Desert Island Discs

Newstead Live! January 2023

At the Newstead Live! Folk Festival in January 2023 I was honoured to be the guest for Andrew Pattison’s Desert Island Discs. Each year at the festival he invites a performer to choose 7 or 8 recordings, plus one book and one luxury item, that they would take with them if they were to be marooned on a desert island, and discussing their life and the reasons for their choices. It’s based on a classic BBC radio show that has been running since 1942.

I got a huge amount of enjoyment and joy thinking about what to choose, and listening to lots of music that I love, and which has been important in my life.

I recommend that everyone does it, just for the fun of it. You’ll love it!

So, here’s what I chose and why. For each item I indicate what it is about the music that I love, and then discuss its importance in my life. You can watch the video of the actual conversation on YouTube. It flits about much more than the notes that follow, and it doesn’t cover all the points below, but does touch on many different ones. But it’s probably a lot more engaging than reading it!  

1.  Methodist hymn: O come, O come, Emmanuel
The music:
This comes from a Latin song from the 8^th or 9^th century. It was translated in mid 19^th century.

I love the minor key and there is something about the timing of the 3^rd last bar, which shifts to 2:4 that I have always found fascinating. Although not understanding these fine points of music theory as a child, I know that I found that minor, modal feel and the timing glitch absolutely captivating, taking it out of the ordinary and hooking me.

My life:
My father was a Methodist (later Uniting Church) minister, so I grew up listening to singing in church throughout my childhood. I remember hearing all the voices all around me, and it is where I first experienced harmony. Music was always important to Methodists, and many of its standard hymns were written by the founder, John Wesley’s brother, Charles.

It’s interesting to note how many musicians, especially but not only gospel singers in the USA, had their first musical experiences in church. Given the importance of church music to so many singers, I wonder what impact the decline of the church will have on the future of music.

For me, not only did it put music into my life, but it did so in the context of community singing and participation, which have always been an important part of my musical life; from participating in sessions to my involvement with Community Music Victoria.

2.  Yesterday  (The Beatles)
The music:
I have always loved the apparent simplicity of this song

My life:
This is the first record I ever bought. I saved up 10 shillings of pocket money in 1965 or 1966 and bought it at the local record and electrical goods shop. One strong memory I have of that shop is that it had lava lamps, which fascinated me.

I loved the Beatles – wanted to go to see them but I guess I was too young when they toured Australia. And anyway, my dad in his wisdom said they were just a flash in the pan.

There wasn’t much live music in our house, but my love of the Beatles comes from a time in my life when I shared a bedroom with my brother, 6 years older than me, and we listened to the radio in the room a lot. 3UZ Top 40 countdown every Sunday afternoon.

This was a huge part of my musical education. The drama of the countdown, as well as the music itself was an intoxicating combination. This gave me a very comprehensive education in pop music of the mid-1960s – definitely a classic era. And, of course, the Beatles dominated the charts at the time, often with several songs simultaneously in the top 40.

I couldn’t squeeze in a track from another important part of my musical development, but I must mention The Monkees and my first experiences as a performer in the 6th grade with a friend. We created The Chimps, and wrote lots of little songs, including our theme song: ‘Hey hey, we’re the Chimps!’ – well, we were only 11 years old! and performed them to our grade. I loved watching the Monkees TV show, but never particularly got off on their music, but they were the most popular band of the day in our demographic, so they were important to me. The writing and performing were great fun and it was an extremely exciting time for me.

3.  Love in Vain (from  Get Yer Ya Yas Out. The Rolling Stones) 
The music:
This is a fabulous examples of blues. Originally a Robert Johnson song, the Stones electrified it and rocked it up from RJ’s delta blues style, but kept that strong blues feel. This music goes deep down into the soul. Mick Taylor crafts a beautiful slide/lead guitar part, which is complemented by Keith on electric guitar

My life:
The Stones were my gateway into folk music!   And songwriting.

This may be surprising. Let me explain.

By the time I was 13 or 14 I was already getting sick of pop music after all those Top 40 years. I fell into a bunch of friends at secondary school who were very knowledgeable about more authentic rock, such as the Stones, and The Who. These friends influenced my listening. They included Brian Nankervis, who even then had a thorough knowledge of music.

These bands, particularly the Stones, paid tribute to the blues, and through them we (and I) discovered the blues. We went to concerts by Muddy Waters, Sonny Terry & Brownie McGhee, Bo Diddly, Johnny Winter. We listened to old Leadbelly records.

As a live recording, The Stones’ Get Yer Ya Yas Out came out as I was discovering the authenticity of live music over recorded music, so it was pivotal in my musical development.  As well as knowing every note they played, I also knew, and would often recite, every word of Mick Jagger’s stage banter (‘I think I busted a button on my trousers, hope they don’t fall down – You don’t want my trousers to fall down now, do you?’ etc.)

The Stones concert at Kooyong in 1973 was a massive experience. It was only 2 or 3 years after Yas Yas was recorded, and a very similar repertoire. That made the record even more significant for me.  We jumped out of our seats and stood right in front of the stage the whole concert. 3 metres from Mick. He splashed water on us, and threw rose petals. I kept, and still have, some rose petals he threw. Sacred objects.

That Kooyong concert was one of the three most memorable concerts in my life.  Since you asked, the second was Leonard Cohen in January 2009. The third was Phillip Glass’s Einstein on the Beach at the Melbourne Arts Centre in 2013.

Anyway, it was with the blues, via the Stones, that I discovered ‘real’ music – less polished, from the heart, not commercial.  From there it was but a short step to folk music.

The blues was also where I started making up songs – decades before I realised I could be a songwriter! Me and a friend called Roger Dylan, used to jam on Sunday afternoons making up 12 bar blues songs on the fly. Him on guitar, and me on piano.

I never had instrument lessons as a child. My two older siblings had, but they were only a minor success, and led to domestic disharmony (sometimes literally!) as our parents pleaded with them to practice. So I wasn’t offered lessons. This, of course, plus that fact that as a teenager, some of my friends were learning instruments, made me want to learn an instrument!

So I organised piano lessons for myself through the Allens Music School in the city – which I knew due to their record shop which I frequented. I had the good fortune to be assigned a jazz pianist, who taught me chord theory and the basics of improvisation techniques, which later provided a very helpful foundation for songwriting.

In year 12, I started tinkering with the guitar as well. I had to sneak it from my big brother when he wasn’t around, because for some reason he didn’t want me playing it.

4.  Suzanne (Leonard Cohen)
The music:
Leonard Cohen’s was the first music that I really responded to deeply in terms of poetry teamed with music. I always liked Dylan, but he never reached into my soul the way Cohen did. I think Cohen is a far better poet.

His influence on me as a songwriter is very strong – not so much in that I sound like him, but in the care I try and take in writing songs. He once told the story of meeting Bob Dylan and asking how long it took him to write a song. Dylan said it took an hour or two, maybe sometimes even days! Cohen was too embarrassed to reply that his songs always took months or years. Over the years I have moved from the Dylan model to something more like the Cohen model, carefully reworking and polishing my songs over a long period – even if they initially come quickly.

My life:
I had heard a bit of Cohen when I was in my last year of school – 1973, but it seemed dreary.

In 1974 after I left school, I hitch-hiked around Australia. It was a maturing experience in many ways. I took my first drugs, had my first sexual experience, and discovered the joys of sitting around playing music and singing with other people.

Towards the end of the trip, I was sitting in the Adelaide Youth Hostel watching the young, groovy warden singing Leonard Cohen songs to a bevy of enraptured young girls. I wanted to be like that!  Also, trying to work out why they were all rapt, I really listened to Cohen’s songs for the first time and I was smitten myself.

When I got home I bought all the Leonard Cohen records out at the time (Songs of Leonard Cohen, Songs from a Room and Songs of Love & Hate) and his songbooks, and learnt them up.  I also bought my first, extremely cheap guitar, a Japanese Suzuki (yes, they make guitars!). I named the guitar Suzanne.

Within a few months I was at uni singing Leonard Cohen songs to a bevy of enraptured young girls. One of them was Jill. Dear reader, I married her!

5.  Ojos Azules (Inti Illamani)
The music:
I love the ethereal sound of the panpipes, the rhythmic pulsations of the charango and the energy of Andean music.
I have always felt a frisson of excitement at the ‘extra’ 2 bars in the 10 bar phrases that many Andean tunes, including this one, have.

My life:
In my first year at Uni I saw Inti Illamani (I think) at Melbourne Uni. They were exiled from Chile following Pinochet’s coup. I liked the mix of politics and music, but more profoundly, I fell in love with the music of the Andes.

A couple of years later, I was living in my first student share house in Fitzroy, which had a large Latin American community. I bought my first sound system and went to Fitzroy Library’s Record Library to borrow (and record onto cassette) music. I was like a pig in shit, having access to so much Andean music.  This track is the first track on the first Inti Illamani record I played. It blew me away. And now I blow it with the Zampoñistas. It was a bit of serendipity that the Zampoñistas came into my life, given its deep roots in my musical past.

6.  Lachlan Tigers (The Bushwackers)
The music:
I discovered the Bushwackers’ music in the mid-1970s, a time when Australia’s search for identity focused around the bush, sheep and cows, macho music, and romanticising the colonial experience. I loved the energy of the music and the images of the history and culture the songs conveyed. The musicianship wasn’t bad either – especially Louis McManus on fiddle.

I am a sucker for energetic songs in a minor key. It’s such an exciting sound. I did a bit of research on this tune, and may have discovered what it is I like about it. It is in the ‘Locrian’ mode, which starts the scale from the 7^th note — an unusual mode which viewed as having an ‘unsettled’ sound.

My life:
Around the time when I started going out with Jill, in 1976, we and some other friends used to go to the Dan O’Connell most Wednesday nights so see the Bushwhackers. The line up at the time included Jan Wositzky, Louis McManus, Mick Slocum, Peter Howell and Dobe Newton.

We pretty much knew their repertoire word for word and note for note. They were my education into Australian folk music, and a key reason why Jill and I started a bush band with friends Benjamin Lindner and Maggie Somerville in 1982. We drew a fair bit of our repertoire from them, but branched out to many other sources.

This band was also critical in getting me to start song writing, because Maggie was the first songwriter I ever knew personally, and seeing how she wrote simple, accessible, appealing songs was a revelation to me, and inspired me to start writing.

At first I wrote parodies and songs to existing tunes because I didn’t have the confidence to write tunes. This included one about Leonard Cohen, to the tune of Suzanne! But eventually I came to a topic where I couldn’t think of an existing tune for a song I wanted to write, so I had a go at a tune.

I went to study in Princeton, in the US for 2 years from 1982-84. Jill and I got married and she came with me. This cut the band’s career short, although when Benjamin and Maggie visited us in 1984 we did a few gigs around NJ. It’s in the US where I wrote the Leonard Cohen song (my second ever) and my first tune for a song (It’s Good to be Back in Melbourne, about returning home after years away). When we returned, we reformed the band.

7.  Ashokan Farewell (Jay Unger, with Fiddle Fever)
The music:
It’s an absolutely beautiful tune – perhaps the best folk tune written in the late 20^th century. And like most great tunes, it follows the rules, but breaks them – this time with the stunning climactic C natural, which takes the tune right out of the ordinary. It’s the killer note in the tune. It became well known as the theme music from Ken Burns’ documentary series The Civil War, but it was written to celebrate a dance weekend in Ashokan, upstate NY.

My life:
The two years we lived in Princeton, in the north east USA, were dominated musically by contra dancing, which is the funnest kind of dancing on the planet. We really learned how to dance and to play dance music there. It’s where I took up the fiddle. In our second winter we went to a dance camp at Ashokan, upstate New York (near where Woodstock was held). Jay Unger and his band Fiddle Fever was the house band. Couldn’t get a better band to dance to! It was a beautiful weekend in the forest, with sleet and frozen dew, if not actual snow.  At the end of the weekend Jay played a tune he’d written to remember a great weekend – Ashokan Farewell.

Prior to our time in America I wasn’t that fond of American music, but old timey, New England contra and Quebecois music became firm favourites.

Dancing was a big part of Jill and my early participation in the folk scene. My first performance at a National Folk Festival was as a dancer with Melbourne’s Colonial Dancers, Melbourne 1986.

8.  The Gift of Years (Eric Bogle) 
The music:
Eric Bogle is a wonderful story teller. His tunes and words are simple – but not simplistic. This song is the epitome of simplicity and economy of the poet.

My life:
I saw Eric Bogle at the first folk festival I ever went to (Longford 1980). We first heard And the Band Played Waltzing Matilda in 1977 in a pub in Galway, Ireland of all places, and were blown away by it. As we started going to folk festivals a year or two before I started writing songs, I gravitated to a number of songwriters: especially Bogle, Judy Small, Bernard Carney, and Bernard Bolan.

Bogle & Small: it was their combination of a clear ideological viewpoint, storytelling, and the importance of funny songs (which sometimes make a point – sometimes just for the joy that humour brings); with Carney & Bolan, it was their capacity for humour – but not just cheap laughs – the cleverness.

In the mid-1980s, after we returned from America, we reformed the bush band, calling ourselves Drover’s Dog, adding Bruce Stephens and Ernie Gruner, who later formed Jugularity. When Drover’s Dog broke up, I had a clutch of songs, so started singing them in folk clubs and open mic’s. I got a good reaction, and wrote more and more, based on those songwriters’ model.

When I had about 20 songs, I made a demo cassette and sent it to several musicians whom I admired, but had mostly never met. Only a couple bothered to get back to me. One was Eric Bogle. He did the most wonderful thing: He wrote a long hand written letter in response – giving a (mostly glowing – but also helpful) commentary on each and every song. It was an extraordinary act of generosity to give his time and expertise to this unknown aspiring writer. That was how Amazon got to him, and as a result he recorded it, and performed it around the world — which gave it far more exposure than I ever could, including internationally. I am very grateful to him.

I think I am more diverse stylistically than he is, but I still think his style is still the bedrock of my song writing and performing.

Book: Year of Wonders (Geraldine Brooks)
It was very hard picking one book. My first thought was Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children. I love the fantasy, expansiveness and playfulness of magical realism (Gabriel García Márquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude)

is another favourite, along with Isabelle Allende’s House of Spirits), and this book is the greatest of them all. It would certainly keep me entertained for a long time on a desert island. When I read it I was agog with wonder at its cleverness, its scintillating prose and wit.  But ultimately I don’t relate to the subject matter based around Indian history and culture, so it’s a great work, but doesn’t speak to my soul.

Overall, it is Australian literature that speaks most deeply to me. I have read Henry Handel Richardson’s The Fortunes of Richard Mahony three times. I love  Richard Flanagan, especially The Sound of One Hand Clapping, and many of Peter Carey’s novels (Oscar & Lucinda, Illywhacker), David Malouf (Remembering Babylon, Imaginary Life, Johnno), and Kate Grenville (The Lieutenant, Secret River, A Room Made of Leaves)

But maybe in the end I would choose Year of Wonders. It is a story of humanity, dealing with adversity, courage, community and empowerment. And it is told really well. I love Brookes’ writing – it’s simple yet very conscious of inhabiting the voice and language of the subject in its place and time. I feel that finding the right voice and idiom for a song I write is critical to its success. It’s the sort of thing people don’t notice, but when you get it right, it’s critical to their (unconscious) appreciation of the song.

Luxury item: My fiddle
This may surprise some people, who don’t realise I even play the fiddle. I am not good enough on the instrument to perform with it on stage, but I will be seen at festivals having a wonderful time scraping away in sessions. I enjoy guitar and piano, but of all the instruments I have dabbled in, the fiddle gives me most joy. It’s so versatile, and so challenging. I can play it for hours, whereas I get bored playing guitar after a while. So it would serve me well on a desert island!