During his life, Lawson wrote hundreds of poems, some of which are better than others. In recent years, particularly, there’s been a denunciation of Lawson’s verse but, like almost all of us, Lawson’s work waxed and waned in quality and longevity.

It’s interesting to look back. Most of the poems David Minear and I chose for the album are taken from Lawson’s early years, with the exception of Scots of the Riverina and The Low Lighthouse, both marvellous poems written towards the end of his life. Lawson’s strongest verse, the verse that was the most telling, the verse in which he was able to really articulate the human condition in a way ordinary Australians responded to, was written earlier in his career rather than later.

There were two broad criteria for the choice of songs. The first one was that we felt that the selected poems had to have some chance of resonating with Australia - and Australians - in 2005. A lot of Lawson’s poems were very much of their times and, to a greater or lesser extent, didn’t survive beyond them. I can’t speak for David here but the other criterion I used was whether any song that emerged from the transition from poem to song could made in a film clip in 2005 - and still retain its integrity.

In some instances, David and I had different reasons for selecting the same poem. I was looking at the poems from a songwriter’s point of view; I mean, how difficult or easy was it going to be to write music to a particular poem. I have to say if the internal rhythm was at all strained, jumpy or challenging, I steered way from it. I’m a chicken. I was also looking for poems that could sustain the “verse-chorus-middle eight” format, which is very much a part of contemporary music.

When they look at the lyric booklet in the CD, Lawson scholars and aficionados will realise that I have taken some liberty with some of Lawson’s words. In some instances I’ve chopped verses out altogether. In some instances I’ve “cut and shunted” verses together. In a couple of instances I’ve created a chorus where there wasn’t one, using lines in a verse that I perhaps didn’t use elsewhere. I hope that I’ve done the work justice and I hope that the ‘end’ justifies the means, the ‘end’ being getting Lawson and Lawson’s work back on the national stage at a time when Australia is being bombarded with cultural crap from all over the globe.

We also wanted to choose, from Lawson’s body of work, a selection of poems that in someway reflected the man and his life and we’ve very much tried to do that. I have a reputation as a songwriter who is almost wholly concerned with social and political issues but David and I have tried to present both aspects of Lawson: the determined Australian, the political and social activist as well as the sensitive bloke who loved and lost love, who was admired and respected but also disparaged and rejected for his behaviour, the bloke who had his fair share of heartaches, trials and tribulations.