buried country:  Live in Concert
backtrackers biography

Buried Country houseband the BACKTRACKERS are an already legendary aggregation...
 
BRENDAN GALLAGHER virtually chose himself as houseband-leader/MD of the show, what with a four-decade long career doing practically everything you can do in music in Sydney but most especially due to his stellar track record as a producer of indigenous artists like the late Jimmy Little, L.J. Hill and Kutcha Edwards. I first bonded with Brendan probably some time around the early 90s, when I was DJing one night at the old Newtown RSL – whether it was with Brendo’s then-band the Leisuremasters, with whom I did a few gigs, I can’t recall – either way I dropped a Leon Russell cut, likely “Roll Away the Stone,” and Brendan ran up waving his arms going, "Oh man, Leon Russell, I LOVE Leon Russell, I haven’t heard this track in years!" And so I figured anyone who loves the Master of Space and Time as much as I do can’t be all bad, and we became friendly…
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Brendo will still describe himself as a guitarist first and foremost – and he is a great one, who has written a celebrated book on the subject, The Open Tuning Chord Book for Guitar, and played the instrument in too many bands and on too many recordings to mention – but he is just as successful as a producer, arranger, educator and advocate (currently an artist representative on the board of APRA). After the Leisuremasters, Brendan formed Karma County, who, starting with Last Stop Heavenly Heights in 1997, have released a total of six albums to date, winning an ARIA Award in 2000 for Into the Land of Promise. I saw a bit more of Brendo around that time in the late 90s because we were both working a bit with the late, great Jimmy Little, me with Jimmy on Buried Country, and Brendo with him ​on producing the ARIA-winning album, Messenger, ​that would 

Pic (left): James Henry

give Jimmy a whole late-career rebirth, and propel Brendan himself into contention too. Since then, Brendan has continued to rack up the credits out of his Bondi bolt-hole, including releasing a string of fine solo albums, most recently the magnum opus Wine Island, and especially notably to me producing the great L.J. Hill album, Namoi Mud. In 2004, he reunited with Jimmy Little to produce the Messenger sequel Life's What You Make It – before Jimmy’s death in 2012 touched us all – and just recently he has produced Kutcha Edwards’ stunning new second solo album. Go to Brendan's website here

​When Mary Mihelakos and I, after committing to the concept of a Buried Country stageshow, turned our thoughts firstly to an MD, it was almost as if Brendo was ordained to get the gig. And when he met our proposal with just as much enthusiasm and application, there were no second thoughts, and it was a done deal.

Pic (left): James Henry

​Drummer JIM ELLIOTT, fellow denizen of Bondi Beach, was the Backtrackers’ first recruit, long before I christened the band by that name. I’m still not sure whether they like the name, but I’m digging my heels in on this one: If Paul Kelly approves, which he did with a smile, that’ll do me. Jim, of course, was and still is one half of one of the greatest Australian rhythm-sections of all time, the Cruel Sea’s, alongside bassist Kenny Gormley; I’ve known him since the late 1980s, when he started out drumming in the late-lamented Sekret Sekret, and I can vouch for him being one of nature’s gentlemen as well as something of a master of space and time himself. Anything that gets him back behind the tubs is a good thing and he slotted straight into the Buried Country groove/psychoscape.
 
And that’s the thing, about this band and show: from the very first time we all got together for the first rehearsals, after Brendan and I had done no small amount of to-ing and fro-ing over the repertoire (myself in a capacity I described as akin to an old-fashioned A&R man), it all just fell into place so smoothly it was almost disarming!
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Pic (left): James Henry

Pedal-steel guitarist JASON WALKER is my Kiwi cousin who, once again, over two decades, has played with practically everybody on the Sydney scene with a bit of a bent towards country music, but should be better known as a solo-artist singer/songwriter in his own right – and which he will likely now be with the release of his third album, All-Night Ghost Town, on the local arm of esteemed American label Lost Highway Records. Of course, I first bonded with Jason as a fellow writer, after he published his first book and still the best Gram Parsons biography, God’s Own Singer. Jason, who now lives up in the Blue Mountains, was a featured picker on the 2012 Jon Langford-produced Roger Knox album Stranger in My Land, and alongside (Youth Group’s) Toby Martin and singer Jimmy James, he was a member of occasional aggregation the Rug Cutters, the only act to purpose-cut a track for the Buried Country 1.5 CD, their version of James’s grandfather Dougie Young’s classic “Land Where the Crow Flies Backwards.” Go to Jason's website here

Pix (left): James Henry

​​Guitarist BUDDY KNOX, of course, as well as being one of the tastiest pickers in the country, is the son of Roger Knox – and the father of Backtrackers’ bassist TEANGI KNOX (whose mother, moreover, is Auriel Andrew’s daughter Serena, making Roger and Auriel perhaps not so much the King and Queen of Koori country as its grandma and grandpa!). In the time-honoured Aboriginal tradition, Buddy, like Warren H. Williams and Frank Yamma, began playing in his father’s band when he was still just a teenager. He was a member of Euraba when they recorded Roger’s first album Give it a Go at the old Enrec studios in Tamworth in 1983, and he has been alongside his dad at every step of the way since. And this is a pattern Teangi has repeated too: When Buddy launched a solo career in the 2000s, Tangi was the bassist in his band that also included Buddy’s other son Goori. Taking a sidestep into the blues, for which he's long harboured a passion, the Tamworth-based Buddy has so far released two albums, 2007’s got da blues and 2009’s Buddy’s Blues, and these have established him as Australia’s crunchiest, funkiest, stingingest R&B axe hero. When Mary Mihelakos asked the young Teangi if he thought he could handle the Buried Country set-list, he shrugged and muttered shyly, Oh, I know all of nan and pop’s songs. He is, like his father, a natural. Go to Buddy's website here