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| Introduction |
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With Country Radio and The Dingoes they were pioneers
in Australian roots music and half a world way, the music found
them again.
Greg Quill and Kerryn Tolhurst are credited by many
music historians and critics as being among the first musicians
and songwriters to shape the unique fusion of Australian country,
folk and rock music that has become a major influence in the
nation's cultural legacy.
Together in Country
Radio, they forged an instantly recognizable sound in
the early 1970s. As songwriting partners they created unusual
and memorable songs from allusive and familiar elements - Australian
stories, landscapes, characters and sentiments - not found in
the pop music of the era till then. Quill's experience in folk,
bush and contemporary art songs was reinforced by Tolhurst's
grounding in country music and blues, and his innovative flourishes
on acoustic resonator guitar, electric lap steel and mandolin.
Two of their best-known collaborations, "Gypsy Queen"
and "Wintersong" - characterized by Quill's evocative
lyrics and Tolhurst's ringing mandolin and soaring slide guitar
- are staples of the Australian musical repertoire, acclaimed
classics performed and recorded by many artists over the years
and still played consistently on radio. The album Country
Radio Live, which contains the enduring favourites "Silver
Spurs", "Last Time Around" and "Terry's Tune", is
a testament to a musical journey that encompassed countless
national tours, television appearances, headlining performances
at major rock festivals, and support tours with international
icons of the era - Fairport Convention, Elton John, Creedence
Clearwater Revival, Stephen Stills, and Santana,
among others.
Quill learned his craft in the folk music and singer-songwriter
clubs and cafés of Sydney and Melbourne in the late 1960s. An
early album, Fleetwood Plain, was released to
critical acclaim in 1970. Country Radio came to an end in 1974.
After one last collaboration, 1975's The Outlaw's Reply
- with Tolhurst's instrumental work infusing Quill's songs with
whimsy, romance and rage - and a farewell performance at the
Sydney Opera House, Quill left to continue his musical career
in Canada, assisted by a grant from the Australian Council For
The Arts.
So far from the sources of his musical inspiration, Quill eventually
put away his guitars. In the past 20 years has become known
as one of Canada's leading arts journalists at North America's
third largest newspaper, the Toronto
Star, with a daily readership of one million.
Only recently has he started performing again, in folk and concert
rooms in Toronto, and has a residency at the market-district
honky tonk, Graffiti's.
After Country Radio, Tolhurst was a founding member of The
Dingoes, which continued to expand the parameters of
Australian country rock by marrying rhythm and blues with bush
music, country and folk. The band was known for its muscular
style and distinctively Australian edge.
The Dingoes were both enormously popular on Australia's pub
concert circuit and darlings of the critical media. Great things
were predicted for them and they seemed destined for international
success when, on the heels of their hit eponymous debut album
in Australia - it contained Tolhurst's "Way Out West", "Goin'
Down Again" and "The Last Place I Ever Wanna Be"
- the band was signed to a U.S.-based management company and
record label. They toured North America and recorded two more
albums, Five Times The Sun, with the Tolhurst-penned
favourites "Smooth Sailing" and "Waiting For The Tide
To Turn", and Orphans Of The Storm, between
1977 and 1979, when their long run came to an end.
Tolhurst had played in Melbourne in the late 1960s with The
Adderly Smith Blues Band and the country outfit Sundown.
He emerged after his stints with Country Radio and The Dingoes
as one of the most distinctive and expressive steel guitar and
mandolin players in the recording world. First settling in Woodstock,
N.Y., then New York City, he established himself as a songwriter
in the American market - he wrote Pat Benatar's "All Fired
Up" and Little River Band's "Man On Your Mind", both
Top 20 Billboard hits in the mid-1980s - and as a session musician
and record producer.
Creative head and producer at Stalking Horse Records in Manhattan, Kerryn plays regularly in and around New York, and travels frequently to Austin, Nashville and Australia to produce, record and perform.
Dividing his work schedule between New York, Austin, Tex., and
Australia, Tolhurst has produced roots artists as diverse as
American singer-songwriter Bruce
Henderson, veteran R&B songwriter Jimmy
Norman, and notable Australian country-rockers The
Pigram Brothers and Goanna, R&B outfit The
Black Sorrows, as well as singer-songwriters Cyndi
Boste, Jeff
Lang, Paul
Kelly, and Russell
Crowe.
Tolhurst teamed up again with his former Country Radio partner
Quill after an all-night jam session in Melbourne in 1999 during
which the old chemistry was suddenly reconstituted and the bare
bones of a dozen new songs emerged. During sessions in New York
and Toronto, Quill and Tolhurst have written and recorded material
that contains the magic of their past collaborations and best
solo efforts, tempered by maturity, wit and an abiding faith
in each other.
The resulting CD, so rudely interrupted, picks
up the threads of their musical lives 30 years on. It was released
in Australia via MGM Distribution (www.TheGrooveMerchants.com)
in April 2003 and in Canada on True North Records (www.truenorthrecords.com)
in September. |
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