ABOUT THE L.P.

​Not unlike the Buried Country roadshow, which was conceived and has been greatly driven by Melbourne music maven Mary Mihelakos, the BC LP was very much the baby of Darren Hanlon, the fine young singer-songwriter from Queensland whose label Flippin’ Yeah Records co-produced the album in a trans-Pacific hook-up with Mississippi Records in the US. (This is a measure of the effect BC has – it inspires people. What writer could ask for a better reaction than that?) I first met Darren, the Gympie Songster, in 2015, when he came along to the Sydney launch of the new edition of the book; and then again in 2016, when I went along to a night at the Golden Age cinema starring Erik Isaacson, who is Darren’s friend from Portland, Oregon, who runs the Mississippi label. Eric spoke amusingly about his background, his mostly-musical obsessions and the rationale behind Mississippi, and he showed some of the amazing last films shot by Alan Lomax that he has in his archive. And I thought, a kindred spirit! Mississippi has amassed a truly extraordinary catalogue of exhumed gems (gospel, blues, R&B, hillbilly, street singers, devotional music) that make Greil Marcus’s famous “old, weird America” tag seem totally inadequate. I had a brief chat with Eric at the end of the night, and left it at that. Until a little while later I got an email out of the blue from Darren who was on the road in the US and with Eric at his home in Portland: They wanted to know if I’d be interested in helping them put together this LP that’s eventuated. I said to them, you mean an actual 12” 33.3rpm vinyl LP?! Are you kidding would I be interested?!? I had only one main qualification – that we take this unique opportunity to include some material from my collection that was always perhaps a bit too arcane, a bit too lo-fi, to include on either of the two major-label CD releases. With which they couldn’t have agreed more. And so we proceeded to get the album together, or more to the point, Darren did; it was mostly his thing and an odyssey for him as he trekked over the four corners of the country tracking down whatever traces of the music he could still find. I mean, who else was gonna do it? I gave Darren all the background, contacts, leads and hunches I could, and off he went and way beyond the call of duty… And it was really only the support and encouragement he got from community and family that made the LP possible. Darren went to the Kimberley to talk to Olive Knight, and to northern NSW to talk to the daughter of Black Allan Barker and the family of Maisie Kelly. In his clapped-out old van, he went and saw Wilga Williams in Canberra, and Bobby McLeod’s daughter Natalie in nearby Nowra. He went and saw ex-Warumpi Band guitarist Sammy Butcher in Papunya. He talked to people in Darwin and people in Tasmania. He secured the rights to use a portrait of painter/singer Jimmy Pompey by Vincent Namatjira on the front cover, and a painting by Pompey himself on the back cover, as you can see here:

These artworks are stunning (and you can see more by both Namatjira and Pompey here), just as the album itself sounds as fresh and sparkling as if it was recorded yesterday; just as Darren’s dedication is total, beyond ego (money doesn’t come into it) and even beyond love, into some form of spiritual obsession… which just leaves me feeling humbled…

As Darren himself put it: “I made a few initial phone calls to clarify some things. It soon became clear that if I was to seek information from the people who really knew about it, then it would be better done face to face. So I hit the road to find them, zig-zagging all over the place. The journey found its own way. One person would say, You’ve gotta meet such and such, they’ll give you the real story. And off I’d go. By the end of it I’d almost done a complete lap of Australia.
          “I’ll admit I came into it all pretty naïve, and sometimes I’d turn up in a town without knowing if my intended interviewee was even there. I’d just start asking around, first at the pub, then the post office. I went forward with blind faith. Alice Springs locals looked at me askance when I said I was just gonna pop over to Papunya, not realizing the many hours of corrugated red soil between it and me, and the fact that I’d probably have to hitch-hike to meet my schedule. Thankfully it always managed to come together.
          “Sometimes the right person appeared without me even knowing they existed. I met Debbie Williams in a music festival coffee queue and she just happened to be related to the Country Outcasts and told me many great tales. I met Ray Kennedy asking for directions in Robinvale and spent the whole next morning with him and his family educating me on the tumultuous social history of their town and its connection to Dougie Young. Some of their stories were hard to hear and I flippantly suggested I could edit things a bit to soften the blow. Ray admonished me sternly: If you’re gonna tell this story, don’t whitewash it.”

On his round-Australia odyssey, Darren meets Salty - just 'Salty' - in the Kimberley and has a jam...

... and back in Sydney has a cup of coffee with CW, American folk singer Michael Hurley and, with son Tom, Leah Flanagan, who doesn't appear on the LP but does on the CD1.5

And so this album is not just yet another dimension to the seemingly unstoppable Buried Country juggernaut but, with the inclusion of rare tracks like the never-before re-released “Give the Coloured Lad a Chance” by Jimmy Little, and the never-ever released cassette demo of the Kooriers’ “Sick of Being Treated Like a Mangy Old Dog,” and complete with a lavish accompanying 36-page booklet, it is a whole other entity in its own right.
          It’s rare that an online retailer puts out a product description that is as eloquent as that which boomkat ran, so much so it’s worth repeating here: “Absolutely aching with soul, Mississippi’s vinyl distillation of Clinton Walker’s acclaimed ‘Anthology of Aboriginal Country Music’ is a truly revelatory set of country music made by native Australian artists, almost guaranteed to open and plug a unique gap in collections everywhere... 
          “Coincidentally arriving only weeks after the Efficient Space reissue of Waak Waak Djungi’s blend of synths and native Australian folksong in Waak Waak ga Min Min, this typically amazing Mississippi LP shines a light on a spellbinding, often unsettling, niche of music which is perhaps understandably unknown to listeners outside of Australia yet should be instantly familiar to anyone with even a basic appreciation of blues and country songcraft.
          “From the mesmerising lilt and buzz of Black Allen Barker’s ‘Take Me Back’ to the heartbreakingly humble delivery of Jimmy Little’s ‘The Coloured Lad’ and the distinctively NSW-twang and bluesy rasp of Maisie Kelly’s ‘My Home in the Valley’, this is an incredible set of songs that will resonate with listeners far beyond their original home.”