Warren Fahey - A Panorama of Bush Songs

A PANORAMA OF BUSH SONGS � INTRODUCTION

I've spent a good part of my life travelling the Australian bush and, during the sixties, seventies and early eighties, I spent three months a year, for almost twenty years, travelling this extraordinary country from mountains to the seas, from deserts to the far flung corners of the mythical Outback. I've smelt dust storms, salty oceans, pine-scented gullies, stretching gum forests and that distinctive smell of the bush at night and early morn. These are smells that I will carry to my grave and are inexplicitly bound to my own view of what the bush represents. The bush is also people, extraordinary people, who live in the history of the people who pioneered this complex land. These are the determined pioneers who sweated to build farms in the middle of nowhere and found themselves fighting bushfires one month and floods the next. Then voracious insects would swoop down on their crops one season and followed by drought the next. These are the pioneers who shrugged their shoulders and bravely battled on to make Australia what it is today. They should never be forgotten and the songs on this collection celebrate their and our survival.

Let me get one thing straight here. I became a singer by default rather than a natural journey. For years I described myself as 'Australia's best known shower singer' because that's how I saw myself. I started to learn songs because, as a product of the nineteen sixties folk revival, I realised that there were very few Australian songs being sung so I started learning them for my own amusement. A stint in Newcastle provided a launch pad and I well remember that first night when my knees knocked like the bells of St Mary's. I was filling in for a singer who hadn't arrived and I've never stopped singing. My main reason for singing was to perform the songs that I had collected off old time singers and, later on, unusual songs from other collectors. I have never been interested in singing the 'folk top 40' and would much prefer to give life to some variant or long asleep ditty. Looking back I have to admit to a repertoire unlike anyone else I have ever met. I like this aspect of being a singer and being able to give songs a new life. There is also the fact that I am a 'ham' and enjoy the opportunity of treading the boards � be it a stage, a radio microphone or across a dining room table.

I love the old bush songs because they tell our Australian story like no other medium. They are emotional time capsules that have been handed down from singer to singer and, in the traditional process, given the occasional polish or even straightening out. I particularly love singing songs that I have a personal relationship with as a collector. Whenever I sing a song taped from Joe Watson, Cyril Duncan, Jack Pobar, or any other song carrier, I feel involved with that story and the responsibility of passing the song on to an audience. Some songs I have been singing for over thirty years and others are only new to my memory bank. Many of the songs were initially learnt so I could include them in ABC Radio programming. Others I learnt as part of The Larrikins repertoire. I still learn songs that tickle my fancy and I still get caught at traffic lights singing at full bore. It sure beats listening to commercial radio and so called popular music.

I am a folklorist more than a singer and this has coloured my repertoire and, I hope, the way I view and perform songs. For instance, The Nugget Family, a song included in the collection, is an important song from the gold rush era however I have never heard anyone else sing this comic song. I have recorded hundreds of bush songs and this selection just scrapes the side of the barrel. I will release more if only as a document of what is available to other singers.

On this compact disc you will find bushranger ballads, shearing songs, droving tales, colonial ballads, seafaring songs and even a few songs about love � a real mixed swag.