CD cover notes: The Never Never Land
THE NEVER NEVER LAND – songs of Henry Lawson ((c) Ian MacDougall, 1984)
As set to music and sung by Ian MacDougall
01. The Old Bark School 5:11
02. The Never Never Land 5:18
03. The Lights of Cobb and Co. 4:57
04. Down the River 3:47
05. The Bush Dance (from the short story;
The Fox Hunters [trad.]/ St. Anne’s Reel [trad.]) 4:32
06. The Roaring Days/The Wild Colonial Boy [trad.] 5:10
07. Andy’s Gone With Cattle 3:04
08. I’m a Rebel Too 3:18
09. The Days When the World was Wide 6:43
10. The Flash Stockman [trad.]/ Shearers 4:45
Henry Lawson (1867-1922)
Though he rarely held an Australian fiver in his hands during his whole lifetime, his face appears on its modern equivalent, the ten dollar note. This is because he is to this day the nation’s most popular story teller. Indeed, his short stories are to Australia’s literature what Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales are to England’s: a heady brew of characters and situations drawn from a crucial period in the nation’s development that often bubbles over with its humour, detail and wisdom.
But Lawson has, until recently, been less respected as a poet. Academics and poets under their influence have tended to judge him by the worst of his work, and have been deaf to the music in his best. It is well to remember in this regard that the reputation of one of the greatest poets in the English language, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, rests on only three or four oft-reprinted pieces, without which he would be found only in dusty anthologies of forgotten rhymers.
On the strength of the material in this album alone, I know Lawson as a man with a profound feel for music in verse, and with a perception of the country and life around him that is totally without pretence. Moreover, the disdain and academic knockery which mars the work of so many modern poets and the output generally of their state-subsidised bungalow industry is totally lacking in Lawson. Listening to him, we realise that it is only since him that the knockers came to outnumber the rabbits in this country.
To the contrary, his work projects an almost magical kindness, and a profound spiritual contact with both the continent and his contemporary Australians. This, or something like it, is I believe the basis of his enduring popularity. He was a great writer of lyrics.
The earliest rendition I ever heard of a Lawson poem in song was Chris Kempster’s version of Reedy River, in Dick Diamond’s musical of the same name. Since then Slim Dusty, the Bushwackers, Redgum, Priscilla Herdman, Mike and Michelle Jackson and others have dipped their lids to old Henry and borrowed some of his verses for the making of songs. A big contribution also from Slim Dusty.
The musical settings here, unless I am most horribly mistaken, are all mine. But what I like most is the power of Lawson’s words – a power that is there in each piece on this album, but especially in The Never Never Land, The Lights of Cobb & Co, and The Old Bark School. It is the true voice of a free spirit. Long may it sing.
Mary Gellibrand, cello; Louise Hildyard, Fiddles; Ian MacDougall, guitars, vocals, harmonicas, mandolins, dulcimer, bass guitar, four track reel to reel; Rowan Rafferty, background vocals; Alan Smart, guitar (on ‘The Bush Dance’); Russell Wombey, banjo.
Recorded at St. Busby’s Studio, O’Connor ACT, 1984. ‘The Bush Dance’ was recorded live in the War Memorial Hall, Hoskintown, NSW on June 16, 1984. (They were dancing a Strip the Willow.) Mixed by Jeff Evans, 1985. Remastered by Jeff Evans at Jemusic, Melbourne, 23.12.2007. From the original on Sandstock Music SSM-014.
