John Schumann Behind The Lines
by Paul Cashmere - September 8 2008
photo by Ros O'Gorman
John Schumann’s `Behind The Lines` has had an impact through Independent stores in the last week, debuting at number 47.
The album features John covering classic Australian songs, what he describes as “important features on Australia’s cultural landscape”.
“After Lawson I was asked to do something for the ANZAC’s so my idea was to do these songs again in 2008 in the context of what is going on now,” he tells Undercover News.
One of the subtle changes was his new version of the Cold Chisel classic ‘Khe Sahn’, which now refers to the Battle of Long Tan. Songwriter Don Walker allowed John to make the small but important change to the lyrics.
The album features John’s old Redgum mate Hugh McDonald, Midnight Oil’s Rob Hirst, Russell Morris, Mike Rudd and Broderick Smith.
With Hugh, he has updated two of his old Redgum songs, ‘Ted’ and ‘I Was Only 19’. John speaks of ‘I Was Only 19’ with reverence and humbly talks about the impact it has had. “A girl I work with, her boyfriend is an RAAF officer and flies a Hercules. I was around at her house. He came in to say how important that song was to him,” he said.
‘I Was Only 19’ has been stripped back to just two acoustic guitars and a fiddle. “It is interesting. It sounds so good cut down,” he says.
‘Ted’ was a Redgum song from the Virgin Ground album. He has also redone his solo song ‘Safe Behind The Wire’ for the album.
Russell Morris features singing on his own two songs ‘Rachel’ and ‘Wings of an Eagle’. “‘Wings of an Eagle’ is about dying,” John says. “We put it in the context of war and slowed it down.”
The Midnight Oil song Rob Hirst features on is ‘My Country’. Redgum and Midnight Oil were two acts that never performed on the Australian music TV show Countdown. “We refused to go on Countdown way before Midnight Oil,” John says. “We were singing about politics when they were still singing about surf”.
Behind The Lines is an album John is proud of and he is glad music fans are so accepting of it. On the weekend at an in-store at Songland Records in Canberra, some fans waited 2 hours to meet him.
Behind The Lines is out now on ABC Music.
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