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Canberra Today 12°/15° | Friday, March 29, 2024 | Digital Edition | Crossword & Sudoku

Arts / Schumann in the fast lane

Photos by Grace Costa-13-1
Alex Black, left, John Schumann and Hugh McDonald. Photo by Grace Costa
FOR a man who wrote the song “I’ve Been to Bali Too”, John Schumann is exceedingly unimpressed by the “island of the gods” nowadays.

“I am very disappointed and distressed to say that Bali is tragically overcrowded and commercially-oriented,” Schumann tells me by phone as we talk about his coming visit to the Southern Cross Club.

“In fact I wouldn’t go there again if it wasn’t for the fact that there’s a guy there who’s probably the closest thing I have to a brother other than [fellow musician] Hugh McDonald,” he continues.

John Schumann… “I sometimes idly wonder what it is about people in Canberra that they react so well to my stuff."
John Schumann… “I sometimes idly wonder what it is about people in Canberra that they react so well to my stuff.”
That friend, artist Tjokorda Krishna Sudharsana, now runs Klub Kokos, a blissful retreat outside Ubud, where Schumann has been taking a break and composing new songs.

Back at home, he’s in discussion with the Australian War Memorial about a big commemorative performance for the ongoing World War I commemorations, to be set against a backdrop from the memorial’s collection of war images

There’s always something on the boil with Schumann, the contemporary folk singer who, with his band Redgum, captured the plight of Australia’s Vietnam vets in “I Was Only 19”, long before the term post-traumatic stress disorder had entered our public vocabulary.

Schumann has become, de facto, one of this country’s greatest experts on PTSD.

“Life is very busy,” he tells “CityNews”.

“I do a lot of work with the Australian Centre for Rural and Remote Mental Health, I spend a lot of time out in indigenous communities and I’m involved in the ‘Minds in Mines’ mental health program designed around the ‘fly-in-fly-out’ lifestyle, speaking to miners above and below ground.” Schumann is also very much involved with the agricultural sector, where mental health and depression problems have been observed for decades.

In short, while never trained for it, the former high school teacher has become one of Australia’s best advocate/counsellors for mental health issues.

“When I wrote ‘I Was Only 19’ I was simply telling a story, but it put PTSD on the national conversation table and it became a passion, so I learnt more and more about it,” he says.

In late 2009 he was approached by the Mental Health Directorate of the Army to work on a “quite effective” program encouraging soldiers to put their hands up if they had psychological issues. Then he was approached by Dr Jennifer Bowers, at the Centre for Rural and Remote Mental Health, and that saw him and McDonald, guitarist and violinist with Redgum, playing at remote mine sites.

So, were they trailblazers? “I’m not sure,” Schumann says. “You just do what you do when the interest in the passion seizes you.”

A more recent player in the same game is Canberra’s own singer-songwriter, Fred Smith, whose song “Dust of Uruzgan” Schumann candidly admires.

“I was initially grumpy about Fred,” he tells “CityNews,” “I wasn’t going to write about Afghanistan until I’d been there and we went in 2012, but Fred pipped me at the post.

“Having been there so long, he absolutely nailed it in ‘Dust of Uruzgan”… in that way it was similar to ‘I Was Only 19’.”

He’s pleased to come back to Canberra.

“Canberra has been a really hot spot for me and Redgum,” he reports, with his friend “Frog” Harris’ Songland Music store at Cooleman Court selling an extraordinary number of their albums.

“I sometimes idly wonder what it is about people in Canberra that they react so well to my stuff.”

In his Southern Cross Club concert, Schumann plans to do some of the old Redgum songs “because that’s what people want to hear,” some songs from his Henry Lawson album, from the Vagabond Crew albums, and from his own two solo albums.

“They’ll be interspersed with stories and banter and acerbic remarks about the conduct of the nation,” he promises.

In his view, songwriters on stage should talk as well. “I get a bit grumpy with Bob Dylan,” he says, “but well – he is Bob Dylan.”

John Schumann, with Hugh McDonald and Alex Black in “Up Close and Acoustic”, at Canberra Southern Cross Club, October 23, bookings to premier.ticketek.com.au

 

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Helen Musa

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