been his intention, the can of worms had been opened and we started throwing around ideas.

People being able to request songs, as he himself often likes to, became a key factor and David then said “and we could use a real jukebox”. Bingo! Over the next hour, the concept of the Human Jukebox was formed: part Artist-in-residence, part art installation. And here we are.