Sitting Under A Tree with Aidan Jones

I saw a wonderful band called FERLA on Saturday night with some friends. The lead singer was bald with his hair completely gone up top, but at the back where it still grew he'd let it go out into a mullet! Awesome. His voice reminded me of the singer from that band Future Islands who did the incredible spot on Letterman like ten years ago.   Then on Sunday morning I went to an 11am performance of...

Bit of a dramatic title this week, I'm feeling pretty good about things and blah blah, but I guess I'm just in a grumpy mood because I sat down this morning to try and do a bunch of things, and try as I might, none of them are completed. There's always more bullshit isn't there. Right now I'm torn between getting back on the emails and trying again, or just fucking all of it off and going to the p...

I try not to engage with politics too much because I feel it's a part of life that only leads to anger and frustration, and I think our time is much better spent working hard (and the work is VERY hard) to be good to the people around us. Having said that, when something beautiful happens like a horrid little scumbag of a man being destroyed in a Federal Election, I do absolutely love it.   I don'...

I'm annoyed that I have to leave Australia to keep pursuing my dream in stand up comedy. I'm scared, and excited, and all of that other stuff, but at the core of it, I am annoyed. By which I mean, heartbroken.   Also it's late and I'm really tired right now.

I took MDMA on the last night of comedy festival and it really brought the emotions out of me. The mixture was strong, and I'm glad I got to feel it all at the festival club, surrounded by my community of comedians all at the end of this beautiful thing we do every year. I'm proud of everything I've done with this show, excited for what's to come with it, and also slowly beginning the process of w...

It's the last week of the Melbourne Comedy Festival and I'm feeling reflective. The show has been a dream, and with seven still to go I've smashed my goals for attendance and profit. I've got an idea for the next show, which I'll keep nurturing, but for the next three months, all my focus is on the rest of the tour in Australia, and getting ready to leave Melbourne and move to London. Terrifying!

I've got a joke that I've been doing in the show the last few nights about how the airport in Warsaw is called the 'Frederic Chopin International Airport', like that's how much of a big deal this guy is - they don't name airports after anyone! Who's Tullamarine, you know?   After the second show I'd done that joke, someone messaged me and told me that actually Tullamarine was an indigenous freedom...

Going to the Melbourne Flower Festival last year was what originally inspired me to host my Melbourne Comedy Festival show in a beautiful, bespoke space this year. I went back on Sunday and it was just as beautiful as I remembered, but I didn't enjoy it as much because I was busy worrying about ticket sales and money and comparing myself to my peers.   I'm having an objectively great festival. It'...

This week has been intense, gratifying, exhausting, terrifying, humbling, exciting, overwhelming, and over in the blink of an eye. The gallery is ready for opening night tomorrow, which is sold out by the way! And so is the night after.   I can't believe how many different people have stepped up out of nowhere in the last week to offer their help in whatever way they can to make this project happe...

I've had the best month in Adelaide doing my show to great audiences, winning an award in the first week and getting five star reviews! Then on Monday, my last day in town, I accidentally crushed the door of my Mum's partner's car in the carwash. It was really scary actually, and it's going to cost me $2000.   I find myself here yet again, in a moment where I could have maybe slowed down a little,...

I had the best day yesterday at WOMAD with a wonderful bunch of friends. Khruangbin were incredible, I was soaring through the trees for the entire 90 minutes that they played. And I'm still having the best time at the Adelaide Fringe in what has turned from a two-week, eight-show run, into a month-long season of 17 performances.   I feel like I'm getting better at choosing not to engage with thin...

This week I got five stars in The List and The Advertiser, and I won a weekly award at the Adelaide Fringe for best comedy! This kind of week is really as much as I could have dreamed of when I started working on the show a couple years ago, but still on Sunday I felt tired and sad.   I took a walk this morning down to the Torrens near my Mum's place in Thebarton, there's a beautiful trail there w...

The other day my Mum reminded me of an old nursery rhyme she used to sing to me when I was a baby called 'I See The Moon' and it's been stuck in my head the last few days. It's got a really beautiful melody and I'm looking forward to playing around with it on the piano.   I've been reflecting on the one-year cycle that a lot of the live comedy touring industry operates on in Australia. I tried for...

I'm all over the shop on the podcast today... I got a tattoo on my butt on Thursday night... I'm $12k in debt... I saw the new Captain America movie on Sunday night and I absolutely hated it... my money from Perth hasn't come through yet... tickets for Adelaide are still selling well... I'm leaving Australia in 5 months. I can't seem to relax and just settle.   I've been watching this Australian s...

I recorded this podcast last night in the back of a hire car parked in the carpark at Point Addis near Anglesea. I love coming down the coast and getting out into the ocean in the morning, how lucky are we in Australia that this is something we can just go and do whenever we want!   I'm stressing about getting an offer from a venue for the Edinburgh Fringe this year. Whatever happens, I'm going an...

It's my birthday on Wednesday! I haven't planned a party or anything, I figure I'm moving away in July so I'll have a going-away party then, but now I'm still kind of in the midst of doing all this stuff with the show and it just doesn't feel like the right time for a party. And it's my birthday, so I should get to choose when the party is, right? RIGHT?!!   On the day I'm going to go to South Mel...

Australia Day this week, always high emotion on both sides. When I was doing my bus tours, I would always explain the situation in Australia with regards to indigenous people by saying that it's a very emotional issue for everyone. Some people think we should talk about it more, and that we need to move towards greater recognition for indigenous people. Some people think we talk about it too much...

I went to the beach today with a bunch of friends. What a wonderful sentence to be able to say! It was 42 degrees, but down by the water it was much cooler, the waves were big and scary and I got thrown around a bunch, it was awesome.   I have been worrying about ticket sales a bit, but what makes me feel better is the amount of nice stuff that other comedians have been saying to me after my spots...

Yesterday at my removals job we worked for a customer who was sending some of their furniture to an auction house to be sold - that is to say, this person was extremely well-off. They had two children there with them, both around 5 years old, and these kids were, as it transpired, two of the most entitled, horrible little bastards I've ever met. They were both rude to us and clearly thought themse...

Lately I've noticed I get anxious when I find myself with nothing to do. I guess that's why I am so enamoured of the Edinburgh Fringe - a month where every moment of every day is relentlessly full of people and places and things and stuff and you NEVER get a break. You NEVER have to stop!! You can just keep going for ever - heaven.   The way I've always coped with the anxiety is by just filling my...

At this time last year my goals were to put my head down at work and make as much money as I could, while spending all my creative energy working on the new show. It was the first year since I started doing solo stand-up shows that I'd planned to not do a show at the Australian festivals, and my only hope for the end of the year was that I'd be in a position where I would be confident with my new...

Last night I saw a movie called 'The Substance', it was great! Go look it up if you don't know what it's about because their copy will explain the premise much better than I can here, but the premise of the film is an ageing Hollywood star takes an experimental drug to create a younger, "more perfect" version of herself. It's all about female beauty standards in society and the way we treat people...

Yesterday I got an ad for this garbage book called 'Dad I Want To Hear Your Story'. It's not even a book that you read, it's a book that you give to your Dad that he writes his life story in. There are all these questions about your first kiss or your school years or whatever the fuck stupid bullshit these people put in there to try and seduce people into thinking that you can skip the years of wo...

The modern world of classical piano seems to be split into two groups:   First there are the people who play the classics, they go through the music from the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries and play the same pieces over and over again in search of the "composer's intention", while attempting to also bring some aspect of their own personality to it. Each year there are dozens of recordings of the mos...

Huge shock in the Australian Comedy world this week with one of the biggest management companies declaring bankruptcy, leaving dozens of artists without representation heading into the 2025 festival season. Also a bunch of comedians have lost tens, or in some cases HUNDREDS, of thousands of dollars.   In reflecting on what is catastrophic news for so many of my friends, I'm reminded of my own expe...