Photo credit: Joe Brennan
Tell us about your tour vehicle.
We don’t have a regular tour vehicle. In Australia we often fly into a capital city – Sydney, Brisbane, Adelaide, say – and then radiate out to towns within a 2 to 3 hour drive. For that we usually hire a Kia van or something similar. It’s a library on the way out, a night club on the way home.
How do you eat cheaply and/or healthy while on tour?
There are enough good options in most places. I like fresh fruit and veggies, good bread. America has much better Mexican and Tex Mex food than Australia so I always give that a good go when I’m in the US. Exercise is important so I walk as much as possible. There are a few keen swimmers, footballers and tennis players in the band so we’re always on the lookout for pools, beaches, tennis courts, playing fields and such.
How many strings do you break in a typical year? How much does it cost to replace them?
I used to break them quite a lot but less so these days. Must have developed some technique along the way. And I play guitar more with my fingers now. On tour I change them every three or four shows.
Where do you rehearse?
It’s a 100 year old bakehouse converted into rehearsal rooms. The top room is large and spacious and there’s an acoustic piano in the corner. We use it for warm up gigs sometimes. We can squeeze 80 or so people in there. There’s a Man Ray photo of Lee Miller on the wall on the way in which I always say hello to. “Hello, Man, hello, Lee.” Now she has a story!
What was the title and a sample lyric from the first song that you wrote?
A song in open G tuning called “The Going Down”. Only four lines:
It’s the going down that wakes you
It’s the running around that breaks you
It’s the falling apart that makes you
It’s the riding of trains that takes you
Describe your first gig.
Open mic night at a folk club in Salamanca Place, Hobart, Tasmania, 1974. I sang “Girl From The North Country” and an Australian folk song “Streets of Forbes”. I was incredibly nervous and drank too much from relief after I’d finished. A good friend helped me home and to my bed. Still my friend today after fifty years.
What was your last day job? What was your favorite day job?
Kitchen hand. ‘Dish pig’, they say here. I did that in quite a few places over the years.
My favourite day job was working as an outside cleaner for The Adelaide Festival Centre in the early seventies. It was only four hours a day in the morning. I did it with the friend who helped me home from my first world shattering performance. It was pretty cruisy work, mooching around at the end of a big broom alongside the park and the river. When it rained we’d duck in to the railway café next door for sweet, milky tea and fruit buns. We had an easy-going boss.
What one thing do you know now that you had wished you knew when you started your career in music?
I don’t know how to answer that question. How do you know something until you’ve experienced it? And I don’t think of writing songs and playing them as a career. It’s more of an anti-career. A career is something you’re supposed to know how to do. I don’t know how to write songs. If I did I’d write one every day.