ABOUT THE ALBUM

​The book was amazing, the film stunning and, I’m happy to say, the CD delivers just as powerfully           
                                                                   Jess Lilley, InPress, 2000

This is an amazing collection of recordings ... Bitter it’s not, engaging it is, and even sometimes confrontational but never alienating ... at the very least always interesting and at times absolutely stunning
                                                               Neal Hunt, Revolver, 2000

Changes to the book are seamless but the shock of the new resounds through the reissued CD      
                                            Anthony O'Grady, the Australian, 2015

This updated 1.5 edition is every bit as strong as the original
                         Noel Mengel, Courier Mail, 2015 (read in full here)

​To coincide with 2015’s second edition of Buried Country through Verse Chorus Press, Warner Music in Australia released a new rebooted version of the CD called Buried Country 1.5. It was called 1.5 because it wasn't all-new – if it was it would warrant the '2' suffix – but was rather a sort of remix, with about half the tracks from the 2000 Larrikin-Festival original condensed down onto Disk One, now joined by a full Disk Two’s worth of new stuff that’s come out since 2000. I wanted to mix it up, so in addition to paying tribute to the elders, especially those still with us, the set also took the opportunity to shine a light on some more current, younger performers… and I am flattered that even many of the veteran fans of the original BCD have taken just as enthusiastically to this new edition.

Then in 2018, the BC album was extended further with the release, through American label Mississippi Records in a co-pro with Australia's Flippin' Yeah Records, of a vinyl LP iteration, which, retaining some tracks from the original CD and then adding some even rarer cuts, is a stunning package that does more than just extend the existing BC juggernaut but is virtually a whole new entity in its own right. Since it quickly sold out its pressing run, work has now begun on a digital iteration of the album.
 
I am ultimately flattered that in the same way that Lenny Kaye’s 1972 double-album of 60s American garage bands Nuggets was a part of the inspiration for not only me but a whole generation of pre-punk people to push towards the sea-change of 1977 – not dissimilar to the way Harry Smith’s 1952 six-album set Anthology of American Folk Music was the virtual source document for the folk revival and 60s’ folk-rock to follow – the Buried Country CD proffered a set of songs that became, if only by default, the basic repertoire in its field, and it has inspired and informed subsequent generations of musicians both black and white alike, and even some overseas. When YouTube was rising in the early 2000s and all sorts of long-submerged recordings were suddenly thrust upon the world, whenever you saw a clip of vintage Australian Aboriginal music, it was almost invariably lifted from the Buried Country CD. Recovering the lost and re-empowering it is the most noble function a timely anthology can fulfill.

Side by side the three sets' tracklistings as follows illustrate the differences and similarities:

​2000 CD
DISC ONE
1 JIMMY LITTLE ‘Royal Telephone’ 1963 
2 OLIVE & EVA ‘Old Rugged Hills’ 1955
3 BLACK ALLAN BARKER ‘Take Me Back’ 1983
4 BROWN BROS  ‘Black & White Cat’ 1976
5 GEORGIA LEE ‘Downunder Blues’ 1962
6 ASSANG BROS ‘Just a Closer Walk with Thee’ 1965
7 JIMMY LITTLE ‘Shadow of the Boomerang’ 1960
8 DOUGIE YOUNG ‘Cut A Rug’ 1965
9 GEORGE BRACKEN ‘Blue Jean Rock’ 1959
10 CANDY WILLIAMS ‘Oh, Lonesome Me’ 1979
11 WILMA READING ‘That’s How I Go for You’ 1961
12 LIONEL ROSE ‘Jackson’s Track’ 1972
13 AURIEL ANDREW ‘Truck Driving Woman’ 1970
14 COL HARDY ‘Blacktracker’ 1978
15 LIONEL ROSE ‘I Thank You’ 1969
16 VIC SIMMS ‘Stranger in My Country’ 1973
17 VIC SIMMS ‘Get Back into the Shadows’ 1973
18 COUNTRY OUTCASTS ‘Streets of Old Fitzroy’ 1981
19 COUNTRY OUTCASTS ‘Jackie-Jackie’ 1981
20 MAISIE KELLY ‘My Home in the Valley’ 1999
21 COUNTRY OUTCASTS ‘Blue Gums Calling Me Back Home’ 1981
22 BOBBY McLEOD ‘Wayward Dreams’ 1988
23 BLACK ALLAN BARKER ‘Run, Dingo, Run’ 1983
24 BOBBY McLEOD ‘The Resurrection’ 1988
 
DISC TWO
1 HERB LAUGHTON ‘Ghan to the Alice’ 1984
2 GALARRWUY YUNUPINGU ‘Gurindji Blues’ 1971
3 WILGA WILLIAMS ‘Arnhem Land Lullaby’ 1979
4 BOB RANDALL ‘Brown Skin Baby’ 1984
5 GUS WILLIAMS ‘Old Aboriginal Stockman’ 1994
6 ERNIE BRIDGE ‘Helicopter Ringer’ 1980
7 JIM RIDGEWAY ‘Ticket to Nowhere’ 1980
8 ROGER KNOX & EURABA ‘Streets of Tamworth’ 1984
9 ROGER KNOX & EURABA ‘Koori Rose’ 1984
10 COUNTRY SHADES ‘Home-Made Didjeridoo’ 1986
11 ROGER KNOX & EURABA ‘Goulburn Jail’ 1988
12 MAC SILVER ‘Malabar Mansion’ 1988
13 MOP & THE DROP-OUTS ‘Brisbane Blacks’ 1982
14 BILL WELLINGTON ‘The Night Owl’ 1985
15 WARUMPI BAND ‘Jailanguru Pakarnu’ 1984
16 MILLS SISTERS ‘Arafura Pearl’ 1987
17 KEVIN GUNN  ‘Down By Banjo Bore’ 1991
18 ARCHIE ROACH ‘Took the Children Away’ 1990
19 TIDDAS ‘Inside My Kitchen’ 1992
20 TROY CASSAR-DALEY ‘Proud Young Man’ 1990
21 JIMMY LITTLE ‘Yorta Yorta Man’ 1995

​2015 CD1.5
DISC ONE
1 VIC SIMMS Get Back Into the Shadows 1973
2 JIMMY LITTLE Shadow of the Boomerang 1960
3 BLACK ALLAN BARKER Run Dingo Run 1983
4 LIONEL ROSE Jackson’s Track 1972
5 VIC SIMMS Hey Sheriff 1988
6 WARUMPI BAND Jailanguru Pukarnu 1984
7 MOP & THE DROP-OUTS Brisbane Blacks 1982
8 KANKAWA NAGARRA Nyantu Yangka Parlaa 2013
9 ALI MILLS Waltjimn Bat Matilda 2010
10 MAISIE KELLY My Home in the Valley 1999
11 KEV CARMODY You Beautiful 2003
12 COUNTRY OUTCASTS Blue Gums Calling Me Back Home 1981
13 GUS WILLIAMS Old Aboriginal Stockman 1994
14 ISAAC YAMMA Pitjantjatjarra Boy 1983
15 AURIEL ANDREW Ghost Gums 2013
16 ROGER KNOX & EURABA Koorie Rose 1984
17 TRACEY LEE GRAY Streets of Tamworth 1988
18 MAC SILVA Malabar Mansion 1988
19 RUBY HUNTER Women’s Business 1994
20 TIDDAS Inside My Kitchen 1992
21 TROY CASSAR-DALEY Proud Young Man 1990
22 RUG CUTTERS Land Where the Crow Flies Backwards 2015
23 ROGER KNOX Wayward Dreams 2012
24 LIONEL ROSE I Thank You 1969

  DISC TWO
1 PIGRAM BROTHERS Barefoot Kid 1998
2 NAOMI PIGRAM Hurts to Be Me 2009
3 WARREN WILLIAMS w. JOHN WILLIAMSON Raining on the Rock 1998
4 PETER BRANDY Long Time Ago 2008
5 KUTCHA EDWARDS Get Back Up 2012
6 DAN SULTAN Old Fitzroy 2010
7 L.J. HILL Pretty Bird Tree 2009
8 FRANK YAMMA She Cried 2010
9 TOM LEWIS Two Dollar 2006
10 JOHN BENNETT Wangkaja 2011
11 SUE RAY Red Roses 2011
12 BENNY WALKER Time 2015
13 THELMA PLUM Around Here 2013
14 LEAH FLANAGAN September Song 2010
15 ARCHIE ROACH Big Black Train 2012
16 PAINTED LADIES Stranger in My Country 2014
17 GLENN SKUTHORPE Great Beyonder 2013
18 JIMMY LITTLE Yorta Yorta Man 2008
19 THEONA COUNCILLOR Cover Me  2007

2018 LP

SIDE ONE
1 BLACK ALLAN BARKER Take Me Back
2 GALARRWUY YUNUPINGU Gurindji Blues
3 WARUMPI BAND Jailanguru Pakarnu
4 KANKAWA NIAGARA Yanany Baliba
5 KOORIERS Sick of Being Treated Like a Mangy Old Dog
 ​

SIDE TWO
1 JIMMY LITTLE Give the Coloured Lad a Chance
2 BROWN BROTHERS Black and White Cat
3 DOUGIE YOUNG Cut a Rug
4 MAISIE KELLY My Home in the Valley
5 COUNTRY OUTCASTS Streets of Old Fitzroy
6 BOBBY McLEOD The Resurrection

​I produced and annotated the original BCD in collaboration with Warren Fahey, of Larrikin Records, and Warren Barnett, of Festival, who did such a fine job on the re-mastering. In 2015, the new edition was greenlighted at Warners by MD Tony Harlow, the trouble-shooting was done by Dave Laing and Nick Young, and once again it was (re-?)re-mastered by Warren Barnett. In 2018, the Mississippi/Flippin' Yeah vinyl LP was produced by Darren Hanlon, and you can read that whole full story here.
 
The album was based – and probably began – in my many years as a crate-digger, or record collector, a vinyl junkie. I can still vividly remember the time, in the mid-80s, when I came across a copy of Vic Simms’ now-legendary 1973 album The Loner at Sydney’s late-lamented emporia of second-hand records, Ashwood’s, and only having half an idea of what it was. But on the evidence of its artist’s obvious Aboriginality and the cover credit saying ‘RECORDED LIVE AT BATHURST GOAL, NSW’, it wasn’t hard to decide, at a price of only two dollars, to take it home for a try-out. And dropping it on the deck, I couldn’t believe what I was hearing! Copies of this album now change hands for hundreds of dollars on eBay.
 
I can’t remember, contrastingly, how I ever picked up a copy of ‘Gurindji Blues’, say, but I did and it blew my mind too. I went to great lengths to procure copies of the cassettes that CAAMA (the Central Australian Aboriginal Media Association) started putting out in the early 80s, including belated debuts by artists like Bob Randall, Herb Laughton and Isaac Yamma, and the explosive debut of the Warmup Band. Cassettes became the real medium for Aboriginal music in the 80s, and all the more perilously - and thus greater reason for trying to preserve - because cassettes tend to die as opposed to the way that vinyl can actually survive quite a bit of punishment.

I do remember that it was former AAA (Aboriginal Artists’ Agency) operative Chris McGuigan who lent me a treasure trove of material, his personal archive including posters, photos and records, among which was a copy of Jim Ridgeway’s 1980 single ‘Ticket to Nowhere’, which I’d never even heard of, let alone heard, and it blew my mind too. (In a beautifully symmetrical closing of that circle, it was only recently that I’ve met and talked with the then-96 year old writer of ‘Ticket to Nowhere’, Joan Fairbridge, and her story is itself fascinating but one that will have to wait for the appropriate forum to be told...)

Artwork by Redback Grafix

Crate-digging and DJing are two sides of the same coin, and my background and on-going sideline as a DJ has primed me well as an anthologist, teaching me how to most effectively mix, or re-mix, a set of songs, how to structure a sonic narrative. And so even as an anthology like Buried Country, that spans decades, obviously has to pay some heed to chronology – if only to avoid jarring leaps of fidelity due to the variations or improvement in recording technology over time – I like to think the album strikes the right balance of moods shifting over the appropriate dramatic arc.

In the middle of the production of the original album, I got hold of a 1998 American 3CD box-set called From Where I Stand: The Black Experience in Country Music, and it blew my mind all over again. It was an enormous confidence-booster that told me I was on the right track. Along the way as a collector, I’d picked up the odd album by the likes of, say, Otis Williams (and his Midnight Cowboys!) or Stoney Edwards, who suggested that Charley Pride wasn’t the only ‘negro’ in Nashville, but From Where I Stand was actually a treasure trove of great, great music that showed just how deep and wide the African-American country tradition was.

It was one of the boons of the CD era for which it's not got enough credit, that it enabled not so much the rediscovery as discovery of a lot of hitherto marginal music, re-mastering and re-releasing especially genre-bending stuff that had fallen between the cracks, and non-Anglophone stuff like music from Africa, Asia and South America, to name a few fields of my particular interest, that had previously hardly got out of its home neighbourhood and reached the West.

I take pride that BC played a part in that process, and that it sits comfortably, I think, alongside the Harry Smith set and Nuggets as an anthology whose revisionist approach to Australian music’s past has altered its future if only minutely but certainly for the better.
​

Folk music for the ages - Ian McFarlane, Addicted to Noise, 2015 ​
 
Anybody who has a love of or interest in Australian music will carry some shame after listening to this remarkable collection ... producer Clinton Walker has dug up an incredible range of artists… How could so many great acts, so many wonderful songs pass with barely a ripple of interest or recognition?
                                                              Peter Lalor, Daily Telegraph, 2000
 
Not the sort of thing that anyone, apart from a few hardcore fans, would buy for listening pleasure. It is a strange hodgepodge of styles and traditions masquerading as a coherent statement
                                                Bruce Elder, Sydney Morning Herald, 2000
 
Years ago now, I was in Sydney on my way to meet someone whose girlfriend was going to be in a video shoot for me.  On the way there I read about Robbie Williams in the Saturday paper. He did come out with one good quote: "I go round to people's houses and they've got fantastic record collections... and I'm not in them."  Anyway, I got to this guy's place, and he had a fantastic record collection, and the first thing I spotted in it was Buried Country. So, we might not have his millions but we're still one up on Robbie!
                                                               Ed Matzenik, Enrec Records, 2015

This is the direct impact: The BC songbook, if I could call it that, has fed to varying degrees into projects by Jon Langford, Tina C, Toby Martin, Luke Peacock and Darren Hanlon, and in this latter case led all the way up to the BC LP. Chicago-based Welshman Langford, who has led punk icons the Mekons for forty years now, stumbled across Buried Country and started out painting portraits of its black stars (he is a visual artist as well as a musician - see some of those pictures in the Art Gallery). When the original CD was deleted, he became doubly determined to “get these songs that deserve to be heard” back into circulation, and did so by producing, for US label Bloodshot, an album of Roger Knox singing those songs called Stranger in My Land.

Tina C is a British drag act, as we used to call them (aka Christopher Green), who heard Buried Country and went on to produce the show Sorry Seems to be the Hardest Word, which was built around many of the classic songs, and which toured Australia in 2012 with such guest-stars as Auriel Andrew, Ali Mills and James Henry in tow.

Local musicians Toby Martin (late of Youth Group and author of the great book Yodelling Boundary Riders), Luke Peacock (of Brisbane country-rock band Halfway) and solo star Darren Hanlon, the Gympie Songster, were all turned on to varying degrees by Buried Country, to respectively go on to: further research the life and music of Dougie Young and pay tribute to him with the band the Rug Cutters; pay tribute to Vic Simms and his album The Loner with the band/show the Painted Ladies; and for Darren, to start out searching for the ghost of Dougie Young and end up producing the Buried Country vinyl LP. 
​
More recently, after L.J. Hill’s 'Pretty Bird Tree' was included on BC1.5, it copped cover versions from not only Paul Kelly but also Irish singer Pauline Scanlon… which was always part of the plan… with hopefully more of the same to follow…
​