Peter Garrett gives Bluesfest the nod

If I say the words ‘US Forces give the nod’, I can pretty much guarantee that you will hear the unmistakable voice of Peter Garrett ringing in your ears. Your head may even start to bob up and down a bit. 

Garrett is a classic and not because he is a septuagenarian – it’s because he is absolutely unique, and he’s embedded in our musical psyche.

The Echo spoke to Garrett, on the tail end of his current tour and his prep for Easter in Tyagarah, in Sydney on what he described as a ‘halfway day. It’s cloudy but not raining.’

Can you tell me about the music you’re bringing to Bluesfest this year?

So I’ve just finished a new record, The True North, which will be out by Bluesfest. We recorded in Sydney – with Martin Rotsey from the Oils and Heather Shannon from the Jezabels, and a group of other musicians who were in town. It was organic, open and really just reflecting exactly what I think, and where I am at this point in time. We’ll play a fair bit of that I’m hoping, with some special guests with a bit of luck, alongside some of the older material. 

I’ll pluck a few Oil’s songs out of the ether and give them a run probably and we’ll just make it the biggest, bestest, most full-on wonderful night we can. 

It sounds like things aren’t necessarily set in concrete, but do you have an idea of how many people will be on stage?

It depends a little bit. My daughters Grace and May will be on stage singing which will be fantastic. I really love that. And maybe apart from The Alter Egos (including Martin Rotsey, Heather Shannon, Evan Mannell and Rowan Lane), we might have another one or two. 

Grace also did the design for the album cover and all the artwork this time around. She’s a designer, so that was nice. Bit of family synergy as well. 

Is there anything in particular about Bluesfest that you find different from other festivals?

I think the strength of Bluesfest lies in the adherence to the traditions and the backstory of popular music really. It’s not just about the moment, although there’s plenty of that that goes on, it’s also about how we got to the moment, and having artists that have contributed to where music finds itself today – but particularly on the blues side of things, has always seemed to me to be one of the features of Bluesfest itself. 

You said that the new album’s a little bit about where you are at now. What is your approach or your motivation for performing and writing now? Has it changed a lot from when you began? Are there different reasons for doing music for you now?

That’s a really good question. There’s not a straight-up answer for it. Music is so mysterious. It comes and goes on the wind. 

You know, I spent such a lot of time in a band that had very strong songwriters, Rob (Hurst) and Jim (Moginie) – there was never a shortage of material. We always had plenty of stuff to chew on and work on. I was very involved in political activism, the environment, and then, of course, ultimately, in that interregnum [don’t worry, I had to look it up too!] in the early 2000s, in formal politics.

As much as I can tell, because I’ve not particularly spent a lot of time navel-gazing, I think that I’ve just created enough space around me, with the charge of coming off two very big tours with The Oils, to find the songs were just starting to spring out of the ‘place’, and you’ve got to grab them when they do and go with them. It’s a very organic thing. It’s not something that you really should overthink in my experience, you just have to sort of almost go with the muse, as it were. 

So I think I’m probably more open to that because I put myself in a place where I can be in more of an open field as opposed to the crowded hurly burly of a busy street.

So what sorts of things are you doing to keep your energy up and prepare yourself for for an event like this?

Well, touch wood, I’ve got lots of energy present and it seems to be really coursing through the veins and making me feel very excited about being out on stage. It’s almost as though coming off the back of the big Oils run my adrenaline didn’t turn off. Sometimes it switches off at this time, but it seems like it hasn’t. You’ve got to make the most of that when it’s happening. 

Also just drawing on a really basic level of charge and gratefulness at still being alive, from sharing a stage with people and creating an environment where whoever’s in the room,  can just have that almost sacred experience of sharing songs and performance and making that whole thing work. 

I don’t ever try to overanalyze it or think about it too much. It just has to unfold, and it in itself is something that produces a form of energy and I’ve always been someone who goes with whatever I can feel on stage. 

It’s the final show of this run at Bluesfest so by the time we get to the stage, I imagine we’re going to be throwing everything at it plus some.

Do you feel that as a person who has a profile, there is a certain responsibility upon you to put your voice to  causes that are important to you?

I think my answer is given on the basis of having been in the public arena for decades, and been in a band whose politics was very important to it, and who acted upon it, and I’ve acted upon my politics as well on numerous occasions, for better and for worse, you know. 

So, clearly, I think that you do have a voice, but there’s a really big capital B for ‘But’ there – I don’t believe that everybody has to speak their politics out, if their vision, and their music is tied up in something else altogether, that’s fine. And even when you do, it always has to be on the basis of ‘this is how I feel, this is what I think’, not a prescriptive view of the world, which says, ‘this is how YOU should think’, because music operates at a visceral, sublime level, and you add meaning to the music, and sometimes that meaning has got a political edge to it. But the politics itself seriously only happens when you actually DO something. You can sing from the rooftops forever, but if you’re not in a position, or you’re not willing to roll up your sleeves and go down and get involved in the sometimes boring, difficult and time-consuming side of politics, whether it’s in the local Landcare group, or whether it’s, you know, handing out leaflets for a politician that you believe in, or whether it’s lobbying, or whatever it might be, then it doesn’t mean anything.

What do you find inspiring?

I’m always inspired by the extraordinary resonance of nature. The sort of explicit beauty that the natural world provides for us even when it’s taking a bit of a tramelling – and that ranges from the beauty of the great landscapes of the true north – the Kimberley, the South Alligator Floodplain, Kakadu, Cape York – where I’ve been spending a bit of time over the last 18 months, down to the shape of a gum nut or the way a creek just trickles down through a gully. Any aspect of nature, I find, has always been very, very important to me, and I get a great deal from. Alongside that, in fact, probably even more important in a way to the soul, my family and close friends and just maintaining those good, intimate, direct connections – sharing the simple stuff and turning off the machines and the screens and just letting life unfold at a slightly less frantic pace.

Do you currently have an earworm? 

Well, I’ve actually got the album rolling around in my head because we’ve already played some shows, we’ve done some festivals. But we haven’t played them all. And we go into a little studio next week and start writing them down. So I’ve got some of that rolling around in my head. 

Other than that, my listening tastes are extremely catholic and wide. I’ve been enjoying a little bit of time with some of the sort of, I think, strong female artists of this country – Mia Dyson, Sarah Blasko. 

I got the Dylan book for Christmas – The Philosophy of Modern Song – I started working my way through the songs that he was writing about and I have discovered some gems there. It’s very ecumenical, I’ll take something from anywhere and have it roll into my head for a while.

Are you having enough fun?

Probably not. I need to work on that.

I just want to ask you from the point of view of a vocal coach. I’m curious to know how long do you take to warm up?

That’s really interesting (laughs) – so, not very long. Yeah, look, I do warm up before I go on, but I don’t specifically do vocal warm-ups. I find that you’ve just got to go with the moment. Once you hear that first guitar chord, once the snare drum smacks you in the back of the bum, and once the crowd sort of looks at us, then out it comes.

You cannot miss Peter Garrett and The Alter Egos at Bluesfest
– they play Sunday 8pm on the Mojo stage.

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