By Matthew Condon

His world is centred on his beloved patch of bush in Queensland’s Granite Belt. But ’s influence on Australian music spreads far and wide

kev’s

country

Photography Justine Walpole tomatoes, his neighbours, granite formations, flowers, his chops as a songwriter, Indigenous ­Australians, injustice, unfairness, the birth of ­ballads and the death of friends. “Here,” Kev points towards the passing bush. “This is where the fella who made the banjos, his block is… no, not that one… this one, this is the along with a companion suite of those same songs carpenter who makes the banjos with the hub- reinterpreted by friends and older names – Jimmy caps… he has a beautiful place up in there,” says Barnes, – and the stars of a new Kev, his eyes scanning the horizon, absorbing generation; , Kate Miller-Heidke. everything, his words barely able to keep up with All hail King Carmody. But at this moment, his thoughts. “And it was down here, at 4 o’clock staring through the windshield, he is interested in in the morning, that poor old Rex hit the bloody wattle trees. “See how all the bloody yellow wattle roo on his motorbike. He said you can’t believe it, up there, on the western side where the sun gets it, the bike’s bloody following me down the road and yet over on these hills here, you can hardly see a the bloody kangaroo’s off in the paddock.” yellow one. It’s all on that hill,” he says. “And look He has a laugh big enough to rattle the lid off at the beauty of that. Wow! Those mountains, you the soup pot. Then it’s back to talking about his can look out at that and if you keep going you beloved music. “I’ve always been into the concept can… go right out into the universe.” of ‘don’t make it too pretty’,” he says. “If it can be done on an acoustic guitar, keep it there. Anyone It’s earlier in the day and Kev is sitting at the can get onto an electric guitar and sound like Eric kitchen bench in his home, a stone’s throw from Clapton, you’ve got wah-wah pedals and Christ three waterholes and surrounded by four tracts of knows what, but try doing it just on your acoustic. untouchable nature – Girraween National Park, t’s a cool Thursday afternoon on Be sparse with it.” Pure? “Yeah, yeah.” Horan’s Gorge Nature Refuge, Sundown National the back roads of Stanthorpe, on How do you rate yourself as a songwriter? “On Park and Donnybrook Nature Reserve – and talks the Granite Belt just inside the a scale of one to 10? I’d be minus eight, because about the road to this place, with its view of yellow Queensland border, and Kev I’m thinking in a different mindset.” wattle flowers from the front deck. ­Carmody is having trouble clicking in his seatbelt. And then: “Hang on, what’s he doing here? He was born in Cairns to an Irishman, Francis The car is filled with Kev, in his checked winter This is what happens when you drive around the John Carmody (or Jack, as he was known), and an Icoat and with a beanie low on his forehead, ­guitars country. What’s he got this great big bloody exca- Indigenous mother, Bonny. They met in Brisbane in the back, and a pot of pea and ham soup lov- vator there for? This all used to be fruit trees. They where Jack, who had joined the Army during ingly made by his wife Beryl. We’ve been ­yarning pulled all the fruit trees out, all the bloody nectar- World War II, was based. He was training as one of all day – so much so that we didn’t have time to eat ines and plums and apples and that, and put Australia’s first paratroopers. (His mates called the soup – and despite three spinal operations and bloody tomatoes in, because there’s money in him “Bull” Carmody for his imposing size and his debilitating arthritis, Kev, 74, a colossus­ in tomatoes.” He misses nothing. A murder of crows strength.) They married in Far North Queensland. Indigenous music, or for that matter any music attracts his curiosity. A missing street sign. A Kev says: “It was illegal for them to get married, for produced in this country in the last half century, smudge of fire across the low hills. a black to marry a white at that time in Queens- finally gets the belt secure. Kev’s story is that of the First Nations people. land under law. But they went up to Cairns And just as well. On the short drive to his He embodies it. He worked shovelling wheat and because it was a lot easier there, because there home, outside the town of Ballandean south of welding steel and had a whole life rich with joy were other Indigenous people, they were all work- Stanthorpe, he continues, as he has done all day, and tragedy before he recorded a note of music. ing in the cane fields.” In 1950 the family headed with his wondrous, sometimes raucous, sometimes And here he is, folk titan, storyteller, national south and settled near Tara on the Darling Downs, quiet, sometimes painfully moving, sometimes treasure, poet, academic, Uncle, totemic Elder, about 300km west of Brisbane. Kev was four years hilarious, monologues. It’s a verbally boisterous father, grandfather, seer, and all that hard work, all old and remembers it like it was yesterday. “I used and bumpy ride back to Kev’s joint. He has quite a that beauty he has given and will leave behind, has to help haul the cattle on my little horse while the motor, this big, bull-chested man, his grey hair come back to this remote corner of the world and men mustered in on the stations,” he says. They held in a loose ponytail, and as we navigate is about to sit at his feet and honour him. were some of the happiest years of young Kev’s through his community he issues a delirious, Next week, his most important songs will be life. Especially at night, under the stars. ­non-stop stream of observations about life, nature, rereleased on the , “Well, the thing was, Dad got some money, he bought an old dry cell battery wireless. We’ve still got it in the old hut,” he says. “Then you run an aerial up high to get your signal. It had mid-wave, shortwave, and then the local ones. At night-time you could turn the knob and get all around the write, andIwas goodat pretty sport.” looking at the picture. But Ididlearnto read and were, but Icould remember what was saidby cat sat on the mat.’ Ididn’t know what the words bered quickwhen pretty Isaw that picture, ‘The dumb bastard, andIwas the dunce the of class. est grade, soIwas automatically told Iwas ablack “But the thing is,Iwas abigkidput into the low up, andIdidlearnto read andwrite,” Kev says. Range west Brisbane. of “That’s where we wound school inToowoomba, upon the Great Dividing ities by moving usaround.” 20 was that they were hiding usfrom the author us. But then what Irealised when Iwas about 18or come out unlessone the of rellies come andgot Andwe weren’t­bugger come, ‘Pissoff!’ allowed to you heard avehicle you some ranandhid.If were little kids,” he says. “We were told, whenever go to school andgetaneducation or be“taken away”. matum. Kev andhisyounger brother had Laurie to intruded on his idyll. His parents were given an ulti- But when Kev was 10years old, the outside world the most important. That’s where the stories were. way. That’s the essential key to music. tion andwiden to listen it out. inanother Learn awareBe things of around you. Use your imagina Frank Balser, told him.Listen to the wind,he said. Indigenous grand­ “It moves the spirit.” He never forgot what his beauty andthe emotive feel that of music,” he says. with the cello… it was justfascinating to me, the phony orchestras, how the oboe counteracted “The combination music of theory with the sym- need aband.Shit, that’s good.” bass, the rhythm, andthe lead inthe one hit! Don’t four fingers. These old fellows, they’ve got the you could hear Blind WillieMcTell. They’re using the fact that you could hear Robert Johnson, or you then? “Oh, Christyes. What me intrigued was American stuff.” Didyou feel it had animpact on ­fellows, there were just heaps them, of and a lot of Buddy Williams.You name it. Tex Morton, we heard HankWilliams,we heard they’d getwhat we was calledHillbillies.“So heard the BBC in 1954. In the morning, on the ABC, written by poetDylan Thomas andproduced by ­languages, you’d hear Beethoven.” You could pickupMoscow, allthese different world depending on the atmosphere andstuff. “I had that oral history training, soIremem- He andhisbrother were sent to aboarding “We always thought it was a joke when we He was told that the space between the starswas He was alsohugely attracted to classicalmusic. They heard Under MilkWood, the radio drama father from north Queensland, - - - with vintage knickknacks. The walls are papered the entrance, racks CDsandshelves of heaving It hasared cash register at 1980s. the in frozen but nightclub inthe back amajor alleyof capital city, first sight, resemblesfunky some alternative music ­Tuxedo Junction Studios,amassive space that, at famed for its stone andwine fruits grapes–is in Australia. Inthe low hillsoutside Stanthorpe – one the of most unlikely music recording facilities It’s closetomidday andwe findourselves in teach yourself. But Idriedher out round the fire.” yourself. No bastard’s going to teach you, you be the most important page how of you canteach But she was wet. I don’t want to lose a page… might teach yourself how to play Oh the shit, OK. guitar! ­guitar’, not, ‘I’m going to teach you, mate’. No, you nuts. We’d getsheets iron, of we’d getwire. markets. We’d getnails,we’d getbolts, we’d get we found… we usedto callthem open airsuper or they dumped them andthat, inthe gullies but bers. “People justdumped their things inthe river, you’d pass these dumps, localdumps,” he remem- ing the drover’s camps. “On the drover camps It was the early 1960s, andKev returned to work end it wasn’t for him.He didn’t finish highschool. XV playing with boys years hissenior. But inthe was seriousabout its rugby, andKev made the First tigious Catholic boarding school inToowoomba. It Late starter: withPaul Kellyin2008;1991 “I found abook andit said,‘Teach yourself He then attended Downlands College, the pres- - - Murri Hour. Other songs poured out him.Thou of play hisnew music straight down the line on The UQ and say, ‘Oh, shit. I just wrote this song.’ He’d used to just walk down to Triple Zradio station at tions really, really made a difference, because I blackfellas. Andyeah, the radio community sta radio stations. That was justsuch agodsend to us “But what happened was thecommunity of birth recording it with acompany or anything,” he says. the sadness inarequiem. “Ihad no concept ever of flood/ Across them sleepy hillsand valleys/ Heard the airinthe spring. I’vewatched the moonlight the of newborn/By the crying And the sweetness of I’ve Been Moved . It goesinpart: I’vebeen moved/ theof firstsongs he recorded was his early classic uments. Then music caught himby One surprise. and research material historical andprimary doc where he andhisfamilyspent their droving years. nial mentalities” the of Darling Down region, near PhD inAustralian history, focusing on the “colo Queensland (UQ)inBrisbane. He alsobegana and postgraduate studiesat the University of too, before completing aBachelor degree Arts of Australian Dawe. poetBruce Kev studiedmusic, Queensland), where one histutors of was the great ­Education (later the University Southern of courses at the Darling Downs Institute Advanced of ­catching up to do. In the late 1970s he enrolled in since he firsttaught himself to playguitar. songs with him,inhismemory andimagination, until he was inhis40s,but carriedhundreds of his music career, given he didn’t recording start soup), andKev talksabout the unlikely origins of chicken, beansalad, olives, relish, cake (andthe the 1980s) hasput on asumptuous spread roast of were students at the University Queensland of in music together inthe converted studio. He isgreat friends with Kev, andthey work on to hishome town after aseriousillness years ago. alternative band Thanks for the Fish, who returned and former drummer for the mid-’80s Brisbane Andy Wilmott, soundengineer, musician, teacher through thisplace. The studioisthe brainchild of chilled-to-the-bone packers) that once passed insulation for the (and millions fruit piecesof of apple packing shed, its walls stuffedwith ancient a giant country shed. Which it is.Orwas. Aformer while it isabone fide recording studio, it looks like speakers galore. kits andguitars anddrum And the Bunnymen andJane’s Addiction. There are the Banshees, The Cure, Hoodoo Echo Gurus, & with original posters for by Siouxsieand Kev loved study. Adored pouring through books Before the music, though, Kev had some Meanwhile, (who Beryl met Kev when they - - -

: Shalt Not Steal, Comrade Jesus Christ, Black Deaths I think it’s a great mix of all of these elements that in ­Custody and Black Bess. Still, he never saw it as make him the artist and the songwriter that he is.” a future career. “No, shit, couldn’t give a stuff,” he says. “Went back home. I was over 40 years old. It’s late afternoon and Kev is sitting on his Christ, I couldn’t give a stuff.” back porch looking up the hill behind his house. In 1988, he recorded his debut album Pillars of The pea and ham soup has been returned to the Society. He was 42. Revered music critic Bruce ­Carmody kitchen from Tuxedo Junction without Elder described it as “the best album ever released the loss of a drop, and will probably be reheated by an Aboriginal musician and arguably the best for dinner later. The domestics aside, is he happy protest album ever made in Australia”. That did with his life? He has an honorary doctorate. He Tribute: Kate Miller-Heidke, below left, and Alice Skye the trick. “Holy shit, next thing there’s people has been inducted into the ARIA Hall of Fame. He ­trying to ring me up and contact me, and I haven’t has been garlanded with plaudits and awards. got a phone because the coppers have got mine all Kev smiles. “I am,” he says, followed by a long tapped in Queensland,” Kev laughs. Other pause. “But how happy do we get when we’ve got followed. As did a little ballad he co-wrote with all this… still got the bloody deaths in custody and the great Australian singer-songwriter Paul Kelly, no bastard has been bloody charged, for Christ’s From Little Things Big Things Grow. sake. You’re happy to a point but all this has got to All this, and yet the one thing constantly on his be bloody addressed. Historically, we’ve really got mind was to get back to the Queensland scrub of to be truthful about what happened. It was a his boyhood. “There’s nothing like the campfire, a bloody invasion. Let’s get used to that idea. And it’s bit of cooking, a bit of fishing in the creek, conver- not a blame game. It’s just saying, this has to be sation… watching the moon,” Kev told a reporter bloody well discussed. Even here, if you look over just as his career was taking off. here to the west, there was a bloody massacre here The way the song speaks of Aboriginal Australia, on the station. All the great explorers… they were Next Friday, EMI Music Australia will release you’re thinking of a person’s spirit, a person’s soul, economic outriders for the bloody stock Cannot Buy My Soul, a double album of original which is indomitable, it cannot be bought or sold, exchange.” This is the voice of his debut album Carmody songs and those same songs reinterpreted it cannot be broken, or oppressed. The song to me Pillars­ of Society all those years ago. Still strong. by some of this country’s most respected perform- is a spiritual song, so I approached it like that,” he Unbending. Unyielding. Truths tempered by fire ers. It was first released in 2007, but the new version says. Kate Miller-Heidke contributed a moving over the decades.­ It is his lived history. has been refreshed and contains ­several additional rendition of Blood Red Rose. “The songs speak for Sometimes you catch the amiable Kev looking contemporary performances. (It will also be avail- themselves,” Miller-Heidke says. “He’s a national into the middle distance, his skin flawless and ruddy able on vinyl and streaming platforms.) The stellar treasure. And I’m sure this record will lead to a pink in the cold, and for the briefest of moments roll call honouring Kev’s work includes Paul Kelly, wider audience digging into his back catalogue, see a deep sadness about his eyes. He’s been read- Courtney Barnett, , , because the rewards are there.” ing the Bible. “When you look at the Bible and the , Steve ­Kilbey, Kate Miller-Heidke, Project producer Sian Darling emphasises the concept of Christianity,” he says. “The three Cs – Alice Skye, Kasey Chambers, , Troy timeliness and relevance of Kev’s work. “Uncle colonialism, Christianity and capitalism. They’re Cassar-Daley, , , Electric Kev is a first-hand witness to a black person’s all bound together. How can you discover some- Fields and others. It is not just a simple a tribute experience in Australia,” Darling says. “Australia is thing that’s already bloody there for Christ’s sake? album. It is a showcase of Kev’s enduring power as a beautiful country but it’s been built on racist “We walked around here naked for 65,000 years…” a songwriter and performer, and in the great foundations and Kev bears witness to that.” As we drive off at dusk, you can just make out ­tradition of Indigenous storytelling, a passing on Head of EMI Music John O’Donnell says the Kev and his wife Beryl waving farewell from their of his songs to younger generations and beyond. songs on Cannot Buy My Soul should be put in front front veranda. Kev. Still with big, important things “They’re emotional songs, they’re powerful, of both black and white Australians. “I do think this to say. Son of Bonny and Bull Carmody. He fails to they combine politics and poetry… some songs are work, and Kev’s words, his songs, need to be spread get smaller the further the car moves away. hymns, others are strong polemicals, other songs as far as they can be spread, these are history les- In his song Eulogy for a Black Person, he writes: combine all those things,” says Paul Kelly, who sons… that sounds a little corny but they are living “Make no monuments or mortal crowns/ Or speak ­features on several tracks. “The other thing that is histories that need to be retold and not forgotten,” my name again when you lay me down.” Does he notable is how relevant a record like this is, as it O’Donnell says. “Many of the stories around black think he and his songs will be remembered? was in 2007, as it was when he was first writing deaths in custody, around the , ­“People are still listening to Beethoven,” he says. those songs in the 1980s. His songs have not dated. these things all happened in my lifetime and it’s “I’m not Beethoven. But I don’t know, I just don’t They’ve become more and more pertinent. His quite gobsmacking to think that not that long ago know. Pass on your stories? Jeez, I hope so.” work has been sort of beating the ground for a long Indigenous children were taken away from their Then we lose sight of the Carmodys, just past time. He’s been an influence on so many up and parents, that we’re still living in an era when black the ridge of yellow wattle flowers, where you can coming songwriters, both Indigenous and not.” deaths in custody is still an issue, is still a problem. look out, and if you keep going you can go right Archie Roach sings the title track. “It’s a story. “And then there are incredible love songs too… out into the universe. l

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