As the great bard, Bob Dylan sang in Brownsville Girl, “Strange how people who suffer together have stronger connections than people who are most content.”
Country music fans are drawn to great stories, and country band The Whitlams Black Stump have more than their share of those.
They tap into the larrikin humour and poignancy of Rabbitohs captain John Sattler playing the 1970s NRL grand final with a broken jaw, Ned Kelly’s sister Kate and her run-ins with the law, long distance love affairs slowly melting as the two parties stop writing to each other as much, a rock band feeling cursed as members die, and a botched 1980s art heist in Gosford, NSW.
So much so that ten years ago, a musical built around leader Tim Freedman’s songs was staged in Sydney as Truth, Beauty And A Picture Of You.
These songs have struck a chord with Whitlams Black Stump, who made their live debut in the summer of 2022 at the Tamworth Country Music Festival. They have done four national tours, three of which went into regional areas—all of which have sold out.
The current run began on March 31 and is entering its final lap. It will take in venues such as Beer Shed in Leumeah, the Prince of Wales Opera House in Gulgong, and The Cordial Factory in Grenfell. It will wind up on October 12 in the Kerribee Park Rodeo Grounds for the Savannah In The Round festival in Queensland before 7,000.
“We get pretty enthusiastic audiences in the cities, but there’s an extra level of enthusiasm in country towns,” reports leader Tim Freedman. “They’re not spoiled; that’s the simple answer. They might see two things a year …
“It’s good to remind them what live music sounds like. As I say to them, Doesn’t it sound good when it comes through these big black boxes as opposed to through a computer?”
In The Spotlight
Regional tours and country audiences have been in the spotlight recently. Moves by state and territory governments to reboot live music have seeped through to the regionals.
Most important are the ground-breaking census reports, which provide data to denote where investment and opportunities lie.
For instance, NSW’s The State Of The Scene 2024, published in June, reported that of the 795 venues showcasing music and generating $1.5 billion, 57 per cent were in the regionals and 43 per cent in metros. The state government’s four-year plan to increase the number of venues saw an 84 per cent rise in the first 12 months.
Music Victoria’s Regional Live Music Census found that five years ago, there were 29,339 regional gigs, which drew 5.29 million people and spent $397 million.
“It’s interesting out there in the regionals; there’s usually a space to play in every town now,” Freedman notes. “There are some marvellous theatres, many of them which have their own pianos. There’s also a tendency for breweries to start doing music, there’ve been new ones in Armadale and Port Macquarie, for instance.”
Freedman’s advice to other rock acts is that most regional rooms have 150 to 300 seats, “so there’s no pressure of wanting to have 1,000 people in a 3,000 population town. That’s a bit hard to ask for!
“The secret to touring is to be flexible. Mid-week in regional areas we’ll play as a duo, piano and pedal steel guitar. When you cut back your costs from, say, the equipment for a seven-piece, there’s not much pressure on numbers.”
It’s an easy transition for someone like Freedman. Decades ago, with advice from MGM Distribution co-founder and visionary Sebastian Chase, The Whitlams and John Butler Trio set themselves up as companies, with chief members as CEOs. They handled as much of their business as possible, including their own record labels, publishing, and merchandising. When their records went platinum and more, they made more money than acts on major labels.
On this current tour, Freedman does his own bookings, saving himself from having to pay an agent a 30 per cent commission. He has a ticket price for each format and won’t budge. “You have to know your worth,” he explains.
This business acumen came in handy during the COVID lockdown. Three months before, he’d decided to return after a ten-year hiatus. In February 2020, he announced a Whitlams tour. 13,000 tickets were instantly snapped up.
Then came Black Friday on March 13, and everything stopped. Freedman postponed The Whitlams tour (no one asked for refunds), and vamoosed to his holiday home in Broken Head near Byron Bay. There, he got healthy, went surfing with his daughter Alice and cycled.
He then set off on a 20-date solo run through regional places like Tamworth, Mudgee, Black Stump Way, Gunnedah and Orange in 2020 and 2021. The music industry had stopped. He’d announce a show on social media three weeks before and watch the tickets get grabbed up.
“I really felt honoured to be this worker-in-song. I’d drive six hours, do a long soundcheck, set up the merchandise table, sing for an hour and a half, and then sign vinyl and CDs. I felt I was conducting a noble pursuit, a trade, a vocation, and it was good for my mojo.”
He enjoyed the feeling of playing to regional audiences. While on his long drives, he discovered that as a result of these shows, country radio stations – the national Kix FM network and Brisbane First Nations Triple A Murri Country – had started to playlist the Whitlams’ Man About A Dog. It made sense to him. It woke an interest in going through this door.
After all, country and folk were not too far from the surface for The Whitlams. In the early days, when they had to play multi-sets, guitarist Stevie Plunder stretched it out with covers by Hank Williams and Patsy Cline. After all, his songs were parochially Australian. What would happen if he put some of these songs and others into a country music format?
He enlisted the Whitlams drummer Terepai Richmond, called bassist and country music producer Mark Fell, and told him, “Put your dream team together.” Fell had worked on Freedman’s 20011 solo album Australian Idle.
Award-Winning
Into Whitlams Black Stump came Rod McCormack (banjo/guitar and award-winning producer), Ollie Thorpe (pedal steel) and George Washingmachine (fiddle). “That’s 35 Golden Guitars and 12 ARIAs in the live band.”
Freedman was particularly impressed that McCormack could also pull out some fierce guitar shredding like Neil Young onstage. There’s a cover of Young’s Birds on the WBS’ debut Kookaburra album, and Young is name-checked on Man About A Dog.
After Whitlams Black Stump’s Tamworth debut, they spent three weeks with a capital city run called Big City Debut Tour.
Their repertoire includes songs by Neil Young, Bernie Hayes, and Dan Reed, as well as hee-haw renditions of Whitlams songs. The Tex-Mex rendition of You Sound Like Louis Burdett, “written during a mad period of my life,” makes it sound even more menacing. The crying pedal steel effect and different time signature on Blow Up The Pokies instills an even greater sadness.
On some songs, the narrator becomes a different person, which is creatively fascinating.
Sometimes, when introducing Fallen Leaves, he’d quip wise and say, “I wanted (this) to be a duet with Dolly Parton, but she wasn’t available, so we went down the line of all the other female country singers, but we got no bites, so instead we’ve got Oliver Thorpe doing harmonies.”
Gen Z’s interest in country and Americana has meant that Whitlams Black Stump shows in the cities have more younger faces dotting audiences. It’s a different story in the regionals.
“There, young people are coming along with their parents who are Whitlams fans. Many is he time when I’m autographing a tea towel I get told ‘I grew up to your music, Mum would never take it off the car stereo’.”
A thirst for vinyl and CDs at shows took him by surprise. On this tour, he printed out 800 vinyl albums. They sold out in a month, and he hastily had to get more done to keep up with demand.
Work has begun on the second Whitlams Black Stump album. Over the next five months, Freedman will be writing with the band.
Whitlams Black Stump have already started recording the next album, with two tracks down. Over the next five months, Freedman will write with the band (McCormack is responsible for penning 30 country music chart toppers) and with the “Springsteen of Redfern” Perry Keyes, who penned two on Kookaburra.
The Whitlams Black Stump are on the road in support of Kookaburra. You can catch them on the following dates:
THE WHITLAMS BLACK STUMP – KOOKABURRA TOUR DATES
Thursday 5 September – Odessa at Leaver’s, Creswick – VIC*
Friday 6 September – Echuca Paramount, Echuca – VIC* with SWEET TALK (trio)
Saturday 7 September – Frankston Arts Centre, Frankston – VIC* with SWEET TALK (trio)
Sunday 8 September – The Pig & Whistle, Main Ridge – VIC*
Thursday 12 September – The Beer Shed, Leumeah – NSW* with MELODY MOKO
Friday 13 September – Avalon, Katoomba – NSW*
Saturday 14 September – Prince of Wales Opera House, Gulgong – NSW* with MELODY MOKO
Friday 20 September – The Co-Op, Gerringong – NSW*
Saturday 12 October – Savannah In The Round – QLD
*The Whitlams Black Stump Duo – Tim and Ollie
