Find out more about the making of the album - click on the track names below...

To an Old Mate
Knocking About
Glass on the Bar
Second Class Wait Here
Faces in the Street
Bush Girl
Taking His Chance
Scots of the Riverina
To Hannah
Prouder Man than You
The Low Lighthouse
The Shame of Going Back
To Jim

Also, find out more about choosing the songs and sequencing.

To An Old Mate

Both David and I were very keen to open the album with To An Old Mate. This was one of the poems that I took the most liberty with in that I changed some words and reworked some verses to ensure that the song set the album up.

“I gathered these songs together for the sake of our friendship and true,
and I sent them along instead of the letters I’d promised to write to you”.

This is one my favourite songs on the album for a whole host of reasons. It was the first time that Shane Howard and I have sung together so it was terrific fun. People who’ve heard it observe that Shane’s voice and my voice, both very distinctive Australian voices on the musical landscape, blend very easily with each other. We weren’t to know that really until we put the headphones on and gathered around the microphone to sing. One of the other striking aspects of To An Old Mate song is Kerryn Tolhurst’s work on the lap steel. I have never used lap steel on an album before and it just sounds sensational. The important contribution that To An Old Mate makes to the whole album is to “gather these songs together” and provide the listener with a rationale for what’s going on here.

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Knocking Around

Knocking Around is the song that we drew the band’s name from - “…knocking around with a vagabond crew..” This was a terrific moment on the album because for first time in 19 or 20 years, Michael Atkinson, Hughie McDonald and I, the three main voices in Redgum, got to sing together again. Everyone remarked how easily we slipped into singing together again. As we walked out of the studio, with our arms around each other, I think, you know, in truth a bit moved about having recreated the old firm, Hughie looked at us and said, “That was great. It was like making love to your ex-missus”. (They weren’t exactly the word he used but that’s what he meant.) We all laughed.

To me, Knocking Around reminds me of those young men who’re out in the bush, working out in the station country. They don’t ride horses but they still shear, they muster and they fence… They don’t have horses these days: they usually have Toyota tray-tops or Holden utes. And often, when I’ve been knocking around the bush, late at night in a pub, or a shearing-shed or where there is something going on, these blokes will drift in from the station country at night with an esky strapped the tray of the ute full of beer and Bundy. The whole “knocking around” ethos is still out there where the bitumen stops and the dirt takes over.

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The Glass on the Bar

The Glass on the Bar is, obviously, drawn from Henry’s experience when he went bush. It’s a rather sad and emotional song and for me, once again, is one of my favourites on the album. It was a great pleasure to work with Russell Morris and Broderick Smith, two singers that I have admired from a distance for such a long time.

Russell and Broderick did such a great job. I’m still quite moved by it when I listen to the song now even though I wrote the music and have lived with it for a long time.

When I hear The Glass on the Bar I can’t help but think of my Dad and my close mate Professor Brian Medlin, who died in the middle of 2004. This song very much reflects the way I feel about those two blokes. And, when all is said and done, there is nothing like a song in three-four time to prick the eyes and bring a lump to the throat. I particularly love the way that our three voices work so well together. Broderick has a very distinctive voice and very distinctive Hereford accent. And Russell is just an amazing singer who can just get on the inside of a song and make every syllable live. If we’re ever going to make a film clip from the album, this will be the one.

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Second Class Wait Here

Given my own political and social predispositions, Second Class Wait Here is a very important song to me. It speaks for itself.

Mick Wordley drew my attention to Second Class Wait Here when, years ago on his houseboat we were dreaming about doing an album based on Lawson’s poems. To that point it had escaped my notice, which is weird. I think Mick had tried to put some chords to the poem but he hadn’t got too far.

When I went up to Bali to write the songs, Second Class Wait Here was very much in the forefront in my mind. It works, it works really well - particularly with Steve and Alan Pigram from the Pigram Brothers from Broome, singing on the track. Their low, dark gravelly tones are just sensational and as producer, Kerryn really did a great job. He encouraged me to introduce the anger and the frustration slowly into my voice rather than do what I usually do - which is just approach the microphone like a bull at a gate.

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Faces in the Street

It is hardly a novel thing to turn Faces in the Street, Lawson’s most famous poem, into song. It’s been done by a number of people but I think the version we have done is pretty special. And I think the “special-ness” mainly derives from Robbie Hirst’s drum track. When I wrote the song, with only two chords, I always had it in my mind for Robbie to play drums, as I knew he’d just open the song up and take it somewhere else. He did.

As it is on the album, it is very much a “one take wonder”. Rob sat down at the kit, put his little bits and pieces together and just started to play. The band just picked up on where he was going and followed him through it. It was an awesome performance from everyone. Robbie played with so much passion and fervour and it was after that Kerryn and I invited him to sing on it because Robbie’s got a great voice as well. Robbie and I have been mates since 1979 but we had never sung together on a record. We’ve sung and played together heaps of times on our back verandahs but never in a formal sense and the two voices go together really well. It’s a real stand-out track. In some ways Faces in the Street is a defining moment on the album, but in another sense, because of the intensity, the arrangement and slow powerful build, it stands apart. Everyone who contributed to the album sings in the swelling chorus at the end.

In today’s political climate Faces in the Street is as important and relevant today as when it was written. Perhaps more so.

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The Bush Girl

I was poring through some notes and music books that I’ve had lying around for years, I realised - and had actually forgotten - that I had attempted to put some music to The Bush Girl for the first album that I did after I left Redgum, an album called Etched in Blue. The music on this album is quite new but this poem has been hanging around at the edge of my firelight for man, many years. It has a contemporary context in the sense that it’s still the men who most often go away today, leaving their partners behind: they go down to the airport and they fly off, often without a backward glance.

For this reason, I’ve always thought that it would be very easy to make a contemporary film clip to The Bush Girl. This song is also one of my favourites. Again, I sang it with Shane Howard and with his sister, Marcia. Those guys have developed for themselves a distinctive “brother-sister” vocal blend and it’s great watching them work together. Marce sings on two songs on the album and she softens the whole album down remarkably. Kerryn’s lovely little mandolin line pulls the whole thing together. This is one of the songs on the album that women have told me that they really like.

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Taking His Chance

Taking His Chance is a strange song for me for me to do. It’s more in the tradition of Bushwhackers than Redgum but I think there is something important about remembering where we came from and the kind of society, social engagements, interaction and conflict that occurred in colonial Australia.

There’s not much more to it than a good story - but a good story that harks back to Australia’s colonial past and resonates with something that still exists within Australia today - and that is our traditional and highly prized disregard for authority. It’s a terrific song to play and the fiddle by Michael Harris, himself an ex-Bushwhacker is just sensational.

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Scots of the Riverina

In the minds of the few people who have heard the album thus far, Scots of the Riverina is one of the absolute stand-out tracks. It is certainly one that’s been done before by other artists, but I don’t think ever like this. The interesting thing about this song is we recorded it, including the vocal, absolutely live - other than the violin part. It’s very much the band playing live…

With regard to the poem itself, I’m fortunate enough not to have fallen out with my parents but I can imagine the heartache that a falling-out like the one in Scots of the Riverina would bring to a family. Then to have the son die in a war without reconciliation would be an absolutely awful thing.

To me, Scots of the Riverina is a very emotional poem and one that, perhaps, works much more powerfully as a song. We had to fade the tail of the song when we finally mixed it because when we were laying it down we kept playing just because the band was cooking and it felt so good. I think the original unfaded “outro” was as long as the song itself!

Lawson was an enthusiastic supporter of Australia’s involvement in WW1 and as we have troops serving overseas today, I think the poem still has relevance today. It’s a song you could play around Anzac Day, I think, and I’m surprised it hasn’t been picked up on before this.

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To Hannah

Notwithstanding a number of biographers, Henry Lawson’s relationship with Hannah Thornburn is not entirely clear. She was much younger than Lawson and he met her after he married his wife, Bertha, but obviously there was a deep, emotional attachment.

Hannah, in fact, died when Lawson was on his way back from London with his wife and she is buried in a untended grave in Melbourne. In the years following her death Lawson made a number of significant and moving references to Hannah. This one, To Hannah, is perhaps the best of Lawson’s “Hannah” poems. The violin lines are very reminiscent of a deep longing and Marcia Howard’s haunting, ghost-like vocal makes it a very special song. Again, women have said to me that they really like this one.

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A Prouder Man Than You

A Prouder Man Than You is kind of song that you would expect Henry Lawson to write. Remember that Henry Lawson had spent some years around Sydney as not a very awe-inspiring character, a bit of shambolic drunk who couldn’t get his life together in lots of ways - though still widely admired and respected as a writer. While A Prouder Man Than You was written before Lawson’s “troubles”, in retrospect A Prouder Man Than You could well have been written later in his life, in a sober moment, with Lawson reflecting on his failures and his disintegrating reputation. I think for those of us with pride there is a great deal in that song that we can all relate to.

A Prouder Man Than You is a duet with Russell Morris. When he signed up for the Lawson project, Russell was terrific. I sent him the demos, the words and the charts and he actually sat down with his guitar and learned to play these songs before the session, even though he was only going to sing. When he came to record the song, it was very clear that he was already right inside the song, in a way that was quite humbling and very moving.

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The Low Lighthouse

The Low Lighthouse is a poem that Henry wrote very close to the end of his life in 1921. According to at least two of his biographers, Lawson was in hospital at the time, probably the Coast Hospital, and when his condition and whereabouts were made public, many, many of his admirers wrote to him. As well as a general response to these people, whose thoughts and best wishes Lawson was very grateful for, I also like to think that The Low Lighthouse is the reflection of an older man at the close of his life.

Apart from the production and the way the band interpreted the song, I think the most striking aspect of this song is Mike Rudd’s contribution. As a young man I was a great fan of Mike Rudd during his time with Spectrum and Aerial, so I was very proud to have him come and sing on an album of mine. I sent Mike the chart and the demo and, like Russell, he also spent a fair bit of time on his interpretation of this song. At the recording session, he went in to the studio, put the headphones on and started singing. I was in the control room with the producer, Kerryn Tolhurst. We looked at each other and, as Mike was singing, I was thinking to myself “Shit. What have I done? This is mad; this is not where this song is at”. But by the time we’d listened to Mike running it down two or three times we realised that Mike Rudd had got it right and that it was my initial response that lacked vision. Mike’s interpretation was sensational. He took the song right out of the predictable zone and made it very much his own.

Mike Rudd’s “read” combined with the very deep, rumbling voices of Steve and Alan Pigram in the vocal section and Louise McCarthy’s violin and viola lines, make this a quite extraordinary performance.

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The Shame of Going Back

The Shame of Going Back is, in lots of ways, really the story of Henry Lawson’s life which is why we put it very close to the end of the album. Wherever Henry went in his life, to the bush, to Melbourne, to Albany, to Brisbane, to London, he went off in high hopes that he would be able to create for himself the comfortable, acclaimed sort of existence that he thought he deserved as the writer that he was. It never happened. He always seemed to “crawl home with empty pockets”.

It’s a very personal song from Lawson’s perspective but in some ways it really it speaks for all of us who’ve gone out on a voyage to conquer the world and come back with the arse out of our strides. That kind of resignation and disappointment was - and is - not confined to Henry.

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To Jim

To Jim was a poem David and I picked out, though we never really discussed why we both arrived at the same song. On the first album I recorded after I left Redgum, I wrote a song called “For the Children” which was, in fact, for my son, Matthew. As song it was a much more optimistic exercise than To Jim which comprises Henry’s last words to his son. A very sad but poignant moment in To Jim is where Lawson said

“..You’ll hear the whispers of the crowd, they’ll whisper tales of shame,
but the day will come when you will be proud to bear your father’s name”.

I’ve often wondered what was going on in Henry Lawson’s mind when he wrote those lines for his son. As he was very self-aware, Lawson must have known that he presented a shambolic, disreputable figure around colonial Sydney at the time. But Lawson also had a sense and a fond hope that, perhaps, his work would live on beyond him and that at, some point in time, his son would be very proud of the name of Lawson. This was the last song we recorded in the sessions. Shane Howard, Kerryn Tolhurst and I sat around in the studio in a circle with our acoustic guitars and we did it live, so what you’ve got here is an absolutely live performance, with all its faults and failings and warts - but hopefully with an endearing charm and an integrity. I think it’s a great way to finish the album.

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