THAT'S HOW THEY GET TO MEMPHIS

​A few years ago, I was asked to write a letter in support of an application for a visa to get into America that was being being made by Buried Country star Roger Knox. Roger had initially been knocked back on the grounds that he was a terrorist, or an artist of insufficient repute for the US to let him in or something like that. Without ever saying, well, he’s a black man, we don’t any more of them than we’ve already got. Anyway thankfully something worked and Roger got his visa and went on to complete his album Stranger in my Country with Jon Langford in Chicago. I’ve just done a similar thing for Roger’s son Buddy, who is a fellow cast member of the Buried Country roadshow, to help push through the general approvals for Buddy and his son Goori to go to the US to compete in the 2018 International Blues Challenge in Memphis in January. 

​I told whosoever it may concern that I first met Buddy when he was still just a teenager playing guitar in his father Roger’s Euraba Band in the early 1980s, when I was a young music journalist writing about Roger, that I’ve known him for that long, and that I could not vouch more earnestly for him as both a friend and musician. I told them, I can say unequivocably what a fine, fine musician Buddy is, and a complete professional at it, and that it’s a measure of his talent and initiative that he can cross so readily between genres like country and blues the way he goes from Buried Country or the Euraba Band with which he still still plays to this duo with Goori. It is in fact an absolute delight for me to see Buddy continuing his family tradition in music, and for Goori to be doing so well as his partner in this endeavor and gaining so much for the experience. Buddy and Goori will make fine ambassadors for Australia and especially Aboriginal Australia at the challenge in Memphis and though I may not know who their competitors are, I share their confidence that they will give it a real good shake. Go, Buddy, go!