43 f “I
t was very low-key. I booked a venue for every Satur- day and had different musicians coming. It was a trial for them as much as for me. I have worked in enough bands and left enough bands to know that it’s as much the personality [of the musicians] as it is their
musical intelligence that makes it work.”
For one gig drummer Chris Lewis and double bass player Dan Witton joined her. “Our audience was one currant bun sitting on a table all by itself,” she admits. “We ate it at the end!” It wasn’t the ideal audience, but she knew she had her band. “I’d worked and toured with Chris before in Circus Oz. He was my musical director and I was always really inspired by his playing. I would have been too sad to have used any other drummer. I did work with a few different bass players,” she confesses, “but Dan played for about two minutes and I knew quite strongly he was an exceptional musician. His choic- es of melody and harmony were very free. Then he sang a little bit of backing harmonies and I almost fell over, because his voice is angelic. I just had to have him. And I did.”
At first they were Jenny M Thomas & The System, and their album was called Bush Gothic, but they liked the latter name more and took it for the band. The term was coined to describe the work of an early 20th Century writer called Barbara Baynton. “She wrote these stories which were very dark and actually very truthful about what happens in the Australian bush, exploring what would happen to settlers’ wives who were left alone when the men would go off shearing. They could often be by themselves, surrounded by 50 kilo- metres of bush before the next neighbour, and it was kind of terrify- ing. She would write about this when most other writers were writ- ing about the lucky country and how you can make money off the sheep’s back. Of course, both are the reality of Australia. It’s a won- derful land of opportunity and it’s a paradise. But there’s also this underlying feeling of great homesickness and fear of this strange land, where everything looks and smells different, the temperature is different and the natives don’t want you there.”
It is this dark heart that Bush Gothic capture in the Australian folk songs they perform. Take Botany Bay, which Jenny has recorded in different arrangements on each of her last three albums. “I’ve sung it ever since I was a kid. At its heart is its chorus, ‘toora-li, oora- li’, which suggests ‘oh well, she’ll be right’,” she grins. “But it’s quite a melancholy story. It’s so Australian. That’s why I keep doing it.”
The latest recording is on Bush Gothic’s newest release, The Nat- ural Selection Australian Songbook. On it they’ve teamed up with four hand-picked musicians – Rachel Johnston, Jason Bunn, Edward Antinov and Sarah Curro – and dubbed them the Lonely String Quar- tet. “Well, the string quartet has been described as the most perfect ensemble on Earth, and I think I have to agree with that,” Jenny explains. “As a composer I wanted the challenge of how to really write for string quartet and utilise everything that the instruments can do, but also how their voices can interlock.”
The album is just as rewarding as the first Bush Gothic release. The Indian influences are more prominent and overall it has a slight- ly lighter touch. As well as the traditional numbers, the trio tackle contemporary Australian songs for the first time. The Songbook opens with a cover of John Williamson’s Aussie country classic, True Blue. It’s often considered a rather bombastic celebration-cum- requiem for true Australians – that is, we infer, working-class, white ones of British extraction. “A lot of people really hate it,” Jenny tells me. “I hated it! What the song represents is a very narrow view on who Australians are.” But by taking it out of context, Bush Gothic reveal a different side to the song. The questions in the chorus, which seem rhetorical in other recordings, sound like a genuine attempt to understand what it is to be Australian when sung by Jenny. “Is it me or you? Is it Mum or Dad? Is it a cockatoo?”
“Australians are complex people,” she considers. “We’re fed this line that we’re these happy-go-lucky people who love being out- doors. That doesn’t even scratch the surface. Until the last ten years, I rarely saw myself represented in artistic practice. Now, I think we’re more confident. A big part of it is coming to appreciate the indige- nous culture here. They have so many secrets and so many insights which are absolutely extraordinary. Non-indigenous Australians are starting to realise the treasure that that is. And slowly, slowly, we’re starting to feel more at home here.”
Bush Gothic tour England and Wales in August and early
September.
www.bushgothic.com.au
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