Min River - Winner of the 2025 Sydney to Hobart Yacht Race

Jiang Lin and Alexis Loison

Double handed team, Jiang Lin and Alexis Loison sailed Min River (JPK 1030) into the Sydney to Hobart Yacht Race record books when they were declared the overall winner of the 2025 race. Min River is the first double handed yacht to win the race and Jiang Lin is the first female skipper to win the coveted Tattersall Cup in the 80 year history of the great race. 

 

Min River crossed the finish line on the 30th December 2025 and the race result was declared the following day. I am an enthusiastic double handed yacht owner, skipper and club racer myself and I was very happy with the race result.

 

Writing Min River

Late on New Year’s Eve, not many hours after the race result was known, I noticed myself singing "For Min River, I cried...." I reached for my guitar at the first opportunity and started to write this song. This songwriting moment was pure magic to me, I was writing through the eyes of Jiang Lin. The lyrics and melody appeared quickly and I was feeling quite pleased with myself.

 

In the studio

The following day, I enjoyed musing with my new song and I thought "I'd like folks to hear this one." Into the studio I went, boots and all, arranging, recording and creating a music video for Min River. The hours turn into days when I work on a project like this. There was many a candle burning in my house at 2am, when the town was quiet and I am able to do my best work.

On Monday 12th January I was ready to release Min River to the world. My long term online music distributor, CDBaby, was brilliant. Within hours of selecting the "go" button my song was available on download and streaming platforms everywhere. I released the music video the following day.

 

Debuting Min River at Clancy's Fish Pub Fremantle,
on the day of the song’s release

It’s been a wild ride releasing this song so soon after first musing over the lyrics, “For Min River, I cried...”

Min River

Chorus

For Min River, I cried, for Min River, I tried,
Until the changing tide, changed our lives forever.
 
Just you and me, just two of us on this journey,
Endless days of wind and sea
Is all we need to set us free.
 
Chorus
 
We hope you’re alright,
We hope you sleep well at night.
Rest your worn hands, your tired minds,
Until the next start line.
 
Chorus
 
Chorus
For Min River, I cried, for Min River, I tried,
Until the changing tide, changed our lives,
changed our lives, forever.

 
Copyright   Jane Laws 2026
Unauthorised copying, public performance, broadcasting, hiring or rental of this song prohibited.

#RolexSydneyHobart #SydneyToHobart #SydneyHobart #S2H #80thSydneyHobart #SydneyHobart2025

#OceanRacing #DoubleHandedSailing #SailingHistory

#MinRiver #BNC

#JiangLin #AlexisLoison #MichelQuintin #YannRigal

#JaneLaws #SingerSongwriter #IndieMusic #FolkMusic

Fremantle Harbour Bound

Fremantle Harbour Bound is one of my maritime folk songs, it is a story about being at sea, for a very long time, and finally sailing towards home.

However the song goes much deeper than that and reflects upon my own personal journey of finding my way to live on the shores of Fremantle. All of my adult life I have connected to Fremantle, to the history, to the culture, to the port, to the people. Although I have been a member of Fremantle Sailing Club since 1987, the different roads I have chosen have never led me to live in Fremantle.

Then the winter of 2022 came along and it was either "now or never" and my partner and I sold up and moved to Fremantle. The song, Fremantle Harbour Bound, came to me while I was musing with my guitar on a stormy afternoon while we were in the throes of moving.

Erik Kowarski, renowned Perth improvising fiddle player, recorded and produced my first album, Gypsy Traveller (released in 2000.) It was wonderful to team up with Erik again for the journey of recording Fremantle Harbour Bound. Erik's beautiful fiddle has added a haunting touch and nautical flavour throughout the song; thank you so much, Erik.

The Fremantle Harbour Bound video was filmed aboard my yacht, Ambience, in the waters around Fremantle. With only two of us onboard, we found the on-water filming a memorable challenge. Trying to look after Ambience, each other, other water users, and filming is a day we won't forget in a hurry.

Way back in 1996, when I wrote the song, Seaflight, (a tribute to Perth teenager, David Dicks, who was sailing solo and nonstop around the world), Fremantle Sailing Club life member, Gran Hickling, asked me if I could write a song about the sailing club. Gran would ask me every time I saw him, which was, at times, every week. I used to just smile and muse to myself, "what could I write in a song about our club." Then last year, when Fremantle Harbour Bound came along, as if out of nowhere, I thought to myself, this is the song that Gran always wanted me to write.

Fremantle Harbour Bound

I am Fremantle Harbour bound,
Around the sound, around the town.
A west bound wind will bring me home,
Away too long, I am harbour bound, Fremantle Town.

 

Will you forgive all that has gone before,
So I might live in peace upon your shore.
And in my mind I hear a distant call,
I'm harbour bound, Fremantle Town, Fremantle Town.

 

I am a mile away from nowhere now,
Do you hear me sigh? Do you hear me shout?
And do you hear me sing The Lord's Prayer out loud?
Away too long, I am harbour bound, Fremantle Town.

 

I am Fremantle Harbour bound,
Around the sound, around the town.
A west bound wind will bring me home,
Away too long, I am harbour bound, Fremantle Town.

 

Copyright   Jane Laws 2023
Unauthorised copying, public performance, broadcasting, hiring or rental of this song prohibited.

#SailingLovers #BoatingLife #SailingBoat

#Fremantle #LoveFreo #Freo

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#JaneLaws #ErikKowarski

Timing and Expectation

 

I choose the title, Timing and Expectation, for my 5th studio album, long before I had written all of the songs. Even though we often have no control over "timing," when reflecting on my life, it always occurs to me that the timing of an event has a significant bearing on the result. The degree of pleasure or pain that you experience from even the most trivial events can be affected by their timing along your life’s pathway. “Expectation” because keeping your expectations in check is one of most difficult and important life skills I have ever had to learn.

 

I kept a copy of the album cover on my music stand to motivate and inspire me during this two year recording project. Timing and Expectation is a collection of thirteen of my original folk-roots songs.

I continue to enjoy writing a travellers tale, and four of the songs are inspired while riding the open road on my motorcycle: Eighty-seven Years, Wilcannia My Darling, Travelling Man and Where the Wind Blows Cold.

 

Falls of Thunder, Can I Dance? and Smoky Bar were inspired by some of the folks and places that have made an impression on me along life's way. My home town of Rockingham in Western Australia inspired Down to the Waterline.

 

Help Me Free My Mind turned up unexpectedly. It was important to include this song on the album as the more we talk about mental health the better the long term outcome will be for everyone.

It's 3am in Studio 453

I worked for hours with my trusted companion, affectionately named Harvey Korg (Korg Harvian 30 Digital Ensemble Piano) on the arrangements for the songs.

 

My vocal and acoustic guitar recordings were recorded in the early hours of the morning, when the town was quiet. All sound checks were completed the night before so we could begin recording with a minimum of fuss. On a given morning we would record either vocal or guitar. We would set the alarm for 1am. Guitar recordings would begin at 1:30am. Vocal recordings would begin at 2am, giving me an extra half an hour to warm up my voice. These early starts took their toll on us and after we had recorded the last track of the last song both me and my sound engineer were very pleased that the recording side of the project was complete.

 

We busied ourselves and created music videos for four of the songs. The music video for Eighty-seven Years was filmed at Porongurup, Western Australia. On Falls of Thunder I used super 8 footage of the falls, taken by my mum and dad. My role in the Down to the Waterline video was filmed on my home town beaches of Warnbro Sound and Mangles Bay. Help Me Free My Mind was filmed late one afternoon, in my front garden, during a covid lockdown.

 

One of my favourite places, on the beach at Warnbro Sound

I would like to say a special thank you to my sound engineer, and life partner, Steve Laws, for the hours spent in my studio, recording, mixing and mastering this album.

 

Sound bites and lyrics are available on my website. I hope you enjoy Timing and Expectation, the album is available for purchase or streaming on all of your favourite music apps; enjoy.

 

My recording studio is made up of the following components:

·       HP Envy 17” (Intel Core i7-4700mq processor, 16GB RAM and 1TB hard drive).

·       Cakewalk Sonar X3 DAW.

·       Roland Octa-Capture Audio Interface.

·       Rode NT2000 Microphone.

·       Adam F7 Studio Monitors.

Does it Rhyme?

Sitting on a Jump-Up in Western Queensland,
How could I not be inspired to write a song?

In January 2016 I knew I couldn’t procrastinate any longer ~ I had the means, I had written the songs ~ the time had come to knuckle down and record another album. We don’t take projects like this lightly at Studio 453 and perhaps that’s the reason there had been over ten years since I released my last album, The Moods I’m In.

The fourteen original songs I selected for my third album, Does it Rhyme?, came right from the heart and span genres folk, pop, blues with a touch of jazz and novelty. After I selected the songs I realised the Australiana flavour of the album, with six of the fourteen songs inspired by our land Down Under. 

Playing to the Kangaroos during a break in recording.

I created a booklet containing a lyric sheet for each song. This became my bible, the place where I would write down my ideas on the arrangement for each song including intros, outros, and other instrumentation and harmony that would be added after the vocal and guitar tracks had been laid down.

Alas, recording an album is twenty percent inspiration and eighty percent perspiration. And so began the hard work of practicing and then recording each of the tracks that would make up the album. My husband, Steve, is my recording engineer and twice we took my mobile studio down to The River Road, our country hideout, for some uninterrupted recording time.

My recording studio is made up of the following components:

·         HP Envy 17” (Intel Core i7-4700mq processor, 16GB RAM and 1TB hard drive).

·         Cakewalk Sonar X3 DAW.

·         Roland Octa-Capture Audio Interface.

·         Rode NT2000 Microphone.

·         Adam F7 Studio Monitors.

The recording process for this album was as follows:

·         Record fourteen guide tracks.

·         Record fourteen guitar tracks.

·         Record fourteen vocal tracks.

·         Record bass guitar on Six Hundred Outback Miles; The Wobblebox Song; The Coal Miner.

·         Add bass guitar, recorded by Lindsay Gould, to Take You to Vegas.

·         Record lead guitar on Six Hundred Outback Miles and In The City.

·         Record a second acoustic guitar on the title track Does it Rhyme?.

·         Record harmony on Jump Up; The Spell of Acrospire IV; In The City.

·         Add Session Drummer track to In The City.

·         Record stone flute on The Wobblebox Song.

·         Record music sticks on Six Hundred Outback Miles.

·         Record tenor saxophone (Lindsay Gould) on Secrets of a Bass Player; Purple Poodle; Mr Dinosaur Bones; Take You to Vegas.

·         Record soprano saxophone (Lindsay Gould) on Trackless and Windforce.

·         Record clarinet (Lindsay Gould) on Kilkenny.

At The River Road

On average it takes us one hour to record a track and one hour to edit a track. The estimated total time to record and edit this album was 120 hours (there are 61 recordings).

The mastering of this album was a reiterative process of mixing down with the required effects (eq, reverb, compression), creating an mp3 at 320kbs and then listening to the song on a variety of devices, checking for clarity of sound of all the instruments and the overall volume. This process took us about one day (8 hours) per song totalling 110 hours.

In total we spent 230 hours (6 weeks full time) just to record, mix and master the songs. This doesn’t include the countless hours spent rehearsing so that we could create solid, clean recordings.

A special thanks to my friend, Lindsay Gould, for his inspiration and magic touch on the saxophones and clarinet. 

Lindsay and me ~ gigging

Lindsay and I collaborated on writing Secrets of a Bass Player and Take You to Vegas. I wrote the lyrics and Lindsay wrote the music. This was a thoroughly enjoyable experience and it is a pleasure to include these two songs on this album.

Also, thank you Steve, for your patience during the recording process and your diligence during the mixing and mastering phase of the project. You have a wonderful ear for the final product and I’m lucky that you are part of the music I create.

Of course the creation of this album is only the beginning as we work towards finding avenues so that you folks out there can hear Does it Rhyme? I’m very proud of this album and I hope you enjoy listening to it as much as I enjoyed writing the songs.

You can listen to sound bytes on the Does it Rhyme? page on my website www.janelaws.com ~ Enjoy!

Six Hundred Outback Miles
written while riding my BMW F650GS though Northern Australia

River Road Recording Studio

River Road Recording Studio.

I decided to take a week away from home and cut a bunch of demo tracks for a selection of songs that Lindsay Gould and I have been working on. My recording gear fits easily into the boot of the car and by mid afternoon we were set up and ready to go in our favourite hideout at the Porongurup National Park. 

Enjoying the recording process.

Porongurup is a little piece of remote country, where we go, from time to time, to recharge our life batteries.

My home studio is called Studio 453, when we are set up at Porongurup it's called River Road Recording Studio. At River Road I put down guide tracks for eleven songs and then single tracked the guitar and then the vocal. 

The Rode NT2000 was worth its weight in gold and recorded a good solid wave for my Maton guitar. The noise of the local wildlife interrupted our recording from time to time but mostly we were able to work, unchecked, in the cool of the morning and it was a thoroughly enjoyable recording experience. Thanks to Cakewalk's Sonar X3 Studio who never let us down.

Lindsay will be recording the Sax back at Studio 453, looking forward to the mixdown.

The Sound Engineer gets a pretty good view.

HP Envy - Broken then Fixed

Computer woes have held me up a little. My new HP Envy Notebook developed an overheating gremlin and after time in the workshop the problem persisted. Thanks to HP for coming to the party and issuing me with a new notebook.

Now I'm up and running again I'm thoroughly enjoying learning Cakewalk Sonar X3 and using it as a tool to develop arrangements for my songs. My bass guitar is out and about and once again life is sweet in Studio 453.

Getting everything together at Studio 453.

Adam F7 - more than just studio monitors

Studio 453

When I'm gigging I always like to spend some of my preparation time in front of the microphone with my guitar plugged in. There is no better way to identify careless guitar work or poor vocals than with amplification.

I usually plug in and play through my EV 100M but I decided to test out the abilities of my Roland Octa-Capture and my Adam F7 monitors. I was blown away by the clean, soft sound that was easy on my ears. This new setup has taken my practice time to a whole new level of enjoyment and I'm very pleased to learn that my beloved Adam F7's have another trick up their sleeve :).

Adam F7 Monitors and a RODE NT2000 Microphone

The promise of a Rode NT2000 microphone for only $499 had me back at Kosmic Sound for the VIP preview night which was held before the big October sale.

I was still in the investigation phase over which monitors to buy. However hearing is believing, and while I was at Kosmic, I slipped into the monitor sound booth with a copy of The Waifs Up All Night in my hand. One switch was flicked after another as I sampled sound from Yamaha, Behringer, Adam and many in-between. I lost track of time in the darkened room and as closing time drew near I decided to take the plunge. A couple of the boys working behind the counter cheered when I announced "I'm going for the Adam F7's."

Back in my studio I smile every time I lay eyes on those Adam speakers. The sound is enjoyable and yet all the nuances can still be heard without making my ears tired; brilliant.

The new Adam F7 monitors.
How about my extra large National Folk Festival coffee mug?

Upgrading My Recording Studio

There comes a time when you must let go of the old and bring the new into your life. My Windows 98 desktop, coupled with an Aardvark Direct Pro 24/96 sound card and Cakewalk Pro Audio 9 DAW (Digital Audio Workstation) had served me well since 2003. My home recording studio had provided all the tools for my second album, The Moods I'm In, along with many other recording projects which are too numerous to mention.

But the old desktop is too long in the tooth to be reliable, and as Aardvark no longer exist, there are no upgrade drivers for my much loved soundcard. So on a blustery spring day, after hours of "forum" research, I came home with my new studio:

¯  Roland Octa-Capture Audio Interface

¯  Cakewalk Sonar X2

¯  HP Envy 17" laptop (Intel Core i7-4700mq processor, 16GB RAM and two 1TB hard drive)

I could hardly contain myself while my partner, Steve, configured the new hardware and software. When it was time for the taste test, I recorded one of my new songs and then waited with baited breath to hear the Octa-Capture playback to me for the first time. The sound was clear and clean with hardly any colour added; jackpot!