Music makers

Brendan Barry, or Baz,
is a mechanic at White Devil mine.
Ali McLay is the trainer/educator with
the 'Living With Alcohol' program.
Barry Benning is a well-known local musician.
Ekkerhart Mundana teaches music
at the High School.

How long have you been playing music?
BAZ: Since I was 12 years old. When I was at school I had clarinet lessons through the High School I was at and that got me onto the clarinet, bass clarinet and the oboe. So I stuck with the bass clarinet for a few years in the school orchestra and when I quit school I never did music until I was in my twenties and then I started buying instruments and playing them.
ALI: Probably since I was in the fourth or fifth year of school I suppose. So sort of off and on since then, and how long's that - mind your business! My first performance in public was years and years ago as a kid, in the likes of church choirs and stuff like that, then I sort of progressed on to male voice choirs.
BARRY: Ever since I was eight years of age.
EKKERHART: Since discovering this old piano in the corner at my Grandparents place, I think I was six and that's when I started playing just by myself. But just discovering and not having any teachers, I think that was quite important for me. Then formal lessons started when I was ten.

What do you specialise in as a musician or performer?
BAZ: Dirty Ditties, comedy sorta jokes and just normal run of the mill singing popular songs at parties. My main instruments are banjo and flute, guitar and I do a bit of fiddle and piano, harmonica and digeridoo and anything else I can get my hands on basically!
ALI: I suppose mainly Country music, yeah, a bit of Irish, Scottish music - nowadays. Previously I used to be involved with things like male voice choirs and doing all that stuff but they now sound grotty to me! It's not grotty music really! I suppose you just seem to grow through it after a while. But things like the "Phantom of the Opera" and that sort of stuff still sounds like good music and it would good to have a try at it one of these days.
BARRY: Mainly lead guitar.
EKKERHART: I specialise on piano and guitar and I've done quite a bit of band work in Germany and in Tasmania. I've also recorded; I've written music for circus and playback theatre, so I've worked in various community projects. I've also released 5 albums so far.
I've been teaching also, mainly piano and guitar and now I'm teaching all sorts of other instruments as well - flute, saxophone, clarinet, bass guitar, cornet etc.
ALI: Somebody once said "hey you're a ballad singer" and well, yeah I like ballads. I like songs that tell a story that people can actually understand. I like songs where the lyrics are clear enough for people to hear what you're singing. I like ballads. I like a lot of country stuff, maybe not some of the real old country stuff, although there's still a few songs there that are quite good, but some of the modern stuff, a bit of rock 'n' roll. Cover songs are okay but I think that singing cover songs is when you're actually trying to imitate somebody else and I've always been quite happy with actually who I am so I don't have to do that really, but the music's still good!

Have you done workshops?
BAZ: I have done a couple of times; years back when Dave Scott the Piano Man was in town. He used to go to Borroloola every fortnight and every opposite fortnight he used to go down to Ali-Curung and Sterling and Neutral Junction, to the Bush Schools and we'd take a whole lot of percussion instruments. I'd made up a whole lot of digeridoos out of plastic tubing at work and we'd tune them all to length and we'd give the kids a go on them and show them how the flute worked and how the banjos work and how guitars and pianos work and give them a bit of a sing along, we'd sing 'Achy Breaky Heart' about 50 times a day!
ALI: Yeah, bits and pieces, mainly on the likes of honing up stage presentation and voice presentation. When I was interested in the more serious side of music I suppose, I was involved there with some voice training, but the main stuff I do is really trying to hone in on stage presentation skills. The club here itself, one of the things that we're heading for is to provide some workshops so that people get a chance to do different things. You see back in New Zealand, in the country music scene you work up sort of through the different Music Awards that are in New Zealand, so you've really got to hone up your skills a bit to get through that. My P.A. System was actually bought with money that I won at awards, so there's money out there, even for amateurs there is money out there.
BARRY: Just about all over here, all over the Barkly and just about half way around Australia, Perth. Sometime next year I'm going to be doing workshops all the way down from Darwin to Alice, getting on the road with the members of the band, going from Darwin to Alice and do all the High Schools along the way.
EKKERHART: I've done improvisation workshops for education, at festivals, for children, teenagers and for adults as well. Basically the workshops are for anyone and I find it challenging and at the same time very satisfying to work with people who don't think of themselves as being musicians, but to actually work with sounds. I think all of us have this great urge and ability within us to produce, if not music then at least soundscapes and it is quite interesting. I would be quite interested to do that here but at the moment I'm just to busy!

Do you think there should be more places where young people can place music out of school?
EKKERHART: At the moment, school in a place like Tennant Creek is the only place that offers kids the equipment and the premises to actually do things like that. I would like to see that music at home would be more emphasised. You know whoever plays an instrument at home should do that more, I sit at home and play music with the kids, rather than watching videos, you know it's active leisure, or whatever you want to call it!
Have you played with any well known bands before?
BAZ: Yeah, I supported that bloke from Police Academy, Michael Winslow, I did a support act for him at Casuarina Tavern in Darwin, that was a few years ago when I was away from Tennant Creek for a year, but apart from that, no one famous, just him!
ALI: God, I'd love to be able to tell you I've played with famous bands, but no not really. I've played with well known bands, but well known in areas back in New Zealand which aren't headline making bands anyway, definitely good musicians but not doing music full time.
BARRY: Yeah like the Desert band, with the LBS Studios.
Have you produced your own album yet, or have you thought about doing that?
BAZ: No, no, I mess around with tapes at home. I've got a four-track recorder that I use. What I do is play one instrument, and then rewind the tape and put another instrument on another track and then so on and get them all on. I'm experimenting with mainly banjo, guitar, bass and fiddle at the moment. I'm not in a hurry to record,
ALI: It's something that we've been considering for quite a while, the only problem is the money! You know, you've got to get somewhere between ten and twenty thousand dollars to put an album out. You've really got to have that money first nowadays, especially if you're unknown. You have to basically foot the bill and the money's got to come from somewhere - it's not grocery money!
BARRY: I recorded an album with 'The Benning Brothers', it took us eight days to record it. I wrote most of the songs. We're going to be recording a new disc with LBS Studios, we don't know what it's going to be called yet.

What do you think of the music scene in Tennant Creek?
BAZ: Actually we've got musicians here who came here with bands and stayed! I don't know of any band that have really been formed in Tennant Creek and have moved on to bigger and better things. There was "Baz and Dave"!, we did a tour down south, we were away for three months and I came stony broke and went back to the mine!
ALI: The Frontier Music Club was set up for two things - one is to run a music festival on a yearly basis, the second thing was to encourage people to come along and get involved and to actually upgrade their skills and to bring them up to a stage where they can go out and perform in public and feel confident about being out there.
BARRY: It's getting better, with things like the Frontier Music Club being started up.
EKKERHART: I think you're never too old to start learning an instrument, never. I mean you can start at 60 or 70.

What are your plans for the future as a musician?
BAZ: Well, I haven't got any plans for the future as a musician, as long I keep working, it's a hobby. Quite often you really enjoy your hobby and if you stop doing your day and start doing your hobby as your job, you start to loose your love for your hobby and it's just another job and you start not wanting to go to work and you can't be bothered and all that sort of thing. So it will probably always be just a part time thing, yeah. I like performing to tourists, yeah because it's like I say, your hitting a fresh audience aren't ya? and you can hit them with your worst stuff and they think it's fantastic!
Yeah that's nothing professional, but my mates got a backpacker place and we go there and sing songs and play digeridoos for them and teach them how to sing songs and get them singing along, they don't know what they're singing but they like it 'cause they're joining in! Very keen!
ALI: My aim was to basically have a CD cut by the year 2000 and that was really to hone into the Olympic market, but it depends on how the money goes really, yeah!
BARRY: Just to keep on doing it I suppose!
Have you written any of your own music?
ALI: One! Everybody has to write one! Was it good? - Who knows!
BARRY: I wrote a song about Derby, where I was born in the Kimberley on our first album. I've written about 8 or nine, they're all mainly about here, Australia, the land.

Just passing through

Od Thongz 'The Duo', Mark and Geoff are
travelling musicians based in Broome.
Mark: Od Thongz has actually existed for about 5 years now, but Geoff and I have only been together as a duo for last 15 months odd. Which we did all in Broome and it was time to give Broome a rest from us and us a rest from Broome, is the line we always give people.
Geoff: We do a bit of everything, we're one of those bit of everything cover bands you know, everything from ABBA to AC/DC really. At some stage of the night we'd like to think that everyone was happy!
Geoff: I was in other bands in Perth about ten years ago, but not seriously, since we started doing this. I'm a welder by trade, but I think it's a lot easier to play music!
Mark: See, we're really a welder and a truck driver, yeah we just trick people into thinking we're musicians!
Mark: We've played with some well known bands. Well maybe not with but we've supported a lot of well known bands, yeah. Gee there's a list. Um, boy off the top of my head.
Geoff: The latest one was James Reyne.
Mark: Weddings, Parties, Anything, Screaming Jets, James Blundell, HooDoo Gurus, most of these were all in Broome. Most of the more famous bands that we've supported lately have been over the last couple of years.
Mark: As far as the future goes, more travel!
Geoff: We're going to get rich and famous! Buy our own island and just drink beer and do nothing all day!
Mark: Because we haven't really been doing it seriously for very long, we have really thought about the recording side of things or anything like that but sure, we plan on giving it a go. But for now I think rich and famousness is a long way a way, we'll just settle for travel!

"Hey mate, can you do
American Pie again?"

'Legs' Arthur travels the country playing in pubs.
He shares his musical wisdom.

My name's Andrew Arthur, I have a nickname, "Legs" and I'm a entertainer, solo entertainer, the band left me!
I specialise in live performance, that's what I do. Live, just in hotels and clubs, halls, on the back of trucks, live performance, as opposed to some entertainers who use recordings.
I started Classical piano at six and started professionally in a band in 1981 and my Mum still asks me when am I going to get a real job!
I like to play the classics, I try to play what people want to hear.
Music should be an integral part of all education because it facilitates learning, you know. I read this article in 'New Scientist' and it says that children in schools that presented a develop music program were significantly more advanced in Maths and English, compared to kids which did Maths and English in schools which had no music.
The patterns of the beats and the bars and musical notes written as dots on or between the five lines, it sort of enhances the brain's logic systems and facilitates learning, yeah. So workshops, I'd like to see all schools and community councils support live music and get more of it happening, everywhere, in schools, everything, because it's an equaliser, it improves learning.
I've been very lucky, yeah. I grew up in Melbourne and that's where I first was introduced into the music scene, so I played the Melbourne circuit. I guess the highlight would have been playing with Max Merritt and the Meteors and Brian Cat. So I did a tour with them which was fantastic and I was a roadie with AC/DC for their last Darwin tour, what a show, it was huge! Fifteen semi-trailer loads of gear, huge stage, fantastic rock 'n' roll band.
I also worked with Aussie Crawl. But now I'm just solo, I don't have to worry about anyone else. At the moment I'm working more on the promotion side; I'm finding that quite fascinating and I'm bringing a couple of bands up north, the 'Tourers' actually.
I've done a few workshops, a couple in remote communities. The N.T. Government has a music in schools program, which schools can access, but you've got to have the administration behind it at these schools to fill out all the forms and get it all happening to get the money to get the artists out there and a lot of these schools in the remote areas don't have those facilities or the manpower to put it together, so they miss out. But yeah, workshops are good.
Tennant Creek's pretty lucky because you've got two places which have got live entertainment and it's quality entertainment, you get some good acts coming through here, maybe not as much as you'd like. But on the local music scene, I was a bit distressed to find there wasn't really a local band as such. Which is surprising really because all the communities all throughout the N.T. and the Topend, they'll all have a local band, you know, in Aboriginal communities a local band is strong, music is strong.
Music also brings people together, it's an equaliser for rich and poor, black and white. Like, people in different social classes can like the same song, people from different parts of the world can relate to the same song. I did this show way out in the middle of nowhere, down south from here at the Marla Roadhouse, and that Saturday night we had about sixty people in there, black and white and they all danced together and one of the social workers there said it was the first time black and white had ever danced together. You know the music and having a good time brought them together. So it's great, music's great. But even though it can bring people together, it can also define different cultures. We've got castanets - Spanish, bagpipes - Scottish and the Digeridoo - Australian - Music!