Welcome to Neal Murray.

And that's how informally we're going to start since you just walked on here like that.

Fine.

Now, you you can just wing it.

Let me tell you about this man that sits beside me on the stage.

It's an honor just to be doing an interview with him.

Um, and he'll come across is an incredibly humbled fellow.

Ah, that classic, iconic, iconic Australian bloke.

Perhaps I could even add the Blackwood in there for you.

Neal.

What do I think?

It's still hands?

No, I'm in D Block.

Um, and as you see, he, uh, he will appear humble and mother, um ah.

He'll keep everything down to us from very grounded for all of us.

Which is a beautiful thing about this man.

But if your someone of my age I turned 45 yesterday, that's recorded now on camera.

Um, thank you so much.

Ah, I've grown up with his music in my vocabulary.

Ah, long cyber Grumpy band and midnight oil eyes Neal Murray, in my vocabulary as folk rider and the traditions fraught What reflects this country to me and ah, he's certainly not shy of being a great Australian social commentator as well.

And we've been talking about that this morning, um, alongside law that he's a songwriter and, uh, a writer.

He's a generous collaborator.

And you'd like to call that co writing.

And Well, today, Neil and I got a sort of unpack kind of quite a few things.

We're gonna start from the beginning.

We're gonna talk about few things that you know that we'll expect expected to talk about, which is perhaps early compositions and island home and some of those other things.

And then we'll talk about when you're But you're going on where you are now and about collaboration, et cetera, et cetera.

So just one more time Because so many of you I know just walked in the house.

Please make Neil Mark Murray welcome, please.

Here to see you.

So this is an effort songwriting workshop where we talk about all those processes and we're gonna break them down today.

So first we just start with how you got into the business.

The business.

Terrible word.

But you know, when did you start?

Did you do have any background in education?

Who taught you had self taught.

What happened?

Where are you?

Who are you?

Neal Murray.

Ah, All right.

My first song and 1975.

I think it was over in a fear of the hat.

Some girl brought the poetry out in the This was pretty bad.

I couldn't.

I kind of remember the song.

You I didn't actually get anything on record until 1993.

Um, and off the songs that I've put on record the oldest one all right, was in 1979.

But there's a bunch of stuff I wrote before them, which wasn't that great.

But at school, I like to write partnering s eyes composition.

I liked I know spiritually good at art.

So I had that creative kind of spark our supplies.

Ah, early on that even, um, I was brought up in the country Western Victoria rise on a soldier settlement bloc farm, small farm that my grandparent's ran.

And I can remember a time before television on Duh, because we never got TV at the little better.

I don't think it's about known in CT three or something, but when we got the black and white TV, that cow inside of beautifully with the Beatles and I love my group.

My sister's All the Sisters were under Elvis and stuff, but the Beatles are migrant and even Grade two in Promise Girl made some other kids would be singing battle songs for morning Talk show and tell, and my grandfather was a clean Emma's a singer.

Encourage me to sing.

All the relatives since have told me I I don't have a voice anyway like my grandfather.

So that's kind of them, Yeah, but I remember going to people's houses, relatives and that having sing songs around the piano, Accordions and things and tinpot Baines that dances and stuff.

So I got a bit of that import.

And then when the TV came in the Beatles and all that 60 stuff, and in the 19 seventies I really started to hear the singer songwriters than your young Bob Dylan's that Joni Mitchell's but also people not in the mainstream.

I was very influenced by John Martin and lighter on Gerry Rafferty and of a songwriters, So it's better time when when I, uh, actually started on drums, I got a little drunk.

It was 10 years old Bash Dwyane that used to play along the souls in the writing on then I was about 13 afford, and I got hold of my sisters know a long string like a long string acoustic.

And, um, in about a fortnight I learned to play the basic chords and are starting to play the songs of the time sheet music, buying sheet music for various popular songs.

And in that process, discovering how songs kind of went together to the point where boy in my life chains are was attempting to run souls.

And were you doing this at school that same time with school?

One of the things we have actually could choose music into it.

You know, there's no reason I wasn't in any choir music group of school.

It was nothing like that.

We're only took country high school.

No, I didn't have it.

I just had to kind of do it myself.

And and from there from that place where self taught and, you know, a bit of a multi instrumentalist, we might call, you know, uh, you know, Jack up a bit of grabbing everything you can get.

Then you start songwriting.

You sit with 75 a little bit before then.

Where's the transition?

How's that?

So you've learned your learning Lots of repertoire.

You're playing lots of other people's songs.

Yeah, but someone got toe at school.

I got I student ship too.

Trained as a secondary art and craft takes United two years and volunteers in Melbourne to do that, cause which ostensibly we're gonna be turned out as a trying teacher to teach your signature and craft.

Um, I was meeting other people of Look that we're into music who are also doing here.

Um, I didn't neither.

There was any music courses like you've gotten an ISA nice, Nice dies and dumb.

And I was getting little bands going for me.

Little bands and we're playing a mixture of covers and a few originals that I had going in anyway.

Even when I got posted at first year teaching up to a place called Robin Vile numeral juror, I got a band going in that 10 straight away and two little gigs.

So I fancy myself as a bit of a hot guitar apply.

But band that I already here after a few years but still play guitar but there was so many good guitar players around, and it was in that prices.

I I started to realize what my strength Woz and that was initially writing songs.

So I want Yeah, this is good bye then it's the 19 eighties.

Well, yeah, $7 that Robin Bell and I went on a trip that year to the Northern Territory and visited Panya and then a friend.

They said there's a job going Ah, driving store truck and out stations on dumb.

I said, Well, I'm coming up.

So in January 1990 I moved up there and, of course, I had made a tear and stuff with me and I wasn't in the place of weight.

And I had a visitor a little flattened.

It was, uh, this Ah, very cool looking cat.

Logical fella.

You want to look at Margareta And, uh So you here look, And he picked it up and he made the sweetest sounds coming out of it and his name of Semi Butcher.

And we were jamming that afternoon and his brothers got involved.

Another young fellows.

We got some equipment, secondhand stuff and started having ah concerts in a pony a couple of nights week.

So here wasn't this place.

I didn't think I'd get a band down there with that.

Something is a band going and, ah, we should start applying what we could apply a lot of early rock and roll stuff.

Chuck Berry, Little Richard bagels and Styron's covers.

I say day singing and ah, I've had four months later I always had on the flat of it was a Sunday remembers sleepy Sunday afternoon, and I had this year.

Rocky didn't didgeridoo.

I got from a previous trip to the Topping in the light seventies and learned a little bit of didgeridoo.

And, um, they don't use didgeridoo and companion Central strike.

It's not a traditional instrument.

The So I thought I couldn't bothering a tiger that I hadn't played it for a while.

So get award and started blowing it on the on the veranda.

I saw him a little Zahra me flat left on this block of four, the risk of trash to run.

So I'm in.

It'll flatten as I started a blot affair, the core of our this skinny black walking down the dusty ride.

But I'm blonde and he starts walking quicker and he walks in a couple of steps.

He's up on my veranda, his company's hands and he's singing him.

Linger.

When I'm a shit, what about done?

You know, he said, Don't stop, Keep gown.

That's boiling Bowling, I said, I don't know much.

That's that's all I know should give it.

I'll show you.

He grabbed it and started blowing up beautifully.

Strong, robust patent.

I was trying to play.

He wasn't from likely was Dr looking for salaries from the top end Betting my Wally's he stopped all is like blowing out when he played with it.

Wow, that's great.

But he was ignoring me.

He'd noticed inside my room I had a good time.

Long, almost waiting.

Said, Oh, you got a guitar?

They said you.

He said, I'm a single man.

What's it?

Are you Is that what time you haven't been?

Uh, we'll be there in the afternoon.

I'll see you.

These And that afternoon a learned that he was, uh hey, coming from alcohol in the top.

Pained.

I need to rob companion because he was sweet on Sammy's sister.

So he was gonna be Sami's brother, Mole and, uh, no.

Why?

He wasn't gonna be in the bane and He had a bunch of song books under his arm and he was angel Rock and roll her.

So we had a front man.

That was his name was George.

And, uh, let's have a war of being good.

Gown says that for those of you who are not even born, perhaps even in the 40th century and there are some of you in here, um, the real grumpy benj, uh, started in the middle identities around that time That rot.

No thing.

We started really flying on a 90 but it took us.

It wasn't until number 90 three that we toured the Sydney, but we applied round communities and in Antillean Kimberly's part of it.

And and through the 1st 3 years, it's always interesting to know what's happening.

Those first coco riding estaba bands establishing itself.

You were doing covers at the start, and then it starts a collaborative riding starts.

We'll have had some American songs that that styles, but I didn't really suit the band on, and, uh, because I took a wall economy, it was easy.

Once we had the late singer, um to then have a focus, and I thought about it writing songs for him For a while, I was still seeing a lot of stuff and he was helping, um that are in the back of a model.

I've got account with some songs that he really wants to sing.

And so what lies beyond it?

Mile in time?

Yeah.

No.

95.

We released their first album, Big No, no blankets.

And we did country to the usual wisdom of not doing a tour up the East cars.

We we did a tour at through the desert or answer w I they got to down to Lone Child.

We got the top and I managed to go out, too.

Ah, Grr!

Cooling.

Um, he's passed away, and I guess I'm a bit reluctant decides nothing too much.

Yeah, to his island home, which is going to alcohol.

And And it's been about five days with him in these brothers and family on a remote part of the bush.

And we just live like kings off the land and sea are getting fish cry fusion, hunting turtles and stuff.

And it was one of my boyhood, uh, dreams to be how to do that with the original people live off the land like that.

You're just in a god and magnificent and just I just No way to get her to get everything in.

Not a big effect on me, I think.

But at the same time, I have been living in Central Stripe for six years of sign length of time is the lead singer.

And I knew what it was like to miss your country because I'm from with with Victoria Freshwater Country.

And I understood that feeling anyway.

I had to fly back down south, uh, to do some promotion work for the bane.

And I was on a bus traveling from Melbourne to Sidney.

What?

I'm gonna be two weeks after being alcohol, But it's the middle of winter.

You know what I'm doing here?

Three o'clock in the morning, I'm feeling very restless to stare at the moonlit landscape.

There's frosty kind of planes going by southwest slopes of New South Wales, and it was just suffering this exceptional longing to be back in about a tropical sea.

It was also the feeling of homesickness and morning to really be where I belonged as well mixed in it.

But just it just popped in my head my home, my island home.

My island home is awaiting for me.

And as soon as I got that, it was like, really insistent.