Boy from the Bush: The Songs and The Stories

By Lee Kernaghan

Lee Kernaghan's very outback memoir is an affectionate celebration of the sounds, characters and milestones (as well as the odd calamity) behind the making of an Australian music legend.

Lee Kernaghan is 'the Boy From the Bush', an iconic star and 2008 Australian of the Year whose music has shaped a generation of country music fans. For the first time, Lee steps off the stage and invites you behind the scenes, into the ute and over the rutted red dirt on a rollocking journey through his songs and the stories that inspired them.

In a plot with more twists than the Gwydir River, Lee bounces from a disastrous caravan-obliterating encounter on Nine Mile Hill to the triumph of the Starmaker stage, from his infamous teenage rock'n'roll-fuelled Albury High lunchtime music room invasion to the frenzy of the Deniliquin Ute Muster. He shares the doubts that nearly ended his career before it began, the heartache of the bush in crisis and reveals the secrets behind scores of his hit songs. It's a tapestry of yarns that will fascinate, amuse and entertain diehard fan and newcomer alike.

She's My Ute, the Outback Club, Hat town, Planet Country - Lee's hits have earned him 33 Golden Guitars and 3 ARIA Awards, climbed to the top of the Aussie charts 32 times and propelled over 2 million albums off the shelves and into the lives of everyday Australians. Now the songs that celebrate the life and times of our rural heart take on a whole new dimension as Lee draws us into his confidence, into the studio, onto the tour bus and up the hill to his hidden songwriting shack, along the way initiating readers into fully-fledged membership of the Outback Club.

A unique memoir for everyone, Lee Kernaghan's Boy from the Bush is an affectionate, inspiring and unforgettable montage of characters, conquests and calamities that tumble from the real-life adventures of an Australian legend.

• Language: English
• Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers Australia
• Release date: Apr 1, 2015
• ISBN: 9781460703397

Lee Kernaghan

Lee has a monster fan-base with over 94,000 fans on facebook and is one of the hardest working musicians in Australia. He tours a new album every year - he travels all over Australia. He sells 60,000-65,000 copies of any CD he does. www.leekernaghan.com/tour/ Barnstorming his way onto the country music charts with the mega hit “Boys From The Bush” Lee Kernaghan has notched up 31 #1 hits on the Australian Country Chart, won a staggering 28 Golden Guitars and has sold 2 mil

Book preview

Dedication

I’ve journeyed to stars, I’ve wandered alone

In search of the only love I’ve known,

But deep in your eyes, I see an old friend,

And I know in my heart I’ve Found You Again.

To my soulmate Robby and our sons Jet and Rock

Contents

Dedication

Prologue

  1 The Outback Club

  2 Three Chain Road

  3 1959

  4 Hat Town

  5 Rules of the Road

  6 Electric Rodeo

  7 The New Bush

  8 Spirit of the Bush

  9 The Big Ones

10 Planet Country

11 Beautiful Noise

Epilogue

Photos Section

Song Credits

About the Author

Copyright

Prologue

When you turned the corner into Indiana Court, there it was. The beautiful chaos of trailers, caravans, cars and clutter. What had happened to this quiet, country town cul-de-sac? It was Darwin after Cyclone Tracy, Brisbane after the floods of ’74 – Indiana Court, Albury, looked like a primer for a telethon, ready for a desperate call to an army of volunteers who could come and help with the clean-up effort. It was a disembowelled carnival, a gypsy jamboree, a cross-bred mishmash of auction, car-boot market and clearing sale. Flotsam had invaded every square inch of bare ground, covering verge and lawn and driveway, with toolkits, suitcases, tarps and trusses; lighting bars, par cans, road cases and monitor speakers; generators, trestles and tents, and a liquorice spaghetti of every conceivable wire, lead and cable known to man.

There was grease on a torn, white-trimmed blue Ford T-shirt; sweat-painted dirt on forehead, cheek and jowl. There were skinned knuckles and scraped shins, scrapes and grazes dusted dark, seasoned with road grime and dust. Sweaty singlets and a man on each corner, heaving and straining with the shouts of ‘To me! To me!’ ‘Back your way . . .!’ ‘Steady. STEADY!’ – the chorus that marks the clash of ancient foes: Stuff To Pack versus Available Space. Months’ and months’ worth of stuff.

The Kernaghans were packing alright. We were packing like we’d never packed before. Not a horse float of PA gear and instruments heading out for a couple of dates out Narrandera way and back. The trucks (conventional diesel-powered and rocket-propelled) the sixth-berth Millards, the pop-top Windsors, the twin-axle Chesneys, the multiple families, kids, dogs, staging, PA gear and miscellany – they all engulfed the whole street for one good reason: tomorrow, Ray Kernaghan’s Cavalcade of Stars would take two right turns and set sail up the Wagga Road, past the cheerful COME AGAIN bolted to the back of the Lions Club and Apex signs on the Lavington edge of town. We were leaving the familiar waters of Albury, chasing the Hume Highway horizon northwards, off on a relentless string of border-crossing, six-nights-a-week shows.

That night, there was no restless excitement. I fell asleep the moment my head hit the pillow. A sign of things to come.

The stiff-limbed, fuzzy-headed fog of fatigue was still lingering early next morning as a lumbering 4 x 4 picked up a fair head of steam and cruised over the crest. We were not quite 15 minutes from home. Loaded to the gunnels, we formed the rearguard of the 12-caravan barnstorming, jet-truck-powered Kernaghan family Country Music Tour of Australia. We were away.

Dad motored on up ahead with Mum and the other kids – Greg, Tania and Fiona. With no room left in the Chevy Silverado for me, I was assigned a ride with some of the crew and there we were, all of us bobbing in time to the warp and woof of the suspension, our backs sticking to the seats.

The hot breath of the merciless Riverina summer swirled its blustery gusts from out over the stubbled paddocks and up off the baking bitumen, through the open windows and tousled our hair in a mad, windswept dance.

Nine Mile Hill is barely a landmark around the NSW Murray River town of Albury. Most people are either nearly there or barely gone when, like us, they ride its forgettable flanks on the way north to Wagga or first spot the lights of town heading south. But that little stretch of the Olympic Way has become part of Kernaghan family folklore.

Not that my mind was on the road at that moment. Like everyone, I was excited that we were finally on our way. Ray Kernaghan’s Cavalcade of Stars was an ambitious undertaking – TV advertised and promoted in advance, it was an eight-month, virtually non-stop ramble from showground to showground. We’d eventually reach as far north as Mossman near the tropical Daintree and as far west as Cloncurry in the Queensland outback.

Like the tarps, tents and trappings, the talent was locked and loaded. Of course, Dad was the star of the show – Ray Kernaghan, the Multi-Gold Award-Winning Star of Country Music. It was a family affair and we all had special titles. I may have been musical director, sound man and roadie, but for 30 minutes every show I was The Dynamic Lee Kernaghan. My sister was Tania Kernaghan, The Sweetheart of Country Music. Our drummer, my brother Greg, was Mr Beat. Special guests included Julie Perry, Australia’s Miss Truckin’ Music, and Eureka Smith as The Man in Black, Johnny Cash. It was all backed up by The Jetset Country Band.

Everyone was pitching in, not just to entertain but to lug and haul, set up and pack away. We even had our own school teacher for the tribe of kids that was along for the tour.

For many, perhaps the biggest drawcard in Dad’s cavalcade was ‘Waltzing Matilda’, the jet-powered ‘fastest truck on earth’, officially clocked in the backblocks of Victoria doing 330 kmh over the flying mile! I was nearly 18 and had a front-row seat for the next unpredictable chapter of my adventure in music and showbiz, rolling my way down Nine Mile Hill.

At first, it seemed like we were swerving to miss a pothole. Perhaps that’s how it began. I glanced across to see our driver snap a little straighter in the driver’s seat and slap both hands more firmly on the wheel. The swerve became a side-to-side drift, with each arc becoming more violent, until it all shifted into that surreal, out-of-control, happened-really-quickly slow motion which seems to accompany high-speed mishaps.

The tank-slapping became more violent, and the caravan flipped, wrenching the vehicle into the verge, spitting dust and gravel as we left the road, still careering ahead but feeling a slow and unstoppable tilting of the cab. In the moment when the caravan was either sheared from the tow ball or simply obliterated by the impact, I remember feeling the deceleration, like the final slowing exhale of the roller-coaster.

As the world returned to real time, I remember looking at a cracked, tipped-on-its-end world, feeling the heat again, the smell of fuel and singeing oil, the ticking of the hot exhaust and a fragile ‘Is everyone OK?’

Someone ahead had seen the disaster unfold and had radioed the convoy. Dad said he rounded the corner to see our freshly rolled Patrol on its roof and the shattered, scattered ex-caravan strewn up and down the road. Shaken but unhurt, we clambered out and onto the roadside. Many times over the years, I heard Dad describe how he felt at the sight of us all, dazed and still in shock, surrounded by the debris. He says he still can’t believe no one was injured or killed.

As he’d so often done in the days before (and since), Dad met misfortune with the dogged determination of a drover’s son who knew you have to take whatever life throws at you.

Taking matters in hand, Dad called in the tow truck and the clean-up began, the crew bobbing like chooks along the roadside salvaging whatever we could of our belongings. We limped back to Albury, sunburnt, shaken and exhausted. And so the sun set on Day One.

Day Two saw us regroup and, around midday, Albury once more slipped into our wake. There was no time to spare – the first show was booked, and Kempsey was still a good two days’ drive away. Ray Kernaghan led from the front, onwards and upwards.

Of course, Dad didn’t know what the months ahead held: the 22 flat tyres in one week in western Queensland, a second caravan – the twin-axle Chesney – engulfed in flames, ignited by a welder’s spark, the storms, the lean nights, the last-minute mishaps, the blackouts, debacles and near misses.

On that tour and in the years that followed, I’ve come to learn that a life in country music has its fair share of Nine Mile Hills – not all of them quite so dramatic, destructive (or potentially deadly) as that January morning, but each of them enough to get you doubting yourself, thinking that perhaps you’re backing the wrong horse, wondering if the safer and more sensible option might be the better choice after all.

But I had no time for navel gazing that day. We all may have been a little the worse for wear, but Ray Kernaghan’s Cavalcade of Stars had a gig to get to! We were back in business, destination Kempsey showground, a good couple of days’ drive through to Sydney and up the then-freeway-less Pacific Highway.

The tales of those amazing eight months may be told one day, but as we Kernaghans look back on the whole thing we all agree: never in our lives have we worked harder than we did on that run. But as the months unfolded, I knew that the thousands of kilometres I’d travelled and the hundreds of songs I’d played was a delicious whiff of the possibility – a life in country music. It was like I’d scraped together the deposit. I decided to see if a music career was something I could actually own for myself.

As the tour headed towards its final show at the Nambour showground I knew it wouldn’t be long before everyone would start heading their separate ways. While I still had a band at my fingertips, I thought I’d make the most of it.

The huge annual Tamworth Country Music Festival hosted the biggest talent quest in Australia – Toyota’s Star Maker. Winning Star Maker would be a fast track into the career in country music I so keenly wanted. But I faced a critical hurdle.

Along with biographical material and promotional photographs, the application process required entrants to supply recordings of two songs. Being on the road, I had no access to a recording studio, so during soundcheck at the Caboolture showground, we set up a small portable cassette recorder on the sound desk and captured two tunes I’d recently penned in show sheds and stables along the way. The entry was packaged up and despatched from the Caboolture post office. Within days, the Cavalcade began to scatter as the crew started to wend their separate ways home from Nambour.

Dad and the family stuck around, continuing their vagabond life, shifting between caravan parks for some months. I decided to stay with them in Queensland, doing covers gigs up and down the coast to pay the bills. My first permanent gig was at the Greenmount Beach Resort in Coolangatta, playing four days per week. But a new chapter was about to unfold.

One day in mid 1982, I received a letter postmarked Tamworth and bearing the blue logo of BAL Marketing, congratulating me on reaching the final 20 of Star Maker. After a hard year of paying my musical dues, I knew I had to grasp this opportunity with everything I had. I couldn’t wait for the October long weekend to roll around.

Dad stayed back to mind the trucks and equipment as Mum, my younger brother Greg and I crossed the border into NSW. As each mile passed, all I could think about was that looming Star Maker grand final. The field of hopeful contenders was culled until finally the envelope was opened and the silence of anticipation was broken: ‘Star Maker for 1982 is . . . Lee Kernaghan!’ The Tamworth Town Hall erupted in applause. This is what I’d dreamed of, and here I was, stunned and delighted, attempting to cobble some words together for an acceptance speech.

What immediately followed was a whirlwind of cameras, spotlights and thrusting microphones. I ricocheted between print, radio and TV interviews as the media swarmed around me. Next day, Mum at the wheel, all three of us high as kites, we headed back to Nambour.

Doors opened as I recorded my Double A Side winner’s single, Advance Australia Again and Cheaters – a song inspired by the hit US TV series Dallas. ‘God save the cheaters, God save me . . .’ The vinyl 45 spun on turntables across the land, surging into country music playlists and my 1983 calendar stretched ahead with festival and tour bookings, including the opportunity to represent Australia on the international stage of the huge CMA (Country Music Association) festival in Nashville, Tennessee. Like Ray Kernaghan’s Cavalcade of Stars a year earlier, I was up and away!

*

Of course, I should have known that a life in country music has its Nine Mile Hills, and sometimes the faster you go the bigger the tumble. For me it wasn’t so sudden – the momentum and excitement seemed to just slowly leak out of my career. The follow-up singles didn’t set the world on fire, the gigs got thinner on the ground and as my Star Maker win slipped out of the spotlight I found myself scratching again for gigs around south-east Queensland, playing country and popular covers to indifferent diners, drinkers and gamblers. It was another slow-motion crash, this time in reverse, over agonising months. And eventually years.

I never once lost my love of country music, but the burning dream of following in the footsteps of my dad was becoming a fragile, barely flickering flame. As the 80s rolled on, I found myself back in Albury, broke, and living back with Mum and Dad, pondering alternative careers, finishing a night-school course in real estate, and spending three nights a week at the Siesta Motel Restaurant playing other people’s classics for not much more than board and petrol money.

The Cavalcade had ground to a halt. There would be no repairs, no ‘on with the show’, I was completely out of puff, destined to be the bloke who used to play keyboards on his dad’s show, what’s-his-name, who once won Star Maker before disappearing into obscurity.

Towards the end of 1989 the dust seemed to settle enough for me to drag myself from the sad, battered wreckage of my tattered, would-be career. New Year’s Eve 1990 at the Mulwala Services Club was the last gig I’d ever do with my band. After 10 years of gigs, trying to make it as a country singer, I finally decided it was over; I had to escape the doldrums. I was done. When the country music history books were written, my entry would simply say:

‘Lee Kernaghan: never made it past Nine Mile Hill.’

Then the phone rang.

CHAPTER ONE

The Outback Club

Boys from the Bush

After I won Star Maker in 1982, I hooked up with Reece Kirk to work on some new material. During 1986, in the process of planning some follow-up recordings, Reece had the idea that we head to Sydney and do some songwriting with Garth Porter. Before I met Garth I certainly knew who he was. Keyboard player, poster boy and musical mastermind behind the 70s supergroup Sherbet, Garth had moved on to a successful behind-the-scenes career as songmaker and producer.

Garth greeted me on the doorstep of his Watsons Bay home studio with a chirpy, ‘G’day, Squire!’ A couple of weeks later, we’d penned a few tunes together and had a couple of very 80s-style Nashville country demos in the can (one eventually became a bonus track on my 1959 CD, called Embers of the Fire).

Buy song now from iTunes

Garth was sitting at his kitchen table with a cuppa one evening when he said to me, ‘Lee, I’d love to make an album with you one day.’

*

I’ve never asked Garth what made him pick up the phone to call me four years after our first brief collaboration. He asked me what I was doing with my music and I basically said, ‘I’m not doing it any more. I’m on the bones of my arse, I’ve broken up with my band and I’ve had to take a day job working in my good mate Chris Stewart’s real-estate office.’ The funny thing is, it didn’t put him off. A week or so later he rang back with a surprising suggestion: ‘Lee, why don’t you ask your boss for four or five days off, drive yourself up to Sydney and let’s see what we can come up with?’

I decided to take Garth up on his offer, even though I didn’t really have the foggiest idea what we might do and whether or not it would ever see the light of day. To get the ball rolling, I called a couple of musician mates who I thought might have some spare songs they could send me. This included fellow Star Maker winner Keith Urban, who was already working on his debut release. (From his formative years playing talent quests around his south-east Queensland home, Keith was destined for music greatness. Some 25 years on, he shines as one of Nashville’s biggest stars, a multiple Grammy award winner and is one of the world’s most successful touring acts.)

I headed back up the Hume Highway to Sydney and booked a room in what was to become my home away from home – the Watsons Bay Hotel, perched on the eastern shores of Sydney Harbour. The legendary Doyle family took pity on this skint boy from Albury and offered me the cheapest rent I could find in Sydney for my tiny room with the washbasin in the corner and shared bathroom down the hallway. And it was a five minutes’ walk to Garth’s place.

The first batch of songs we recorded included Don’t Thank God for Her Just Thank Me and Coming Down With You. In terms of style, it landed in what was then my comfort zone – US country music. None of them were bad songs, but nothing jumped off the page or out of the speaker. The songs had love and emotion in the lyrics but there was something theatrical about them, like I was playing a role; the ‘I’ of the songs was never really me. I was actually fine with that because I never really thought my own story was interesting enough to sing about.

At the end of the week I sat again at Garth’s well-worn pine kitchen table, anticipating the long drive home, not certain that I’d gained any ground in re-establishing my creative career. But the amazing thing about Garth Porter is that he’s like a captain at the helm: thinking, planning, reading the wind and the waves. No way he was going to sail us into the shallows – it was time to chart a fresh course. He put a pile of hefty volumes on the table – the poems and stories of Henry Lawson, the collected works of Banjo Paterson. I had some homework to do.

Garth’s parting words to me were prophetic: ‘LK, you’ve got to start singing your own story. You’re a boy from the bush.’

Back in Albury, I set to work reading Lawson’s Campfire Yarns and got lost in his colourful, rich, earthy, touching, hilarious accounts of Australian bush life from a hundred years ago. And I started to realise that at the heart of what I was reading were ordinary things – workers and families, farms and bush tracks, pubs and stockyards. Here were ordinary stories, ordinary people, ordinary places, captured in such a compelling, authentic and enduring way. It was as if Lawson was urging me on with a ‘C’mon, mate, you heard what the man said. Start singing your own bloody story!’

In my notes from our Sydney writing sessions, I found some phrases Garth had scratched down, a bit like priming the carburettor, something to get me started: ‘. . . shearing sheep . . . culling roos . . .’ The penny was dropping. I had the list right inside me, the catalogue of my ordinary life growing up in the Riverina. Growing up riding horses and motorbikes; visiting my grandfather at his stock camps; campfires beside the Murray; circle work; chasing girls; the mayhem of the Euroa B & S Ball; crawling between pubs in Finley, Jerilderie, Narrandera; the dirt roads, dry paddocks, tractors trailing dust . . .

Outside my room at the back end of my mum and dad’s place sat the old Knight piano, purchased on a Palings music store pay-as-you-go plan when I was nine years old. It was the scene of endless lessons, scales and rehearsals. I sat on the stool, notebook propped up on the music stand, pen lying on the keys. What happened next can only be described as divine intervention. Boys from the Bush was born!

As Garth and I knocked the song back and forth, tweaking the lyric and melody, one of us would inevitably say, ‘That song is so catchy, I just can’t get it out of my head.’ As the weeks went on it dawned on me that I’d found a new musical home. It was like a door had opened. Everything we had come up with before that song didn’t make sense any more. Boys from the Bush set a completely new agenda for the whole project – and