By Ignatius Kim
"I don't know how it's doing but it's a great relief to have it out. The rest of it is in the hands of the corporate gods", says Neil Murray of his latest album These Hands.
As Murray will tell you, when the whims of the music market ordain you a position on its hierarchy, it can be a trial by fire to get a satisfactory hearing.
Without a recording contract, he began laying down the tracks of These Hands in mid-1991 with producers Jim Moginie (Midnight Oil) and Mark Moffat.
"The recession was on and there was a feeling of doom and gloom around in the music business, especially with someone like me, a singer-songwriter with no hit to point to.
"I've been involved in the music business for 10 or 15 years, but with no commercial success to back me up, it was doubly hard to get the attention."
So it wasn't until the middle of this year that the album managed to get released after Murray signed a deal with Aurora in May. I could almost see the relief pouring off him as he talked.
"The whole experience was very sobering."
But Neil Murray remains a driven man.
"It comes down to yourself. This stuff is coming out of you and you just can't stop it — you've got to do something with it. The songs that come to me move me, some of them very profoundly, and I think, 'Jesus, if it does this to me, it's got to do it to someone else so I've got to get this out'."
"So it was just a question of biting the bullet, borrowing money and going into debt and all that sort of stuff just to get the songs recorded as best as I could.
"And I remain hopeful that I'll get airplay which I've started to with 'Holy Road'."
The ghosts have been exorcised. At that point I mentioned Bruce Elder's review of These Hands in Rolling Stone magazine.
"Everyone else seems to know what 'Big Truck' [second track on the album] is about, but this guy thinks it's just about a truckie, and he's supposed to be one of the best critics around — it's totally mystifying. He's just pidgeon-holed me into the country mould of writing songs about the landscape. I don't write songs about the landscape. "I don't think he understands what an allegory is."
Indeed. In Elder's own words:
"A track like 'Far Away' reaches towards a feeling of the isolation and desolation of western Queensland and the Northern Territory but it is too up-tempo to achieve the resonances and the sense of place.
"With some of the other songs, Murray actually seems to sing with a flatness and lack of emotion which reflects the flatness of central Australia. This is particularly evident in the low-key vocal on 'Big Truck' [a song about being a truckie]..."
Hmmm... is Bruce Elder himself profoundly misunderstood perhaps?
Says Murray: "It's generally very hard in this country to get yourself heard, even more so if you happen to be doing stuff that is of weight, if it has a little bit of thought behind it. If they're songs of conscience I sometimes get the feeling that it makes radio programs a bit uncomfortable. They'd rather play some schmaltz which is a safe product to sell.
"I draw a lot of strength from other peers in the industry who are working in a similar ball-park as I am: some of Midnight Oil's material, Kev Carmody, Archie Roach, Shane Howard, Tiddas — there's quite a few people I can think of who I feel some sort of camaraderie with in terms of getting our music out there.
"It's encouraging to see people like Tiddas [whose debut album is due later this month] and Mixed Relations [whose album was released earlier this year] finally getting their material out. Whether they'll make inroads into the mainstream remains to be seen.
"But the more there are people doing it, making music that actually speaks to people, that has something to say, the better. There are so many releases that come out every week, but not much of it has anything to say.
"Kev is one person who's very courageous with his songwriting, he doesn't pull any punches at all."
Was there any chance of collaborating with Carmody?
"We're trying, but we pass like ships in the night. We have got a song that we've done together and there's another one that we're working on, but it's just a matter of finding the time and sitting down together. We're always jamming over at his place, but we've got to actually lay the stuff down."
In the time between recording and releasing These Hands, Murray wrote Sing for Me Countryman, an autobiographical novel based on his experiences in central Australia between 1978 and the end of the '80s during which he worked at Papunya, an Aboriginal community west of Alice Springs. It was there that the Warumpi Band was formed.
Murray hinted at an album with the Band sometime in the near future nent reformation.
"We've been doing some reunion gigs this year and things are feeling pretty good, so we're looking at doing some recording together.
"But I've got my own solo career — I can't just jump back into the Band. I don't think it's what they want either. We'll just get an album done and see what happens."
There is also the possibility of a tour with Paul Kelly and Chris Wilson in November.
But for now, Murray has already embarked on a national tour to promote These Hands.
The remaining dates and venues are:
September 1 Tower Hotel, Kalgoorlie
3 Herdsman, Perth
4 Mandurah
5 Sandringham, Sydney
9 Patrick's, Pennant Hills
10 Dee Why, Sydney
11 Annandale, Sydney
21 Continental Cafe, Melbourne
22 Geelong Lyric Theatre (with Yothu Yindi)
24 Collingwood Town Hall (with Yothu Yindi)
26 Albury Civic