There is little so transitory as the Phnom Penh musical landscape. Venues rise and fall, bands congeal and fragment, big names expand and disappear, and above all, open mics come and go at a relentless rate. Some few have lasted a long time – take the Sharky jam or the Paddy Rice open mic which both provided on-going employment, entertainment and occasional suffering for many a host.
Standing apart from all of the above is the Sunday Sundowner Sessions which I established at Rubies Wine Bar at the end of 2012. With the demise of Rubies in August 2013, the Sundowners were moved to what was then the Alley Cat Café, now known as Tacos Kokopelli. This weekend TacoKat (as it is affectionately known) celebrates ten years of Sunday Sundowners – in all that time only the COVID arrangements of 2020/2021 kept it from happening each week like clockwork, and even then alternatives were jerry-rigged to keep the music playing. Sometimes it’s a bit empty, sometimes it’s overfull, somehow it rolls on.
Experienced performers have rubbed shoulders with nervous first-time-behind-a-mic participants, newcomers have introduced themselves, songwriters have tested new work, jams have erupted out of nowhere, chemistries have been discovered, bands have been formed (notably The Uncomfortably White Brothers, The Sock Essentials, and Table Six Miniature Harmonica Orchestra) – a lot can happen in ten years, as you can read below in the impressions of some of those who, at least for a while, have found a home for a Sunday afternoon.
A special mention for the dogged documentation of the Sundowners week by week by photographer David Flack, whose works are included in this article, and the enthusiastic audiencing of Hayley Flack.
Scott Bywater
I hosted Sundowners at the Alley Cat Cafe for about three years between 2014 and 2017. What was special about this open mic? …many things. Sunday Sundowners almost always came together in a very organic and unplanned way, striking the magic balance between professional musos and amateur performers, rehearsed pieces and improvised jams. The session always seemed to fill up with just the right number of participants to create a full and lively show.
For me personally, the Sundowners provided a great chance to ‘practice’ new material, get to know new-in-town (or just-passing-through) musicians and shoot the proverbial with familiar faces. I experienced many ‘magic moments’ at Alley Cat, too many to mention here, personal highlights include being schooled on how to sing harmony by Conrad Keely, learning to play jazz chord progressions with Richard Pearl, or that one time an audience member jumped on stage after the show with a compelling urge to show me exactly how Django Reinhardt played two-string turnarounds. I’m very glad it happened.
What really ‘makes your day’ as an open mic host is when an unknown performer turns up, completely out of the blue, then wows the room with aspects of greatness. This doesn’t happen every week… but once in a while, someone new will come in with a knockout voice, a dazzling mastery of their instrument, an unbelievable song or some otherwise fresh sound that unites the room in wonderment. This happened to me several times during my tenure at Sundowners. The memories live large and colourful. The first performances of Roxane Dumont, Clayton England, Dave Cox, Nat Vimonchandra, Marianna Hensley… and many more. One single short performance can land like a raindrop on water, creating a small splash in the room, with ripples that emanate out around the town. ‘Have you heard this new guy… yeh he blew everyone away at Alley Cat yesterday…’. So it was with Clay George, who ducked into Alley Cat one Sunday in 2015, dressed in a tailored shirt and waistcoat, with a vintage Gibson guitar in hand and a tan trilby hat on his head. Somehow, I knew that this was going to be a special Sunday Sundowners Session.
Joe Wrigley
I made my TacoKat debut in early 2018. I remember I sang Nantes and Riptide and Scott kindly accompanied me. I think I really grew into myself as a musician there. I bombed but also managed to make the whole bar listen to me. I learned so much from the different artists who performed there and miss sitting at that very front table with Ariane and Marianna every week. I miss sitting next to Sam scribbling in his notebook and seeing Frisco Tony, Karen, Hayley and David. I have so many good memories of the place and going there every Sunday night was the highlight of my week. Thank you to Dallas, Teang and Scott for creating such a safe space for us all.
Jo-Ann Lim
I arrived at my first Sundowners session wanting to play some original songs. I hadn’t played live in a long while, and I remember David and Hayley Flack encouraging me and telling me “Don’t be nervous!” I was, of course, but the people, the environment, the energy were all so welcoming and inclusive that soon the Sundowners became my regular Sunday ritual. On the other side of the world, it was a community of friends and artists that I had the privilege of hanging out with every week. This was often to the chagrin of my early Monday wake up time, but it was always 100% worth it.
The Sundowners sessions were more than a weekly open mic. Meeting people within that creative community inspired me, made me a better songwriter, and opened many other doors. I played some solo shows, sang in a band, and was featured on a Cambodian radio station. In my travels and living situations before and since, I have never found a music community as dear to me as the Sundowners is. It had a magical tint to it, and you would never know who would walk in the door or what would happen each night. For me, those sessions were integral to a time of self-growth. They were an anchor for me throughout my two years in Cambodia, and the people, the music, that welcoming and creative energy that existed within those sessions make it one of the most treasured parts of my life. Happy 10th, Sundowners!! Keep playing hard and loud, and I can’t wait to be back someday.
Sarah Gee
Sunday Sundowner Sessions has been a rare oasis of consistency in Phnom Penh’s ever-shifting landscape over the past decade. That is not to say it has been the exact same all along. It has, of course, experienced changes of venue, a change of venue name and changes of host. Even during the pandemic, the open mic insisted upon continuing to exist, even when it meant going acoustic, going online via Zoom, going on a rooftop, and going on a boat, putting to rest any residual doubts as to whether Sunday Sundowner Sessions was just another open mic or, in fact, a community. The highly irregular “regulars” of the Sessions are as family to me: they’ve been there for me through good times and bad, and they have embarrassed me in front of every girl I’ve wanted to impress at the open mic. Long live Sunday Sundowner Sessions.
Sam Thomas
The first time I wandered into Sunday Sundowners at Tacos Kokopelli Joe Wrigley was at the helm—and there was a fella in a hat sitting off in a corner scribbling in a tiny notebook. Soon enough said fella in a hat (Scoddy Bywater) was back in the Sundowners host seat sharing his own songs and encouraging everyone who came along to join in however they like, bringing whatever they had to offer—a song, a laugh, a poem, a mini-harmonica! I’ve many fond memories of Sunday Sundowners from highlights like Jigsaw Collective taking over the tiny space (Jack serenading us as he stood on the bar), and the what-on-earth-are-they-doing early performances of the duo that was to become infamously known as the Uncomfortably White Brothers, or a rousing version of Frosty the Snowman with Jet Odreir. Then there are the quieter but equally fond memories of sitting in a corner harmonizing a song as others sang and played.
To Scoddy, Joe, and all the guest hosts along the way—thank you for keeping the institution that is Sunday Sundowners going these 10 years. To Dallas and Mark, Teang, Vanessa, and all the staff through the years—thank you for offering Tacos Kokopelli as a place for music and fellowship every Sunday evening. Happy anniversary Sundowners!
Marianna Hensley
The Sundowners have been celebrating music, culture, and friendship for over a decade now. It is a cosy and convivial venue where locals meet and greet, enjoy a cocktail and is famed for tacos and burritos. Tacos Kokopelli is an integral part of the scene in the city, and it will be rocking on Sunday to celebrate its anniversary.
Frisco Tony
The Sunday Sundowner Sessions at Tacos Kokopelli… and I.
I remember my first time going to the Sundowners quite well, it was my second time at Tacos Kokopelli – the first time I spent an hour on a Friday night in the presence of a very quiet, glowering barkeeper listening to a solo performer (I do believe other people arrived after I had left), so at least I knew where to find the place. I didn’t know what to expect though, and was quite surprised by the a group of people who obviously all new each other and sang along to songs that I had never heard in my entire life. I was lucky, the host encouraged me to sing, and he did know Billy Bragg’s A New England. That was late September 2017. I returned the next week with a few more cover songs to sing on my birthday. And I would return the next Sunday and the next – until I got to know that group of people and began to sing along to those songs. And I still return on many Sundays, always excited to spend time with the people and to sing many many songs. Happy 10th Anniversary! Thank you for all those happy Sundays!
Ariane Parkes
There are some constants I notice in my ten years of living in Phnom Penh. The pervasive sound of construction, traffic jams, the traffic jam along Street 19 between 6 to 8pm on a Sunday evening, and people in a small Tex-Mex restaurant in a small street along Street 19 tooting ‘meep! meep!’ along to the chorus of a song about the Phnom Penh traffic jam written and performed by veteran expat Scott Bywater on a Sunday evening, usually between 6-8pm (but it could be later) in a weekly event which is now known as the Sunday Sundowners.
Most of the regulars at the Sundowners would balk at the idea of having a religion, but I would boldly argue that this doesn’t change the fact that they are there for a religious-like experience. Is it that hard to notice the similarities? You’ve got your regular host singing tunes that many regulars know by heart, and they would spontaneously join in with the more singalong songs, you’ve got Frisco Tony showing up dressed frequently like Lou Reed-meets-Johnny Cash, and Cash is often described to have the voice of an Old Testament prophet (despite audiorecording devices not having been invented until several thousand years after the last Old Testament prophet died) . And you’ve got your Church choir/band in the form of The Table Six Miniature Harmonica Orchestra (whose official logo was one of the many lousy design jobs I take on as a consequence of being rather bad at saying ‘no’); at least that’s the kind of church band that I imagine a poorly-attended Church in a small English town would be like. There’s currently an ongoing debate about whether a tortilla is a kind of bread, but to go along with my argument that Sundowners is a religious ritual, I’d say it is, and it gets served and consumed during this three-hour event.
Then you get a person who must have been tired of being compared to both a Mormon apostle and Jesus giving a speech in which it is rude if you interrupt (too frequently), but which often gets many laughs, and is almost always light on the moralizing part, kind of like one of those modern churches which want to appeal to a younger demographics by having sermons that dial up the funny bits and tone down the fire and brimstone bits. And to round it all up, performers get to down a shot of a type of spirit called tequila, and you don’t need me to spell it out for you what I’m comparing that to.
But change do happen. People come, people go. Often the same people that went came back. I would show up every week for months, and then disappear for just as many months, usually because I threw myself into yet another crazy artistic/musical endeavour that demanded too much of my time. And for those of us who were there since Day One ten years ago, we all got older. Some whom we would never imagine to become parents, had kids. My reasons for showing up have changed. It used to be that I showed up because I’ve got something to prove. I would get a bit stressed out over which songs I wanted to perform because you’ve got only a very limited time – around four to five songs – with which to win the crowd over. That’s the trait we Singaporeans like to call kiasu. And when I resumed writing my own songs, Sundowners became the place for me to get used to NOT getting any audience response, to grow a thicker skin. Now? I don’t know. Most times I show up completely unprepared to perform anything and just play whatever that comes to mind. As I said, it’s a ritual. A ritual for the self-professed unreligious.
One of drawbacks about living in a different country from the rest of my family for the last ten years is that I miss many gatherings on important dates. Ironically, I’ll be missing the tenth anniversary celebration of Sundowners this Sunday because I had to go on a last-minute business trip to Siem Reap. Hold on a minute. Why did I mention my family in the same paragraph as the Sundowners? Let’s just pretend that it never happened. Happy 10th, Sundowners.
Joshua Chiang
I saw the video for the Cambodian Space Project’s Have Visa No Have Rice long before I ever set foot in the alley. Upon darkening the door of that place with sombreros and that mural with Top Kat and Felix, I was a bit in awe, picturing the siren whose voice initially brought me to the banks of the Tonle Sap. The Sunday gathering of minstrels, mini-harmonicas, workshopping bands, cat costumes, joy, revelry, all instruments great and small and a pretty damned good comedian still inspires awe in me, the vagabond who shows up and is allowed to play on the walls, the wayfaring stranger with a set of brushes.
Sundowners refuses no one willing to show up, fosters new bands and allows performers to hone some skills, collaborate with like minds, share in fellowship and wash it all down with shots of courage and whatever else Dallas pours. From year to year, Sunday Sundowners has created a community. From shore to shore, I am lucky to have been welcomed back, given a seat at the table, the opportunity to play and to sometimes shine. The weekly jubilee is pretty awesome, indeed. Cheers to another ten, and to when I see the Guernsey Girl again.
Troy Campbell
If you ever played the Sundowners, you’re probably here. A fragment of The Wall of Fame, a photograph of ten years of photographs by David Flack.
The tenth anniversary will be extra-long – from 4 to 9 pm – with a buffet for participating musicians from 4 – 6 pm. Come on down and see what the fuss is all about.