PRINTED ARTICLES

 

THE TAMWORTH STORY
first published in Trad & Now

What is it about country music that scares the bejesus out of so many people? It can't be the songs because most are tried and true and universally loved. The artists are certainly credible and it wasn't so long ago that Garth Brooks was the highest selling artist in the world and, locally, no one can deny Slim Dusty's extraordinary output of well over one hundred best-selling albums. Maybe it's the country music industry machine they dislike or possibly the seemingly manufactured toothy Nashville makeovers? Maybe it's those silly ten-galleon hats and 'I Luv Country' baseball hats? I have a theory that a lot of the knockers feel that country music is the music of Mr and Mrs Too Average and representative of the trailer trash brigade. The awful truth is that nowadays it's okay to like country music and at Tamworth's annual festival you're just as likely to be tapping your toes alongside a millionaire as a jack or jillaroo. There I was in Peel Street listening to a busking band and right next to me was a smiling Dick Smith.

I was in Tamworth to judge the Bush Laureate Awards. Well, that's what I had been told by the Country Music Association of Australia. As the three-hour concert came to a close I discovered the real reason. I was the recipient of the Judith Hosier Heritage Award for Lifetime Achievement in promoting bush culture. I rather liked this golden gumleaf since its gong had sounded previously for Slim Dusty, R M Williams and the ever-yarning Bill Scott. Mind you, as a youthful 58 I felt more than a little awkward about 'lifetime achievement' ö surely I'm still a pup!

The thing that interests me about country music is its relationship to culture and especially the bush tradition. In recording older bush performers, especially in the nineteen seventies, I found most singers would happily sing an old shearing ditty and then a once popular 'cowboy' song like 'Old Shep' or 'Red River Valley', reckoning a song is a song whatever its background. Importantly, both songs felt comfortable as an expression of the singers' life and told familiar stories. Some American country songs were localised by singers who simply changed 'The Rolling Hills of Montana' to 'The Rolling Hills of Scone' or whatever. One cannot underestimate the role of pioneer radio in promoting country music and in the 1940's it was the music of the masses with so-called hillbilly songs hugely popular in our cities as well as country. This is when Tex Morton, Buddy Williams, Gordon Parsons, Smoky Dawson and, of course, Slim Dusty started to sing with a more Australian accent.

In the fifties radio changed its musical taste and country music headed back to the bush. Our performers continued to sing about Australia and write songs that told of our pioneering spirit and to reintroduce familiar outback words like station-hand, drover, scrub and swagman. Today's country singers carry on this tradition and, not surprisingly, some are really effective while others are bloody woeful. The Tamworth Country Music Festival shows the best and worst of country music and like the old farmer one needs to separate the sheep from the goats. The Peel Street buskers are generally pretty scary but they definitely add to the local colour as they croon, yodel and fiddle their way through their sets. Even scarier is the fact that nearly all of them have produced Cds. I suspect that in a few years we are going to be faced with a Cd dumping problem similar to nuclear waste. Around the town, in pubs, clubs and halls, the music never stops and, believe me, there's something for everyone from the 'stars' through to specialty tribute shows on Slim Dusty and another on Patsy Cline.

The big growth area of the Tamworth Country Music Festival appears to be bush poetry. Reciters were everywhere from early morning Poet's Breakfasts to late night sessions. These were big events and Jim Haynes hosted his Big Bush Brekkie at the Digger's Club auditorium while his wife, Robyn, stage managed Grant Luhrs' Poet's Breakfast at the West Leagues Club - and both large venues were chock-a-block full every day. These poets are definitely not your arty-farty variety. Many are great storytellers in the tradition of Lawson, Paterson and Ogilvie as they recite their galloping rhymes about 'chooks on the loose' and 'how the drought is rooning the land'. Bob Magor, from South Australia, was an audience favourite with his hilarious poem, 'A Lesson Learned', about a bull that had never seen a heifer ö so the farmer and his wife had to give a demonstration ãto show him what to doä.

These poets weren't all old codgers either. Paddy and Ali Ryan are youngsters fresh from school and already experienced reciters. The poems, like good country songs, tell our stories and it was enlightening to see Milton Taylor's poem 'Down Memory Lane', concerning his father's battle with Alzheimer's disease, win the golden gumleaf award for best poem of the year. Henry Lawson would have approved.

© Warren Fahey