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SISTA-SEQUEL

17/11/2017

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Out in February 2018, through New South Press:

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BACK FOR A LITTLE TRIBUTE IN TAMMY

4/11/2017

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Delighted to be able to announce, just confirmed, the next Buried Country: Live in Concert gig will be at the Tamworth Country Music Festival in January 2018. Co-presented by the Jimmy Little Foundation, Buried Country will appear in concert at the Capitol Theatre in Tammy on Sunday, January 21.

This marks something of a completion of a circle, because it was at Tamworth, during festival time two years ago, that Buried Country had its first rehearsals and played a quiet little showcase performance at Enrec Studios; from which everything we’ve done since has flowed. At that same time in 2016, BC cast-member Franny Peters-Little was unveiling, as you can see here, a bronze bust of her father Jimmy that was added to the Country Music Trail in Tamworth’s Bicentennial Park:

Perhaps it’s opportune to note here now too that in attendance at that Enrec session was Iain Shedden, a long-time supporter and great friend of BC who has sadly just passed away. Sheddy went off and wrote up in his Spin Doctor column in the Australian that our little invite-only event was one of the two best gigs he saw up at Tammy at that time, and we were all grateful for his support – he subsequently afforded us another major feature in the Australian – and we will miss him dearly.

So there are all those good reasons and more that we are so happy to finally be returning to Australia’s home of country music, the ‘more’ being that it is a hometown gig at last for the Knox family members of the show – and that the date is a special milestone birthday for Franny too.

The Jimmy Little Foundation is a non-profit organisation that carries on its namesake’s dedication to the improvement of the quality of life and health of Indigenous Australians, and Buried Country is proud that it is proud to be co-presenting our Tammy show. We know that Franny, James Henry and the whole mob will do Jimmy and Marj proud - and we’ll do one for Sheddy too!

For tix go to the Capitol Theatre here

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VALE JAMES MACLEOD, 1972-2017

26/9/2017

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It is sad indeed to have to report on the death of James Djagamara Macleod, one of the stars of the Buried Country 1.5 album. That’s James’s voice you hear at the start of the mash-up ‘title sequence’ that opens our every BC: Live in Concert performance. When the time came in 2015 to put together the BC1.5 CD, I was so determined to have a track on it by the sometime band James had with Toby Martin – the Rug Cutters, a sort of tribute band to James’s grandfather, the legendary Dougie Young – they became the only act to purpose-record something for it.

And now I’m even gladder we did that, because not only was it a great thrill for James, but serves as something of a small legacy… we remember James and fondly, and convey all our condolences…

Now, for the real deal, over to Toby Martin, who from his current UK base penned the following testimonial that was read out at James’s funeral in Queanbeyan, and is reproduced here with the kind permission of James’s family:

I first met James in 2011. I had just started a fellowship at the National Library in Canberra where I was researching the music of Aboriginal folk and country artists, including the legendary Dougie Young. I got a phone call from a friend of a friend one day who said, “I’ve got the number of Dougie’s grandson for you!” James and I arranged to meet at a café outside the Eora centre in Redfern, where he was studying. He had a guitar with him and, there and then, at the café, he busted it out of his case and gave me a full-throated rendition of his own songs, as well as his arrangement of his grandfather’s powerful song about black identity ‘The Land Where the Crow Flies Backwards’. It was different from the original version – it was fuller, more strident, more rock, very much done in James’ own style. Inside his guitar case were a few gum leaves that he told me had picked up from a river bank at Michelago a few days beforehand. That was my first introduction to Jimmy: charming, crackling with energy, a bit wild, interested in connections to Country and his people. Utterly and truly himself. It was a first-impression that was to prove consistent throughout the time I knew him.

James discovered his Aboriginal family when he was 21. So he was already a musician himself when he found out who his Grandfather was and the respect with which he was held in Aboriginal communities. If it was a coincidence, it was a pretty mystical one.

James and I got a country-rock band band together to play Dougie Young’s songs. We called ourselves the Rugcutters, after the famous Dougie Young song ‘Cut A Rug’. James taught us his arrangement of ‘The Crow’. He also did a beautiful, bitter, stripped-down version of ‘Old Wilcannia Town’, and a spoken-word turn on ‘I Don’t Want Your Money’. We played some great gigs that year: at the Block in Redfern with kids down the front and seated Aunties at the back, at the Sandringham Hotel in Newtown where Jeremy Beckett, the anthropologist who originally recorded Young, came up to us and said, “Dougie’s finally got his rock and roll band!”, and at the Canberra Folk Festival to a packed tent of folk afficiandos. People were often struck by the way we had re-interpreted Young’s acoustic songs, and in particular the fresh life James had breathed into his Grandfather’s music. A few days after the folk festival, James and I went into the recording studio at the National Library and laid down about eight Dougie Young songs.

RugCutters live in Wilcannia

We played sporadically over the next few years. Most memorably, we were invited to go and play in Wilcannia, the town in which Dougie Young spent most of his life and wrote most of his songs about. I remember the thirteen-hour drive west from Sydney, the trees becoming more sparse, the soil turning to red. James was uncharacteristically quiet on that drive, he spent most of the time looking out the window – and I think going to the Country of his Aboriginal family stirred some complicated emotions in him. It was the first time James had spent a significant amount of time in Wilcannia, and while it was an incredible experience for him, he also later described those couple of days to me as “pretty full on”. The gig itself took place in a park on the main intersection of town. Lots of people were there. People who had known Dougie, and people who were descendents of the friends that Dougie wrote about. People who loved the way James was singing his Grandfather’s songs and who were keen to meet him, to hug him and to talk to him. A descendent of one of Dougie’s mates showed us around town. He took us out to the cemetery where we unsuccessfully searched for Young’s grave. “Sorry son,” he said to James, “I really wish I could find it for you.”

Following our Wilcannia tour, the Rugcutters did full-band studio recordings of ‘The Crow’ and ‘Got No Time For Dancin.’ The recording of ‘The Crow’ appeared on the 2015 CD Buried Country 1.5, the re-release of the influential collection of Aboriginal country music put together by Clinton Walker and featuring artists like Roger Knox, Troy Cassar-Daley and Vic Simms. It was a well-deserved honour for James’ music to feature alongside these singers. James and I always talked about doing more – about doing a whole tribute album to Young, about writing songs together – but musicians talk and dream a lot and act a lot less. Still, I am very proud of what we achieved together and the way in which it got James respect for his own music, and raised the profile of his Grandfather’s amazing legacy.

Through playing music together, James and I became close friends. He made a very big impact on my life – both as a musician and as a person. He made me re-think some of my ideas about music and culture and friendship and identity. I loved him like a brother. Life was not always easy for James. He struggled with some fairly serious health issues and many of the times I hung out with James the surroundings and occasions were not as fun as the ones I have described above. And yet in almost every situation his lust for life and positive spirit shone through. He turned my visit to the psychiatric unit of Goulburn hospital into a lunch date and a tour of the op-shops of town, followed by a jam session in the garden out the back. I left with my spirits raised! James said yes to things. He said yes to forming a band with a complete stranger, he said yes to going to Wilcannia, he said yes to people and to opportunities. His willingness to say yes and worry about consequences later was a trait I greatly admired in him. He was a huge force of positive energy, dreams and enthusiasm. He died too young, but I feel very lucky that he came into my life when he did.

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DRAWN OUT

3/7/2017

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Cartoonist Reg Lynch is a long-time Friend of Buried Country - a long-time friend generally, going all the way back to our hazy crazy drinking days in Darlinghurst and Tamworth in the 80s and 90s - and it was sad to see him leave Sydney to go and live in Tasmania a few years back. But it was great to see him make the effort to come down from his home on the north-western coast of the island state to see our Buried Country show in Hobart recently as part of the Dark Mofo festival. And it was great too when he sent through this artwork below...

... which portrays Franny Peters-Little on stage at the Odeon. It just seems to capture a bit of an essence of Franny, which is part of Reg's great talent as an artist, his ability to do something like that with just a few strokes of line on paper. But as Franny asked, Yeah, but can he play the ukulele?

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ONE FOR TUCO

13/6/2017

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When Leah Flanagan announced early this year that she was pregnant, we were all not only naturally delighted but hopeful-confident it wouldn’t cause too much disruption to her regular schedule. But when the baby refused to emerge for a few weeks beyond the due date, it was clear the Buried Country show at Dark Mofo in Hobart would have to do without one of its star attractions.

And so, when young Tom Emilio Jones, aka Tuco, was born on Monday, May 29, just days before the Hobart show – and it should go without saying that all our congratulations went and go to Leah, Tom and the little fella; we know they’ll make a great, loving family – we thought the show would have to be dedicated to him… so, this one was for Tuco…

And happily, as the Buried Country mob has made it fairly standard practice, it was a top show.

The festivalisation of culture is a syndrome that seems to enjoy almost universal approbation. But I am surprised there isn’t tad more wariness about it, or concern, like I feel. I mean, it’s state-controlled culture after all, and at worse when, say, in a place like my hometown of Sydney, the grass-roots that was once a thriving live music circuit has effectively been killed off – meaning if nothing else, where do to tomorrow’s festival stars come from? In Hobart, it’s a bit different, because the Dark Mofo festival of which BC was part largely comes down to one man, David Walsh, who’s not a bureaucrat or public servant but rather a wildcat philanthropist who’s almost single-handedly put Hobart on the culture map, and certainly bolstered its tourist trade, with his amazing MONA gallery and all the events that spin off it, like DMFO. Walsh and his empire is not beholden to the corporate-politics that so often stultify festivals. I’d been to MONA on one previous occasion and while there was almost as much art there that I wasn’t fond of as there was that I did like, that’s the point, and what’s great about it.

DMFO was much the same, among the attractions I was able to squeeze in, some fantastic, some less so I thought, but all of them adding up a vibrant variegated whole, which is how it ought to be.

I’d like to think Buried Country was generally one of the highlights. If audience reaction is anything to go by, certainly they seemed to enjoy it. In fact, I don’t think we’ve had a better audience, in terms of foreknowledge. There was a real nice little record shop (remember them?), Music Without Frontiers, virtually next door to the Odeon Theatre, and walking past it on shownight the strains of “Blue Gums Calling Me Back Home” rang out, and that was a lovely little touch that doubly encouraged me to buy a couple of disks (remember that too?). The audience for the show recognised many of the songs and gave them encouragement in anticipation, and responded with terrific applause and, at the end, with a standing ovation. We were all humbled and so, thank you, Hobart. Thank-you too to more than a few friends from Sydney and other parts of Tasmania who made the effort to be at the show, and played a part in its success.

In the absence of the new young mum, we re-shuffled the set slightly. Warren Williams, who opened the show as he usually does and with his usual stirring spirit, is to be doubly commended for pushing through some tragic sorry business back home. Luke Peacock has been enduring some trevails too and apart from wrestling one of our hire cars in an altercation, performed well too. Nobody was going to tackle Leah’s “September Song,” but Franny was game to take on “Brown Skin Baby,” as on offering to Leah, Tom and Tuco, and she pulled it off, again, with customary verve, a bit more country than Leah’s version.

The following morning, a few of the mob went into to the ABC for a session with Radio National’s Books and Arts program, which you can listen to here, and then over the next two nights, a few of ’em played short solo spots at the Winter Feast. For me, I finished my five days with a visit to MONA to see the opening of its latest exhibition, the Museum of Everything, and I was totally blown away by a vast show of outsider art or whatever you call it that I couldn’t see any other state-controlled gallery in the country ever daring to put on. Buried Country is a bit like outsider art too – my favourite kind! – and we will continue in our campaign to storm the citadel.

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REFERENDUM SONGS

4/6/2017

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Buried Country was represented on last weekend’s fiftieth anniversary of the 1967 Referendum that accorded Australian Aboriginal people citizenship in their own country – a weekend when Aboriginal people were making more history with the Uluru conference on constitutional recognition – when I was honoured to be asked to go into ABC Local Radio in Sydney and, with the ABC’s Indigenous Affairs Editor Stan Grant, go on a ‘Sonic Journey’ on Simon Marnie’s morning show through some of the pertinent music of the era. Stan is a long-standing Buried Country fan (“It’s the soundtrack to my life,” he said), and a top fella who really knows his tunes.

Our hour included the unveiling of a recently remastered version (thanks to Darren Hanlon and the guys from Vinyl Frontier) of Jimmy Little’s legendary B-Side from 1958, “Give the Coloured Lad a Chance,” which was written by his father and certainly the first-ever Aboriginal ‘protest’ song committed to wax. Given the nature of the song, the nature of Australian radio back when and the rarity of the record (I’d not even seen a copy until just recently, when Bruce Milne gave me this one; thanks Bruce), it’s possible that this is the first time it’s ever been heard on air, period! If the podcast of Simon's show has already disappeared, you will have to wait to hear it: The track will hopefully be included on a new Buried Country vinyl LP coming out of America soon; but that’s another story I’ll get to in good time…

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"... round-up in Tasmania..."

13/4/2017

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Very pleased to have confirmed appearing at Dark Mofo this year in Hobart, at the Odeon Theatre on opening night, Thursday June 8, buy tix here

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TOP PICKIN' AT PORT FAIRY

13/3/2017

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Whole cast encores on 'Arnhem Land Lullaby'

BC: Live opened the main stage at the Port Fairy Folk Festival on Friday night, in a set dedicated to Auriel Andrew after her passing in January, and we all had a ball and felt it was a good showing – and one that Auriel would have approved of! We hope Barry enjoyed any bits he’s seen.
Teangi Knox stepped up to sing his nan’s song for her, ‘Ghost Gums’, and he showed he’s got a voice of his own that’s strong, and the set closed with the whole cast on another of Auriel’s specialities, ‘Arnhem Land Lullaby’. The setlist was quite significantly re-shuffled around. On the night it went as planned:

1. Western Wind - WARREN
2. Raining on the Rock - WARREN
3. Ghost Gums - TEANGI
4. Run, Dingo, Run - BUDDY
5. Brown Skin Baby - LEAH
6. September Song - LEAH
7. Ticket to Nowhere – JAMES
8. Yorta Yorta Man - JAMES
9. Pretty Bird Tree - LJ
10. 18th Day of May - LJ
11. Shadow of the Boomerang - FRAN
12. Blacktracker - FRAN
13. Brisbane Blacks - LUKE
14. Get Back in the Shadows – LUKE
15. Wayward Dreams - ROGER
16. Blue Gums Calling Me Back Home - ROGER
17. Arnhem Land Lullaby ROGER, TEANGI + CAST

A long session in the Elvis(-actually-Alistair Crowley) Room at the fab Bakehouse rehearsal studios in Melbourne the day before was spent working in some of the differences. New songs: Luke Peacock swapped ‘Ticket to Nowhere’ with James Henry and took on Vic Simms’ ‘Get Back in the Shadows’, and ‘Brisbane Blacks’, dedicated to Mop and the Dro-Outs’ late Angus Rabbit. With two generations of the Little family now on stage together, James Henry, in addition to doing ‘Ticket to Nowhere’, retained ‘Yorta Yorta Man’, and Franny Peters-Little added a stunning almost-acapella rendition of ‘Shadow of the Boomerang’.

It feels so good to be able to say that so much about the set just feels like smooth sailing. Often in situations like this credit is given to the professionalism of a cast, but that’s not quite the right word in this case I don't think. Not that the show doesn’t run as efficiently as the whole concept of ‘professionalism’ might imply – I guess I’m just trying to say it has that bit of special something beyond just a professional level. I like the show because it’s deep and it’s a bit gnarly at times but overall has this great sense of good humour and strong commitment. So I continue to be just blown away, and I think the whole team shares this confidence - and I’m also pretty sure everyone’s having a great time doing it! And I think that’s important, you wouldn’t have as good a show, or it would be harder to mask or overcome, if you didn’t have that wonderful shared sense of purpose and camaraderie that we do. It gets a bit crazy at times but that’s how this black country-rock roadshow revue rolls. I hope I’m not drawing too long a bow to say it, but when, as a music lover, I contemplate and listen to legendary gigs like, say, the first Stax tour of the UK and Europe in 1967, or one-nighters like The Last Waltz, where a once-in-a-lifetime bill comes together and just makes some magic, some history, well, I sometimes like to indulge myself with the thought that Buried Country is a tiny bit like that too: Giving audiences the opportunity to see this amazing cast of stars, to catch up on a whole world of vital Australian music, to join in on a celebration that might not pass this way again... I went away after the show as I’ve tended to do and had to catch my breath. What a great show – a lot of us think our best to date – and so we can't wait to do more…
Unfortunately we only had the rest of Friday night to try and catch some of the weekend’s other fine attractions. Backtracker Band MD Brendan Gallagher has to be a contender for the festival’s busiest picker, staying on after the rest of us returned to Melbourne to play with two other acts, his own Karma County plus blues supergroup the Pinks, as well as sitting in with Kutcha Edwards. I myself caught quick bits of Melody Pool (good) and Don Walker (good too), at least up until the power blew out on Don! Not that that was typical of the festival generally; in fact it was all very convivial and well organised, and so congratulations to the team of Fairies for keeping up the game for more than forty years now. I was flattered when the aforesaid great don of Australian songwriters, Don Walker, gave me some lovely words of praise on Buried Country; I couldn’t resist responding by photo-bombing him into the picture here:

The Walker brothers? Jason, me and Don, in the green room

All the rest of us went back to Melbourne and on the Saturday night most stayed on there for some sideshows, Luke Peacock and his band at the Thornbury Theatre, Jason Walker solo at the Retreat and, at the Grandview Hotel, maybe echoing so many nights that happened there so many years ago when Harry and Wilga Williams and the Country Outcasts called the Fairfield pub their own, there was a show by Roger, Buddy and Teangi Knox and Warren H. Willams. All reports say all went well, and I understand the rock’n’roll flowed on until late into the night. I flew home mid-evening with Jim Elliott, L.J. Hill and Leah Flannagan, who, I should add, has all our best wishes as she digs into her final tri-mester – you go girl! L.J. stayed over at my place and slept with the dogs, or rather they slept with him, since my absent son’s bed was where he dossed down and where the dogs usually sleep too, and I think everyone was pretty happy with that arrangement; and then I got L.J. to the airport with early Sunday morning coming down and, with him and Franny in mind, I thought of Kris Kristofferson: I'd smoked my mind the night before/With cigarettes and songs that I'd been pickin'…

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AURIEL MEMORIAL

2/3/2017

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Pic: James Henry

Since Buried Country: Live in Concert lost Auriel Andrew earlier this year, when she passed away, aged 69, in Newcastle in January, our set at the forthcoming Port Fairy Folk Festival will be dedicated to her memory. BC will be opening the whole shebang with the first set on the main stage on Friday evening (March 10) starting at 7pm, so if you’ve got a ticket – and you'll need one, because the event is already sold-out – don’t miss it. We will be performing some special songs by way of a tribute to her, and there will be some other extra features as well. Auriel typically brushed aside health problems to be part of the first few Buried Country shows late last year – there’s no show without Punch! and she wouldn’t have missed it for quids – and she set a standard and a tone, as she did generally in life and her career, that the entire BC cast and crew is proud to just try and live up to: and we’ll be giving it our best at Port Fairy, be assured!

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THE QUEEN IS DEAD, LONG LIVE THE QUEEN

11/1/2017

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Auriel Andrew was buried in Newcastle on Monday, January 9. It was a fitting farewell, a funeral service that was packed to the rafters and full – as I’d hoped, as appropriate to Auriel – with as much laughter as tears, plus more than a little singing too of course. There was a wonderful warm feeling for her that just inhabited the space and the day; a feeling that I only hope won’t ever fade, but rather, and certainly if Buried Country: Live in Concert has anything to do with it, will just grow…
… and so perhaps it’s apposite to say here now, as Auriel herself, ever the trouper, would have agreed: The show must go on! – and so this is to say, by way of a formal public announcement: Buried Country: Live in Concert will continue on, to play throughout the forthcoming year (and hopefully maybe beyond!), and not with a replacement for Auriel because you couldn’t replace Auriel Andrew, but with just a bit of what I like to call panel-beating; and also, I don’t doubt, with the beautiful benign spirit of Auriel smiling down on us, spurring us on… This next one’s for you, Big Mamma!

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SISTA-SEQUEL

BACK FOR A LITTLE TRIBUTE IN TAMMY

VALE JAMES MACLEOD, 1972-2017

DRAWN OUT

ONE FOR TUCO

REFERENDUM SONGS

"... round-up in Tasmania..."

TOP PICKIN' AT PORT FAIRY

AURIEL MEMORIAL

THE QUEEN IS DEAD, LONG LIVE THE QUEEN

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