Editor’s Note – occasionally, Australian music journalist Sue Barrett contributes articles to FolkBlog.
By Sue Barrett
They read Les A. Murray from the hilltop
with a wide vision of Batman’s land
Dropped him without a word except ‘Amen’ –
So be it. ‘I don’t know why anyone studies
history,’ said one. ‘It’s so futile.
It always repeats itself. We have to learn
from our own mistakes, each generation
over and over.’(Rae Sexton, from ‘The Historian’, On Looking at 30-Year-Old Slides, 2005)
A little while ago, between ANZAC Day and the Memorial Day weekend, a photograph of singer/songwriter Holly Throsby’s drummer appeared in the social notes of an Australian newspaper.
For Americans, the coming of Memorial Day brings memories of the men and women who have died while serving in the US armed forces – in current wars, in wars long past, in so-called “forgotten wars”. Memorial Day also brings memories of those who have died subsequent to serving. And it brings fears for those women and men still serving and for those who carry the scars of serving.
In Australia (and New Zealand), a key day of remembrance is ANZAC Day – 25 April. As Holly Throsby and her drummer subsequently toured north America, she may well have run into Canadian singer/songwriter, Heather Bishop. For Bishop, 25 April marks a different event – her birthday. A seemingly little known fact about Heather Bishop is that the artwork for her first three albums for children was done by Lynn Johnston, the creator of the comic strip, For Better or For Worse.
Over the years, For Better or For Worse has combined humor, drama, everyday life and social commentary. In November 2006, For Better or For Worse took readers to a Remembrance Day ceremony, where 15 year old April asks, “When will it end?”:
http://www.fborfw.com/strip_fix/archives/002136.php
The impact of war is a recurring theme for songwriters – songs of glory, anger, sadness, despair…
BRUCE ROBISON (www.brucerobison.com)
Bruce Robison is singer/songwriter from Texas, whose father bought him a Fender Precision bass in seventh grade. Bruce has performed as a duo with his brother Charlie, in groups (including Chaparral) and as a solo performer. Over the years, Bruce’s songs have been recorded by such people as Kelly Willis, Tim McGraw, Faith Hill, Lee Ann Womack and George Strait. Bruce’s song, ‘Travelin’ Soldier’, was a No. 1 country hit for the Dixie Chicks.
What are your earliest memories of war?
I have some memories of Vietnam television reports. I was young. My step grandfather was a World War II veteran. He spoke of his experiences some.
Tell us about ‘Travelin’ Soldier’ and how you came to write it
I wrote the song during the mobilization for the first gulf war, many casualties were predicted. A young co-worker of mine was called up to the National Guard. I decided to write a song about one person going off to war and not coming back.
What reactions have you had to ‘Travelin’ Soldier’, including after [Dixie Chicks] Natalie Maines’ comments about the Iraq War in 2003?
I have had hundreds of people tell me about their feeling for the song, including many veterans. Almost every day. It is a simple song of compassion, not political at all, so no one really has a problem with the song. Some reaction to the Chicks of course, over the years.
Have you written other songs about war?
No other war songs.
What other things do you write about?
Thinkin or drinkin songs.
So what is new/different for Bruce Robison in 2009?
Back to work after eight years of changin diapers.
MICK THOMAS (www.mickthomas.com)
Mick Thomas is an Australian singer/songwriter, whose songs have appeared in films, on television and in theatrical productions. After many years as the primary songwriter and vocalist for Weddings, Parties, Anything, these days Mick performs with his band, The Sure Thing. Now Mick explains how he came to write, ‘Scorn of the Women’.
What are your earliest memories of war?
Pretty much the earliest recognition would have been my grandfather’s artificial leg in the hallway of our house in Yallourn – from injuries sustained fighting in France. After that, it was the medals and yearbooks my father had from the Navy in the Second World War. War was pretty present in my family I suppose.
Tell us about ‘Scorn of the Women’ and how you came to write it
‘Scorn of the Women’ was written for an old friend I used to spend a lot of time with in the early days of the Weddings. We would go out drinking and he’d fill me full of wonderful tales of his exploits travelling around during the great depression, working on the waterfront and that sort of thing. He’d sing songs and I’d sing some back to him and we’d spend a lot of time just bumping around Melbourne and generally enjoying ourselves. One day I sang, ‘And the Band Played Waltzing Matilda’ [by Eric Bogle], and I think it must have touched a pretty raw nerve for him as he proceeded to tell me of his life during the war which was so much different from the experience of my father and grandfather. Being clinically blind he hadn’t been eligible for service and had therefore suffered incredible scorn and indignity as a result. My mother’s brother had a similar experience and it actually ultimately drove him to an early demise in the opinion of his family – so I guess I was pretty sympathetic to my old mate’s plight. In some ways it was a really easy song to write in that all the material was right there in front of me.
What reactions have you had to ‘Scorn of the Women’?
From the start people always seemed to think it was one of my more “important” songs. What it is saying is reasonably involved and convoluted – that war hurts people in a myriad of ways – but nobody really ever seems to have had much trouble grasping the meaning of the story.
Have you written other songs about war?
None that have made it onto record. There are wars that people are fighting everyday trying to keep their heads above water and I guess I have concerned myself with them.
What other things do you write about?
I have been a professional songwriter for over twenty years now so you can cover a fair bit of ground in that time. The back catalog speaks for itself hopefully.
So what’s new/different for Mick Thomas in 2009?
My current album, Spin! Spin! Spin!, has managed to actually chart – which is the first time in a long time – so that is good. There’s some musical theatre stuff for later in the year and I’ve already toured Europe and Australia. There’s a Weddings, Parties, Anything reunion gig on Grand Final eve [Friday 25 September 2009, Billboard The Venue, Melbourne, Australia] and there will be at least another one or two tours thrown in for good measure – so it’s a pretty reasonable year of work when you look at it like that.
CHARLIE KING (www.charlieking.org)
Charlie King is an American singer/songwriter, whose songs have been recorded by Holly Near, Ronnie Gilbert and Pat Humphries. For more than a decade, Charlie toured North America as part of the Bright Morning Star ensemble. These days, Charlie performs with his partner, Karen Brandow. In May of 1998, the War Resisters League gave their Peacemaker Award to Odetta and Charlie. Pete Seeger nominated Charlie for the Sacco-Vanzetti Social Justice Award, which he received in November 1999. ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ is just one of the songs that Charlie has written about the impacts of war.
What are your earliest memories of war?
I was vaguely aware of the Korean War. I was six when it ended. As John Prine says “I still don’t know what for”. I was raised in a home strong in conservative anti-communism and that was the template for my viewing the Vietnam war until I left home for college. There I read descriptions of the impact of war on flesh and saw all of it confirmed as policy in the ROTC [Reserve Officer Training Corps] classes I attended. I changed, stopped going to those classes and applied for Conscientious Objector [CO] status.
Tell us about ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ and how you came to write it
I was hopeful for some change with the defeat of G H W Bush by Bill Clinton. Bill had made a campaign promise that he would order equal rights for gays and lesbians in the military. The “don’t ask, don’t tell” capitulation was the first campaign promise he broke.
What reactions have you had to ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’?
I think it most surprised listeners who knew me as an anti-war singer/writer. The heroes in the song are military personnel, at least one a career officer, and the song does not criticize war. It targets the hypocrisy and self-destructive impact of “don’t ask, don’t tell”.
You’ve written a number of other songs about war. Why is this?
Once I had come out as a CO, I could no longer understand war. Why does my country keep doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results? Is it some form of magical thinking? Why does anyone show up for war? Why would anyone pay the price that soldiers pay? “Pay” is an operative word here because I’ve come to believe that the ideological engine that drives war is the profit motive. Some very influential people make a lot of money off war and as long as that is true I’m afraid we will keep up this insanity.
What other things do you write about?
Most of what I write is about people in interesting social/political situations. When I’m at my best I don’t write about “things”. The people in my songs may be wrestling with workplace struggles, gender identity conflicts, alcoholism, politics, murder, the fate of the earth etc. Mostly I write about people who live lives of courage or mischief who give me hope that change is possible. Sometimes I write about the insanity, banality or stupidity of the high and mighty.
Your 1995 album, Inside Out, with its songs about the impacts of war and economic circumstances, seems as relevant today as it was back then. How do you feel about that?
Since I still sing more than half the songs on that album I feel glad that I got it right and sad that things seem to stay the same. My friend Ted Warmbrand reminds me that it’s easier to write a song than right a wrong. So I do other things besides music, and hope for the best.
What new/different for Charlie King in 2009?
I’ve helped my kids through college, I’ve faithfully filed contracts as a union activist in the musicians union, I’ve made it to 62 without killing myself and I find myself in a shrinking market with no monetary reason to swim against the economic tide. With pension and social security income I have more economic freedom to do good work than ever in my life. That feels good. Karen and I were able to find the silver lining in the perfect storm of economic recession and bought a house with monthly payments less than what we paid to rent our one room apartment. So I’m free to travel and longing to spend more time at home, free to do good work and not quite sure what that work should be. Hmmm. It’s kind of like graduating from high school!
COLUM SANDS (www.columsands.net)
Colum Sands is an Irish singer/songwriter, who has sung in more than 30 countries around the world. He is a member of the Sands Family (which performs together and solo), presents BBC Radio Ulster’s Folk Club program, has six solo albums to date and a book of songs and stories, Between the Earth and the Sky. Colum has produced over fifty albums for independent songwriters and traditional musicians, with studio credits including work with countless young musicians and well known names like Joan Baez and Pete Seeger. His work in radio and studio production won a Living Tradition Award some years ago. He produced a number of tracks for Sound Neighbours, an album of music from Northern Ireland which was released by the Smithsonian Institute in Washington DC – the album was short listed for three Grammy nominations in 2008. Now Colum tells the story behind his song, ‘The Last House in Our Street’.
What are your earliest memories of war?
War was something in books, films and television until the arrival of what we called “The Troubles” in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s.
Tell us about ‘The Last House in Our Street’ and how you came to write it
I was playing a concert in Belfast in the early 1980s…lost my way going there and ended up in a street where all the windows were either broken or bricked up…it looked like there was no one living in the street anymore until I noticed, at the very end of the street, a little girl playing with a ball, an old tennis ball, she was throwing it back and forward against the wall and the sound of it bouncing off the wall and back into her hands made a sound and created a kind of rhythm that stayed in my mind. So too did that picture of the little girl playing a very natural kind of game in a most hostile environment. She was living in the last inhabited house in that street and when I arrived back home later that night I wrote this song, trying to imagine how Belfast might have looked through the eyes of a child. Although things in Belfast are much better now, I still sing this song very often because that little girl could be a child in any city that’s visited by war, when often the ones who suffer most are the children.
What reactions have you had to ‘The Last House in Our Street’?
The song has struck a chord with many different audiences around the world. The child in the song is throwing the ball against a wall…a kind of subliminal reference to the so-called “Peace Wall” which stands between Catholics and Protestants in Belfast to this day. This symbol was a very relevant one for audiences in Berlin before 1989 and also for audiences in cities like Jerusalem. Probably the most memorable reaction was from a former British soldier who asked me to sing the song at a festival in England – he told me that when he had first heard the song, it helped him to arrive at a decision to leave the army.
Have you written other songs about war?
Yes, songs like ‘The March Ditch’ which refers to the dividing wall or fence between neighbouring farms, a boundary which can also be seen as a border between countries or even the walls we build in our minds; the song “Whatever You Say, Say Nothing” about suspicion and paranoia, this one has been translated into several languages; ‘The Child Who Asks You Why’ written after performing in Neve Shalom (Oasis of Peace), the first integrated school and village for Jews and Arabs in Israel.
Why do I write them? I think the songs insist on being written – melodies, rhythms, ideas, images and words are always around me, whether on my travels or at home. Now and again they all seem to get together and knock on the door, Now and again I open the door, let them in and by the time they are ready to leave they have shaped themselves into a song.
What other things do you write about?
I also write songs about the little rituals and ways of life, the humour and wisdom of the ordinary, the twists and turns of language which always make me think that the winding back roads of dialect are much more interesting than the straight motorways of perfect grammar. Many songs inspired by individuals, for example ‘Buskers’ was inspired by Vedran Smailovic, the cellist of Sarajevo who played his cello on the streets of Sarajevo as a protest to (and in the midst of) the devastation of his home city. When Smailovic heard this song, he came to County Down where I live and played his cello on a recording of the song…he liked this part of the world so much that he decided to stay and he now lives a few miles down the road. One of those songs that you write and people step out of the verses into your life!
So what’s new/different for Colum Sands in 2009?
On the world stage the arrival of Barack Obama in the White House comes as a great symbol of hope for the future, here at home the political situation has greatly improved and yet there is still much to work for. On a musical level I’ve had the privilege of bringing my songs to Australia, Germany, Denmark, England and Scotland, there’s a trip to Newfoundland coming up in August, between these gigs and some in Ireland as well I’m putting the final touches to a new album of original songs called Look Where I’ve Ended Up Now – due for release in September 2009. There’s also a DVD planned for release around November, recorded last Easter over a series of concerts at the National Folk Festival in Canberra, Australia.
TRET FURE (www.tretfure.com)
Tret Fure is an American singer/songwriter and audio engineer/producer, who also teaches guitar and song writing. As a young performer, Tret opened for the J Geils Band, Yes and Poco, worked as a guitarist/vocalist for Spencer Davis and had her first solo album produced by Lowell George (Little Feat). The cookbook, Tret’s Kitchen, features her own recipes. ‘Hawk and the Dove’ is one of Tret’s songs about the impacts of war.
What are your earliest memories of war?
Vietnam. When I was seventeen, my boyfriend was drafted. He and his twin brother both went. You were not supposed to have both go to Vietnam because of the chances of parents losing both sons, but they wouldn’t go without each other. It was a good thing, because my boyfriend’s twin brother got shot and my boyfriend carried him out of the jungle and to safety. He wouldn’t have made it otherwise. But when he got home, he was a different person…and we parted right away.
Tell us about ‘Hawk and the Dove’ and how you came to write it
I wrote Hawk and The Dove on 12 September 2001, the day after the twin towers came down. It was devastating for us as a nation. Fear was rampant. I was with my partner, Jane, at her parents’ house and I needed to put all that fear and terror somewhere. I couldn’t believe the loss of life, the way events unfolded and I felt a need to express that. I went out on the back porch and wrote that song in about five minutes. It was a powerful experience and that song carried me and the fans through those difficult times.
What reactions have you had to ‘Hawk and the Dove’?
I sang it at a folk conference the year we decided to invade Iraq. We folkies were having an anti-war rally in the lobby of the hotel where the conference was held. All the major news stations were there. I opened the show with that song and people wept and then cheered. It was a powerful moment. Didn’t stop the administration from going in…but we had made our statement.
Have you written other songs about war?
Yes – the songs ‘Try’ [Drums and bombs and little children/Heading off to war/Wired cars and wired martyrs/Falling to the sword] and ‘Eyes of God’ [In something we should know by now/From time and war and grief/We’ve got the right to live as humans/In the Eyes of God].
I think our last administration did a lot of damage for our country and who we are in the world…It makes one feel powerless. It’s my way of finding power and expression.
What other things do you write about?
I write a lot about love, family, compassion, the human condition.
So what’s new/different for Tret Fure in 2009?
I’m staying off the road more, teaching more guitar and song writing. I’m writing songs for the next CD but won’t start it until 2010. Mostly enjoying my life in these hard times. Economically music is not a great way to make a living these days, but it is still my heart and soul.
STEVE BARNES (www.steveandrosbarnes.com)
Steve Barnes was born in England, but has been living in Australia for the past 20 years. In addition to writing songs, performing as part of the Steve and Ros Barnes duo and being Artistic Director of the Fairbridge Festival, Steve is a geologist with expertise in nickel and komatiites (magnesium-rich lavas). Alec Campbell, the subject of Steve’s song, ‘Water to the Trenches’, was Australia’s last surviving participant of the Gallipoli campaign.
What are your earliest memories of war?
My earliest memories of war are probably hearing about the Vietnam War on radio and television as a kid. And, growing up in England, there was always a heavy presence of World War II movies on tv.
Tell us about ‘Water to the Trenches’ and how you came to write it
‘Water to the Trenches’ is really a song more about the bloke [Alec Campbell] than it is about war. What really inspired me to write the song was reading a number of biographical stories about him around the time he died. As the last surviving veteran of Gallipoli, there was a lot of media coverage – the Howard Government decided to put on a State Funeral and there was all this talk about his experiences at Gallipoli. But reading about him, the thing that stood out was the fact that Gallipoli was something that happened to him for an incredibly short time, very early in his life – he was 16 years old when he went off to Gallipoli and he was there for something like three or four months. The Gallipoli experience then sort of proceeded to define his life for the rest of his 103 years. He lived a very, very long time after Gallipoli, but still the thing that everybody remembered him for at the time of his death was those few months that he spent as a teenager at Gallipoli. He lived a fascinating life – he did all kind of things – the major thing being a union organiser on the railways in Tasmania. So he basically spent his life working for the good of working people – which was kind of a mirror of what he’d done as a soldier at Gallipoli where his job was carrying water to the trenches – hence the title of the song.
What reactions have you had to ‘Water to the Trenches’?
The song generally seems to go over well – I think people get the spirit of the song – which is that Alec Campbell’s life was exemplary in a lot of ways other than what he did as a soldier and that being a soldier was only a small part of what he was.
Have you written other songs about war?
I don’t actually think that I have. I’ve written one called ‘The Weaver and the Buffalo Boy’ – which , although not specifically about war (it’s about a refugee), is about that experience of life being torn apart by cataclysmic events.
When did you start writing songs?
I started writing after I came out to Australia. One of the first songs that I wrote, ‘Green Among the Gold’, has been recorded by a few people, including Geraldine Doyle and Seán Keane. And Judy Small recently recorded, ‘Anchor and Sail’ [Judy Small – Live at the Artery].
What triggers your songwriting and your choice of topics
I come very much out of a folk background – so the songs that interest me tend to be narrative, tend to be story songs that have interesting characters in them or characters (like Alec Campbell) and incidents that stand for something bigger than themselves.
For me, the real golden age of song writing was the Cole Porter era – I think the Cole Porter-Irving Berlin generation of songwriters produced absolutely wonderful work that has been pretty well unequalled since – they were craftsmen.
I travel a bit in my job and that provides a source for stories. Song writing is something that needs time and space and I’ve found time on the road doing field work in remote places is good for reflection and song writing.
For successful song writing, I think you’ve actually got to be thinking like a songwriter – you’ve got to have your songwriter’s head on – and that means being awake to ideas and phrases and ready to capture them. To be writing good songs, you’ve got to be looking for them all the time.
I’m probably a bit unusual among songwriters in that I don’t sing my songs myself – Ros sings them. Not being a singer imposes an editorial process on my songs – it means that a song has to be good enough that somebody else wants to sing it. If you’re just singing them yourself, there’s probably one element of the critical filter that isn’t there. The best possible complement anybody could pay a songwriter is to sing one of their songs.
So what’s new/different for Steve Barnes in 2009?
Our current project is a group called Five Point Turn (with Andrew and Karen Winton). I’m still Artistic Director of the Fairbridge Festival. And Ros and I play traditional Irish music – we’ve regular session goers at the local pub!
JUDY SMALL (www.judysmall.com.au)
Judy Small is an Australian singer/songwriter, who works as a legal aid lawyer specialising in family law. She has a life-long commitment to peace and justice and has written about how “it’s not only men in uniform who pay the price of war” (‘Lest We’). Recently, John Schumann (‘I Was Only 19’) recorded Judy’s song ‘Mothers, Daughters, Wives’ for his album, Behind the Lines. Now Judy talks about another of her songs, ‘Widow in Waiting’, which tells the story of the partner of a serving member of Australia’s Special Air Service (SAS).
What are your earliest memories of war?
One of the salient memories of my life is asking my Dad, when I was 7 or 8, “Who won the war?”. He looked at me – I’ll never forget this because it is so clear in my mind – he looked at me with this very sad look on his face and he said, “Nobody won, Pet. (He used to call me ‘Pet’ when I was little.) Nobody won, Pet. Everybody lost.”. And that was the end of the conversation.
My Dad was a journalist and a World War II veteran. He died when I was 14, so I didn’t really ever have any adult conversations with him about this stuff. But I remember him, when I was about eleven, giving the ANZAC Day address in my home town. He spoke for about 35 minutes without notes and it was riveting. I remember feeling so proud of him at the time. Basically he was saying let’s not glorify this, there’s nothing glorious about dying face down in the mud with a bullet in your brain. And that’s where I first remember anything about war being other than either something that happened in history or being glorious.
Tell us about how you came to write ‘Widow in Waiting’
A friend was involved in arranging celebrations for the Australian troops who were coming home – the ones who landed in Fremantle, Western Australia. The SAS doesn’t march in these parades because their identity is secret, so they had a separate reception. She told me about a bloke at the reception who was sitting there laughing way too loud and drinking a lot. He was really on edge and his wife or girlfriend, or whoever it was, was hovering around him and looking worried. That’s where the song started.
What reactions have you had to ‘Widow in Waiting’?
People come up to me afterwards – grown men with tears in their eyes – to tell me their regiment details and say things like, “Good song.” It’s really quite moving. And some the SAS guys have introduced themselves to me after hearing the song – I remember one of them telling me how it made him cry.
In a sense, ‘Widow in Waiting’ is the first time I’ve ever really done a “we can support the soldiers, without supporting the war” song. I think we learnt that from Vietnam. I don’t think we should ever make that mistake again – of blaming the soldiers for the war.
I actually sang ‘Widow in Waiting’ in Fremantle at the KULCHA club (which is a folkie, alternative music venue) just before the funeral of one of the SAS soldiers who had been killed in Afghanistan. In the introduction, I said I was very conscious that I was singing it that context, but the audience certainly appreciated the song. And I think it was the right thing to do.
When I wrote ‘Home Front’, in the late ‘80s, I would get a lot of the women talking to me – now I get the men. I think that part of the reason is that, although ‘Widow in Waiting’ is about the woman, it’s actually acknowledging the impact of war on the men. I think those guys have rarely had it acknowledged publicly that war affects them in a really deep, emotional way which they can’t talk about, or they don’t talk about, to their family. And we’ve seen from Vietnam what that does to them.
You’ve written a number of other songs about war. Why is this?
I wrote them because nobody else was writing those songs at time.
‘Mothers, Daughters, Wives’, which was the first one, didn’t start out as a song about war at all – it was a song about my mother’s generation. As I was writing, it turned into a song about war.
‘Lest We’ [written about 18 months later] came out of the demonstrations that were held in Australia in 1981 in memory of civilian women who were raped and murdered during war time, particularly women who were raped. The rape crisis centres throughout the country had these demonstrations and the reaction to the demonstrations was really quite aggressive.
‘Home Front’ came out of the tours I did with Redgum in 1983 and 1985 – when all the Vietnam vets would go and talk to John [Schumann] after the show and their wives and their girlfriends would come and talk to me.
And ‘Silo’ is about the people who, if there was going to be a nuclear holocaust, would be the ones who pressed the buttons. The song tells of what that type of job does to people who are not necessarily combatants as such, but who are certainly involved, and what destruction of human lives at our own hands does to us as human beings.
What other things do you write about?
I write about women. I write about the environment. I write just plain stories.
Writing about women was a deliberate thing. Writing about women was absolutely deliberate. I wanted to sing songs about women because I was a feminist and because I was a woman and there weren’t songs to sing. I had to write songs like ‘From the Lambing to the Wool’ and ‘Mary Parker’s Lament’ and, later, ‘Planning for the Future’ – songs about the lives of ordinary women, in all their aspects.
Mary Parker was my great, great, great, great grandmother. And what I’ve done with that song is record what we know and add to it. The transcript of her trial is still extant and the implication is that she may have been being abused by the master of the house and, reading between the lines, thrown out of the house when the mistress of the house found out. She came back to get her stuff and she was discovered in the attic of the house and charged. Although there is no record of her having had a child in England, the things that she came back for were things you would think she would need not just for herself, but for a child. Mary Parker was a very real woman and had, I think, seven children after she came to Australia and married John Small.
I wrote ‘The White Bay Paper Seller’ because I saw her [Beatrice Bush] every day when I lived in Rozelle and Balmain and was going to Sydney Uni. And there she’d be, little spindly legs and a short skirt, winter and summer. She was amazing. [In 1996, Judy sang ‘The White Bay Paper Seller’ at Beatrice Bush’s funeral.]
‘The Manly Ferry Song’ is a true story. I took Cora on the Manly Ferry to the beach at Manly and then we came back again on the ferry. As we were driving home, Elton John’s song ‘Blue Eyes’ came on the radio. And Cora looked at me – she was six and had been very sick – and said, “You could write a song for me”. The next time I saw her she asked, “Have you written my song yet?”. She’s now a women in her 30s, with three children!
And, of course, the other thing I write about is being gay. I have always sung about being gay – ‘Turn Right, Go Straight’ was on my second album; ‘Annie’ [written by Fred Small] was on Home Front; ‘No Tears for the Widow’ was on Snapshot. When Home Front was released, I can remember a radio interviewer saying something like “and you’ve recorded a song about a lesbian school teacher”. He kind of dumped it on me. And when I just went on with, “Yes, I have – it’s a really nice song – it’s about prejudice and forced dishonesty”, he seemed quite taken aback that I wasn’t embarrassed or upset. Over the years, I’ve realised that the more normalised we make being gay and lesbian, the more normalised it is.
So what’s new/different for Judy Small in 2009?
I’m very much a part-time folk singer these days – I even see myself now as being semi-retired! I play probably ten to a dozen times a year and that’s absolutely satisfying for me. When I’m not doing it – I don’t miss it. When I do it – I love it.
I think it’s time for other people to pick up that mantle and it’s really encouraging to see young women like Ami Williamson doing that. Ami’s got that combination of the humor and the serious songs and an amazing stage presence – she’s incredibly musical (she’s opera trained).
Over the last ten years or so, my life has increasingly gone in the direction of the law and the practice of law – which I find incredibly stimulating and satisfying. What I’m doing in my legal aid work is in many ways what I’ve done with my music and, before that, with my psychology work – I see them all as corners of the same field –social justice and human rights.
SUE BARRETT is an Australian music writer, with a special interest in women in music. One of her vivid childhood memories is hearing radio broadcasts of the results of ballots for Australia’s compulsory selective National Service scheme during the Vietnam War.
© 2009 Sue Barrett
