Musicians Serge Le Goueff and Paula Renée are hitting the stage as Mr and Mrs Smith with their brand new show Speakeasy Story in Augusta and Dunsborough .
Le Goueff has taken the back roads to hold the performances after COVID-19 restrictions stopped live music dead in its tracks.
He has hired the Augusta Centennial Hall and Old Dunsborough Hall to perform the show after he was asked him to play for free or for food as venues started reopening.
"Most venues down here and in Perth told me they did not want to pay any musicians until December," he said.
"Musicians are welcome to play for free, but venues do not want to take the risk to provide entertainment unless we bring our crowd with us.
"I respectfully declined, I said to one venue, I would come in and play for free for two hours but in return would you come and cook for my family for two hours free of charge.
"That was the best answer I could give them and it was well received, the person got my point, this is my job just like running a hotel or restaurant.
"Your job is to cook food and make an income out of it, my job is to play music and make an income out of it.
"A little down the track I will do another round of contacting the venues to see if they are ready to treat the musicians as professional who deserve remuneration.
"It has been disappointing in some ways but I expected that, obviously they have lost a lot of money and are skimming but they still want the same offerings they used to give their patrons but they do not want to pay for it.
"It is not really fair on musicians."
Read more: What matters to Serge Le Goueff
LeGoueff decided to tackle the problem another way and hired the community halls himself.
"The excitement is there, I cannot wait," he said.
"I have a private gig coming up, then July 19 in Augusta and August 2 in Dunsborough."
Speakeasy Story is a brand new show that Le Goueff wrote about three months ago.
"I decided to bring some light to an era of prohibition when a lot of things were forbidden including going to the pub, just like COVID-19," he said.
"I thought it was the perfect time that would bring to light what people went through and how they worked around it by creating illegal joints called speakeasies.
"Speakeasy was a tremendous era, it was the beginning of liberation for women from the kitchen where they had been confined.
"It was the beginning of the end of segregation in the 1920's when white and black people were mixing very happily in those illegal joints.
"It was a tremendous vehicle for jazz to flourish and those three together for me were worthy of writing a show and sharing some of the stories and anecdotes about gangsters, jazz men and cocktails that took place then.
"It will be a mixture of theatre, of humour and obviously music will represent the bulk of it through Mr and Mrs Smith.
"It should be a lot of fun, we have only performed it once and people absolutely loved it, there was a lot of laughter and we even had people dancing which was just great."
The duo plan to take their show on the road and will hit Albany, Mandurah and Perth after playing in Augusta and Dunsborough.
"Hopefully we will try and get to where we were, we used to do 100 concerts a year, since COVID-19 we have done three."
Tickets to the events are available online at ticketebo.com.au/serge-le-goueff.
