Mick Coates & the Shallow Gravediggers

 

Mick Coates and the Shallow Gravediggers

CD review by Tony Smith

TN2595-49 – $20

TN180 Sep 26

In this self-titled album from 2021, the Central Victorian group sing some 14 songs.

Mick Coates wrote the opening and closing tracks, ‘Late Night Hillbilly DJ’ and ‘Walls of Mutawintji’, and he is joined by Tom and Cathey Ryan for ‘Johanna’.

Geoff Macarthur wrote ‘In the Service of the King’ (with Kevin McCarthy), ‘Baryulgil’ (with Steve James), ‘A Letter 10 Feet Long’, ‘Free Trade Hill’ and ‘The Only Ghost’.

Rex Watts wrote ‘Am I Blue’ and ‘Bring My Body Home’.

Charlotte Buckton wrote ‘The Barrier Line’ and ‘Riding Free’.

L.J. Hill wrote ‘Pretty Bird Tree’ and the band covers Bob Randall’s ‘Brown Skin Baby’.

The writers are joined by musicians Steve James, Finn Matthews, Tex Turkey, Oliver Dear, Matiss Schubert, Wendy Phypers, Charlotte Le Lievre and Leroy Johnson.

Mark Woods recorded and mastered the album and Aimee Volkovsky designed the cover.

The sleeve notes remind us that you do not have to dig very deep to start uncovering skeletons.

These are stories that need to be told, old songs and new from ‘our shared history: black, white, women, men, the living, the dead, the victims, the free and the imprisoned’.

‘Pretty Bird Tree’ will appeal to anyone who knows Narrabri and the Namoi River under the Kamilaroi Moon, but it tells a sad story.

‘Early on in life I took to the booze/ and drank away my dreams/ I watched my life flow sadly by/ like tear drops down the drain’.

There is more tragedyin In the Service of the King’.

An Australian of Irish descent enlists in World War I only to find his rifle sights set on Irishmen during the Easter 1916 Dublin rising.

‘Johanna’ has an interesting story told in an equally interesting musical setting.

A young Irish immigrant struggled to establish herself and offspring in rural Australia.

‘Free Trade Hill’ tells of another immigrant, this one from Scotland.

Agnes Franks arrived in Ballarat on the eve of the Eureka Stockade massacre.

‘Baryulgil’ tells the story of the asbestos mine west of Grafton and adjacent to the Bundjalung village.

The lyrics of this song are direct and unrelenting.

They tell how asbestos was used in construction but also of the poisoned air when the wind blew.

Capital punishment is horrific and indefensible.

‘Letter Ten Feet Long’ was written on toilet paper by the last man executed in Australia, with a pencil provided by a Pentridge warder.

The Victorian premier of the day had refused his request for paper and pen.

Among so many sad tales, ‘The Barrier Line’ tells a partly happy story of a railway worker at Broken Hill.

‘Riding Free’ is a ‘Child’s Lament’ on the loss of a parent.

The classic ‘Brown Skin Baby’ tells a tragic story, but it was one way in which consciousness of the stolen generations finally established the injustice of discriminatory treatment of Indigenous peoples.

A parallel with the Indigenous stolen generations was the abuse experienced by children in church run institutions.

In ‘The Only Ghost’, the perpetrator is the Catholic church.

Mention must be made of the large contribution by Geoff Macarthur.

His five songs establish him as a songwriter of significance.

While the overall theme of this album is tragedy, some tracks have a lightness of touch which alleviates the misery implicit in many of the songs.

In any case, we should not shy away from these darker moments in our past.

Without exception the songwriters have tackled difficult subjects fearlessly and have done so in excellent fashion.

The colourful sleeve notes include all the lyrics and feature several excellent landscape photographs by Mick Coates.

He ends on an optimistic note with ‘The Walls of Mutawintji’.

His love for the country of western New South Wales and his appreciation of the role of the traditional custodians show that amid the varied stories on this album, the enduring background is this magical land.

 

Ed. Mick Coates has two albums available for sale from the Trad&Now website, both of which have been uploaded to Trad&Now Live! and can be heard there from time to time.

 

 

 

Brought to you by musicians from central Victoria. Tales from long, long ago and tales from our lifetimes. These are stories from many aspects of our shared history:black, white, women, men, the living, the dead, the victims, the free and the imprisoned.

“Mick Coates along with a band of outstanding musicians sings songs about the vast, brown country that is their home and its people who they love. In a heartfelt, gloriously packaged album they look with new eyes at traditional themes of love, betrayal, murder, abuse of power and the plight of Australia’s aborigines, the oldest living human culture”.
Gary Adams, actor/musician/writer

“This record is bloody bloody bloody good!!!”
Archer

“I have been listening to folk music since the days of Frank Traynor’s Folk and Jazz Club in Melbourne in the mid sixties, and what drew me to this music were the stories and history in the songs.
This album embodies both of these things. The stories in these songs sit against the history and events of this country in a compelling way that few achieve.”
Don Williams

“An excellent collection of heartfelt well crafted tracks by Mick and his fellow bandmates.”
Barry from Bali