THE LARRIKINS

It was around this time we started to get invitations to tour internationally. Musica Viva did the coordination and we travelled over to New Zealand for the Auckland Festival and, on another occasion, we toured to the South Island for folk festivals and clubs. One of our choicest international tours was the first-ever cultural exchange tour of the South pacific island. Hard work! The tour stared in Vanuatu, then New Caledonia (where we made a live to air television special), Tonga, Nauru's, Samoa, Fiji, Kiribus Islands and then the Solomon's. The larrikins on this tour were JACKO KEVANS, CATHIE O'SULLIVAN, BOB McINNES.

DAVE de HUGARD replaced Jacko Kevans who had relocated to Glenn Innis after the South Pacific tour. Dave had already made a name for himself as a leading interpreter of Australian dance music and song. His album 'Freedom On The Wallaby' was a landmark release and he was a natural to join the group. In many ways Dave helped change and develop the sound of The Larrikins. He was and remains a major force in the creative development of Australian traditional music. We were a good pair of misfits if ever there were two. We actually got on admirably considering our individual eccentricities. We certainly shared a lot of laughs and a lot of spotlights. Dave has a wicked sense of humour that could crack us up, as well as the audience.

The Larrikins were booked to tour the West Australian Goldfield towns and also appear in Adelaide then Broken Hill en route. TOM RUMMERY joined the group for the tour but we'd only got as far as Broken Hill when Tom decided he would rather be back home in Canberra. Before he departed there was a very cute moment when the band members appeared on The Hill Today – the city's only local news and entertainment program of the day. The television segment was broadcast live and hosted by a rather snooty woman who, apparently, wasn't liked by the studio crew. I was away at the Broken Hill Old Peoples Home recording some singers and left the band to fend for themselves. Everything was going fine until the lights went on, the band played a rollicking medley and the host opened the interview by turning to Tom and asking “Tom, tell us about that cute little thing between your legs”. The band cracked up, the crew cracked up and the concertina remained a mystery.

Noted Canberra fiddle and guitar player PETER HOBSON was called in and remained a Larrikin for the tour and a good time after.

IAN WHITE, banjo player and singer, joined the band for quite a term including a couple of international and regional tours. One of the tours was to the Vancouver Folk Festival where I took a whole group of Australian artists including Kev Carmody, Judy Small and the Eric Bogle Band. The Larrikins on that trip were CATHIE O'SULLIVAN, IAN WHITE, BOB MCcINNES, DAVE de HUGARD and myself. It was a great festival and the highlight for Ian White and myself was to see the great Pete Seeger at an unscheduled Union concert. On the way home I travelled with Pete and Toshi and Patrick Sky on an ill-fated United flight that saw us offloaded in Chicago. We were put up in a transit hotel where we had one of the best informal concerts (in a Mexican restaurant) before travelling on the next day to New York. The original plane we were on ended up exploding because of a technical problem. Frightening.

We did a few trips to Indonesia including a memorable one where JACKO KEVANS, CATHIE O”SULLIVAN, DECLAN AFFLEY and BOB McINNES found ourselves playing at the Ambassador's cocktail party for the Indonesian Generals. It was a tense time for diplomatic relations and the Ambassador asked us if we would be interested in playing at this private party. “Of course!” we responded, keen to get a look at the swish colonial home and to help our touring benefactors, the Department of Foreign Affairs. The performance was going well with about fifteen highly decorated and stiff Indonesian Generals and our equally stiff and decorated Aussies. As I was thanking the audience at the completion of the performance I don't know why but I said, “Maybe one of the Generals would like to sing us an Indonesian song?” I still remember the look of absolute horror on the Ambassador (and the rest of the Australians) face.

I wasn't too sure what was going to happen when all of a sudden one of the Generals pushed another and urged him to sing. He sang what sounded like 'Blue Moon' in Indonesian and then the room applauded with glee. For the first time in a long time the Indonesians and Australian diplomats had something to laugh about. They went into dinner and, apparently, kept singing all night. It was a great success and the Ambassador personally thanked us the next morning.

Another wonderful overseas opportunity came when the group was invited to perform at the Commonwealth Arts Festival in Edinburgh, Scotland. The band was CATHIE O'SULLIVAN, DAVE de HUGARD, BOB McINNES, CLEIS PEARCE (who had joined for earlier radio and live concerts) and MICHEAL ATHERTON, now Professor of Music at the University of western Sydney. We had flown via Malaysia where we did concerts at the university and also a strange television program 'The Larrikins in Malaysia' which we never saw and which might have proved a blessing.

CHRIS KEMPSTER, a truly talented guitarist, singer and humanitarian, joined the group for touring and radio programs. Chris was a pioneer of the Australian folk revival and a great asset to the band's music.

We did a few more trips, some epic radio productions including a hilarious Larrikins Xmas Pantomime produced by David Mulhallen.

In the mid-nineties the band did less and less touring and started to wind down because of my commitments to keeping the record label alive. Dave moved south, Cathie had married and relocated to Canberra, Bob went back to his farm in the Kangaroo Valley and Chris moved to the Blue Mountains.

If the Larrikins, in all its many manifestations, achieved anything it was to show Australians that there is more to our folk song heritage than the usual bush band top 20. We certainly brought focus to a lot of traditional songs previously unknown. We also had a commitment to contemporary songs, especially songs of social change, and sang them at every possibility. I was reminded the other day by Donald Horne that the Larrikins performed on the stage of the Sydney Town Hall in the very first public meeting calling for a Republic. Now that's a piece of history to be proud of.