TIM WINTONDirt Music

M U S I C F O R A N O V E L

Georgie Jutland is a mess. At forty, with her

career in ruins, she finds herself stranded in White Point with

a fisherman she doesn’t love and two kids whose dead mother

she can never replace. Her days have fallen into domestic

tedium and social isolation. Her nights are a blur of vodka and

pointless loitering in cyberspace. Leached of all confidence,

Georgie has lost her way; she barely recognizes herself.

One morning, in the boozy pre-dawn gloom, she looks up from

the computer screen to see a shadow lurking on the beach

below, and a dangerous new element enters her life. Luther

Fox, the local poacher. Jinx. Outcast.

So begins an unlikely alliance. Set in the wild landscape of

Western Australia, this is a novel about the odds against

breaking with the past, a love story about people stifled by

grief or regret, whose dreams are lost, whose hopes have dried

up. It’s a journey across landscapes within and without,

about the music that sometimes arises from the dust.

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CD1

5 Matt Taylor and the White Pointers – I Remember When I Was Young* 4’26(Matt Taylor)

Matt Taylor, vocals, harmonica; Jim Fisher, guitar, mandolin; Dave Brewer, guitar;Ian Simpson, banjo; Fred Kuhnl, bass; Lucky Oceans, Dobro, accordionP 2001 Loggerhead Pty Ltd

6 Backsliders – Down By The Riverbed 5’09(Dom Turner)

Dom Turner, resonator guitar, vocals; Jim Conway, harmonica; Gyan, vocals;Broderick Smith, vocals; George Butrumlis, accordionFrom the album Wide Open Backsliders BS1

P 1995 Backsliders

7 Renee Geyer with Uncle Bill – I Scare Myself 4’23(Dan Hicks)

Renee Geyer, lead vocals; Gerry Hale, acoustic guitar, fiddle, backing vocals;Adam Gare, mandolin; Andy Price, upright bass; Peter Sommerville, banjo;Justin Stamford, bongosFrom the album Where Joy Kills Sorrow W. Minc Productions W.MINCD006

P 1997 W. Minc Productions

8 Mud Crab Trio – I’ll Be Gone* 3’49(Mike Rudd)

Lucky Oceans, National steel guitar; Stephen Pigram, vocals, harmonica, guitar;Alan Pigram, tipleP 2001 Loggerhead Pty Ltd

9 Lucky Oceans – Irene Goodnight Variations* 2’06(Ledbetter/Lomax)

Lucky Oceans, DobroP 2001 Loggerhead Pty Ltd

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CD1

1 Keb’ Mo’ – Every Morning 2’58(Kevin Moore)

Keb’ Mo’, vocals, guitarFrom the album Keb’ Mo’ OKeh/epic EK 57863

P 1994 Sony Music Entertainment. Licensed courtesy of Sony Music Entertainment Australia Pty Ltd.

2 Tim O’Brien and Darrell Scott – Long Time Gone 3’34(Darrell Scott)

Darrell Scott, mandolin, lead vocals; Tim O’Brien, guitar, harmony vocalsFrom the album Real Time Howdy Skies Records HS-1003

P 2000 Howdy Skies Records

3 David Hyams – Watching The Wheels 2’25(David Hyams)

David Hyams, acoustic guitar; Marcus Dengate, fretless bass;Lucky Oceans, pedal steel guitarFrom the album Miles To Go Dark Horse Records DH001

P 1999 Dark Horse Records

4 Rory Block – Got To Have You Be My Man 2’21(Rory Block)

Rory Block, vocals, acoustic guitar, harmonium;John Sebastian, baritone electric guitarFrom the album High Heeled Blues Rounder Records 3061

P 1981 Rounder Records Corp.

Dirt Music

% Eliza Carthy with John Reed and Tristan Glover – I Drew My Ship IntoThe Harbour / When The Boat Comes In 5’31(Trad./Trad. arr. Eliza Carthy, John Reed, Tristan Glover)

Eliza Carthy, vocals, fiddle; John Reed, cittern; Tristan Glover, melodeon;Jock Tyldesley, fiddle; Peter Grayling, celloFrom the album The Reality Check Melodeon/Hoodlum HOODCD002P 1998 Melodeon (Aus) / Hoodlum (UK) Co-production

^ Ten Cent Shooters – Kokomo Blues 3’56(Scrapper Blackwell)

Scott Wise, vocals, mandolin; Peter Woodward, guitar, foot; Sean Diggins, bassFrom the album Wild About It Ten Cent Records 10CD03P 1999 Ten Cent Records

& Jim Fisher and the White Pointers – Keep Your Lamp Trimmed And Burning* 2’54(Trad. arr White Pointers)

Jim Fisher, guitar, vocals; Dave Brewer, guitar; Ian Simpson, banjo,backing vocals; Fred Kuhnl, bass, backing vocals; Lucky Oceans, DobroP 2001 Loggerhead Pty Ltd

* Lucky Oceans – One* 1’00(Lucky Oceans)

Lucky Oceans, slide koraP 2001 Loggerhead Pty Ltd

( Matt Taylor and the White Pointers – Nobody’s Fault But Mine* 3’09(Trad. arr White Pointers)

Matt Taylor, vocals; Jim Fisher, guitar; Dave Brewer, guitar; Ian Simpson, banjo;Fred Kuhnl, bass; Lucky Oceans, Dobro, accordionP 2001 Loggerhead Pty Ltd

) Chris Whitley – Dirt Floor 2’10(Chris Whitley)

Chris Whitley, vocals, National guitar, foot stompFrom the album Dirt Floor Elastic LAST001 (Rubber Music)P 1998 Messenger Records, Inc.

*SPECIALLY RECORDED FOR THIS ALBUM

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0 June Tabor – He Fades Away 4’26(Alistair Hulett)

June Tabor, vocals; Mark Emerson, accordionFrom the album Against The Streams Cooking Vinyl D31286

P 1994 Cooking Vinyl Ltd (UK)

! Broderick Smith – A River Runs Through My Heart 4’18(Broderick Smith, Kevin Bennett)

Broderick Smith, vocals; Peter Howell, double bass; Nigel MacLean, violin; MattWalker, Dobro; Kevin Bennett, acoustic guitar; Laurie Ernst, drums;Gerry Hale, mandolinFrom the album Songster ABC Music 4798332

P 1995 Australian Broadcasting Corporation

@ Lucky Oceans and the White Pointers – Look At The Moon* 3’50(Lucky Oceans)

Jim Fisher, guitar, mandolin; Dave Brewer, guitar; Ian Simpson, banjo;Fred Kuhnl, bass; Lucky Oceans, DobroP 2001 Loggerhead Pty Ltd

£ Lucky Oceans and the White Pointers – White Point Breakdown* 1’58(Lucky Oceans)

Jim Fisher, guitar, mandolin; Dave Brewer, guitar; Ian Simpson, banjo;Fred Kuhnl, bass; Lucky Oceans, Dobro, guitarP 2001 Loggerhead Pty Ltd

$ Sensitive New Age Cowpersons – I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For 2’56(Evans, Hewson, Clayton, Mullen)

John Reed, lead vocals; Jim Fisher, guitar, vocals; Fred Kuhnl, bass,vocals; Ian Simpson, banjo, vocalsFrom the album Strange On The Range SNAC COW002

P 1998 SNAC

CD2 In the early nineties I began making notes for a novelon the strength of a few fleeting images anda couple of pieces of music.There was a naked, hungry man. And a boab tree. In my mind there was a Holden uterolling over. Dry paddocks, some dust rising into the night air. A man stepping on abroken guitar. A dead girl. They were like bits of a dream I couldn’t quite grasp orremember. Chris Whitley’s song ‘Big Sky Country’ began to haunt me because it feltrelated. When we get over to the big sky country, he sings, we’ll be kissing time, kissingtime goodbye. By this distant place did Whitley mean death? Or maybe love? Perhaps asense of self possession? Or all of the above? After seven years working on the book I stillhadn’t made my mind up but I had somehow found enough moments of my lost dream tomake a novel.

The title comes from a discussion between Georgie Jutland and her unlikely lover, LutherFox. Fox, a musician in flight from music, makes his living as an illegal fisherman – ashamateur. Before his family were killed in a freakish rollover that he survived, his wholelife was consumed by growing melons and playing guitar in the family band. In an effortto describe it for Georgie he coins the phrase. Anythin you could play on a verandah,he tells her. You know, without electricity. Dirt music.

What he means is music wrought from small resources, stuff that reflects both a modestyof means and the humble places where it’s played. Porch music. Campfire music. Rootsmusic. Kitchen music. And if he thought about it enough maybe he’d include chambermusic and the chanting of many religious traditions. To Fox, who is a planter of trees, asea-lover and a keen listener to creek and stone and wind, it’s also earth music. Theinstruments he’s grown up with, the National guitar, mandolin, fiddle, banjo he’s playedon the farmhouse verandah, reflect the landscape he lives in and yet the folk sounds heloves, the traditions of country blues, bluegrass, work songs and ditties he learns from oldLP’s speak of other countries, other regions, landscapes, histories.

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CD2

PETER SCULTHORPE b. 19291 Djilile 4’30

Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra; David Porcelijn, conductorP 1997 Australian Broadcasting Corporation

RALPH VAUGHAN WILLIAMS 1872-19582 Symphony No. 5: III. Romanza (Lento) 11’09

Adelaide Symphony Orchestra; Patrick Thomas, conductorP 2003 Australian Broadcasting Corporation

DMITRI SHOSTAKOVICH 1906-19753 Piano Quintet in G minor, Op. 57: III. Scherzo (Allegretto) 2’44

Victor Aller, piano; The Hollywood String Quartet (Felix Slatkin, violin;Paul Shure, violin; Paul Robyn viola; Eleanor Aller, cello)P 2009 Australian Broadcasting Corporation

JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH 1685-17504 St Matthew Passion: No. 53 Befiehl du deine Wege 1’05

Cantillation; Ray Harvey, organ; Antony Walker, conductorP 2002 Australian Broadcasting Corporation

ARVO PÄRT b. 19355 Cantus In Memory of Benjamin Britten* 7’41

Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra; Ola Rudner, conductorP 2001 Australian Broadcasting Corporation

*SPECIALLY RECORDED FOR THIS ALBUM

In the early nineties I began making notes for a novelon the strength of a few fleeting images anda couple of pieces of music.There was a naked, hungry man. And a boab tree. In my mind there was a Holden uterolling over. Dry paddocks, some dust rising into the night air. A man stepping on abroken guitar. A dead girl. They were like bits of a dream I couldn’t quite grasp orremember. Chris Whitley’s song ‘Big Sky Country’ began to haunt me because it feltrelated. When we get over to the big sky country, he sings, we’ll be kissing time, kissingtime goodbye. By this distant place did Whitley mean death? Or maybe love? Perhaps asense of self possession? Or all of the above? After seven years working on the book I stillhadn’t made my mind up but I had somehow found enough moments of my lost dream tomake a novel.

The title comes from a discussion between Georgie Jutland and her unlikely lover, LutherFox. Fox, a musician in flight from music, makes his living as an illegal fisherman – ashamateur. Before his family were killed in a freakish rollover that he survived, his wholelife was consumed by growing melons and playing guitar in the family band. In an effortto describe it for Georgie he coins the phrase. Anythin you could play on a verandah,he tells her. You know, without electricity. Dirt music.

What he means is music wrought from small resources, stuff that reflects both a modestyof means and the humble places where it’s played. Porch music. Campfire music. Rootsmusic. Kitchen music. And if he thought about it enough maybe he’d include chambermusic and the chanting of many religious traditions. To Fox, who is a planter of trees, asea-lover and a keen listener to creek and stone and wind, it’s also earth music. Theinstruments he’s grown up with, the National guitar, mandolin, fiddle, banjo he’s playedon the farmhouse verandah, reflect the landscape he lives in and yet the folk sounds heloves, the traditions of country blues, bluegrass, work songs and ditties he learns from oldLP’s speak of other countries, other regions, landscapes, histories.

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Robbed of his family, run off his own farm, Fox turns his back on music. There’s toomuch emotion in it, so much pain and memory. He lights out for the tropic north andtries to live as a man without music or pain or memory. But music, as well as being themost dispensable of arts, is probably the hardest to throw off. It pursues Luther Fox bystrange means. He discovers that music lives beneath the soles of our feet. Given noencouragement it still rises as if from the dust itself. Just as memories and landscapeseventually emerge to make emotional claims upon us, music comes, insistent anduninvited. Throughout his tropic exile Fox feels drawn to some underlying drone innature. There is, he discovers, no silence out there. His dirt music is the lure of place,the call to belong and perhaps even the eerie persuasive force of love.

I’m no musicologist. Not even a musician. I’m hardly in touch with the cutting edge ofpopular music and my classical education is sketchy at best, but like most people, I havea few musical passions (not all of which can be accounted for). Like Frank Zappa andRachmaninoff’s Vespers, Soundgarden and Arvo Pärt. I’m no longer young enough to be asnob. The thing that still excites me most, though, is the simple, unadorned stuff, themagic people can wring from portable mechanical contraptions. Many musics are imbuedwith place but those which speak most eloquently to me are those of humblecircumstance using modest means. Folk music, I guess.

When my novel was done I had the idea of making a tape for myself of the kinds of musicFox and his family might have played, the stuff he’s trying to describe to Georgie Jutland,the recordings she discovers in a trunk in his absence. It was one of those things thatgrew once it was uttered to others. As you see, it got out of hand. I showed themanuscript to Lucky Oceans and we traded ideas about roots music. We came up with somecommon passions and before long he wrote some instrumental pieces which emerged fromhis reading of the novel. And thus began this hybrid project, a mixture of already existingmaterial and work specially composed for an album with the same title as my novel.

Lucky, whose musical connections are legion, made a few calls, and the band we tookinto the studio included people I’d grown up listening to. I was 13 when Matt Taylor’s

‘‘I Remember When I Was Young’ was allover the radio. Dave Brewer from TheCatholics was playing in The Elks in the70’s when I used to sneak underage intopubs to watch him play rhythm and blues.Fred Kuhnl, Jim Fisher and Ian Simpson,as members of The Sensitive New AgeCowpersons revived my interest inbluegrass and have probably given memore low cost pleasure than should belegal. It was a treat to work with all ofthem. In keeping with the modesty-of-means theme, the band barely rehearsed.We wanted a verandah feel, a casualexuberance, something raw and homely.There was a brief rehearsal at Lucky’s oneafternoon and we went into the studiothe next evening.

So much for my little home-made dubtape to play in the car.

Ironically enough, Chris Whitley’s ‘Big SkyCountry’ didn’t make it onto the disc.Somehow it seems more fitting to go outon his lo-fi elegy ‘Dirt Floor’. When all elsefails, he seems to say, there’s still the dirtbeneath your feet.

Tim Winton, October 2001

Just as memories andlandscapes eventuallyemerge to makeemotional claims uponus, music comes, insistentand uninvited ...

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I’m going away, to a world unknown

I’m going away, to a world unknown

I’m worried now, but I won’t be worried long

(Charlie Patton, Down the Dirt Road Blues 1929)

It’s true home isn’t in the concert hall or even in theconfines of 9:00-12:00 gigs. Dirt Music refuses tohappen to plan. Start playing a blues and it becomes an Irish ballad. It hasno one face. It’s the 80 year old playing a song for the thousandth time and a kid playinghis first E chord. It’s not about joy or sorrow, but about a deeper feeling that containsthem both. Play music as if it’s a technical exercise and it flies away. Find yourselfthinking while you’re playing and it throws you off melody’s dirt road and on to thehighway, where speed and technology conspire to confuse and separate. It’s not againstlearning music, but it’s against repeating what you’ve learned, because every momentoffers a chance to do it a new way. It can happen when you’re alone, playing with an oldfriend or playing with someone for the first time, when you watch each other for clues –the shifting of body weight, a hand poised to move – secret signals of the way aheadtogether. If you travel far enough down that dirt road, you meet yourself – the you thatwas playing before there was music.

Thanks to Tim, whose musical knowledge and intuition are far greater than what he’swilling to claim, for his insights, generosity and perseverance.

Lucky Oceans

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If you travel far enough down that dirtroad, you meet yourself – the you thatwas playing before there was music ...

CD1 5 I Remember When I Was Young

Matt: the man who put an Australian accent to the blues with Mushroom Records’ first topten hit. We transformed it from a blues ump-a-dumpa to a straight-ahead bluegrass feel.Matt’s exuberance is infectious – he always sounds like he’s singing it for the first time.

6 Down By The Riverbed

One of the great stomp down country blues outfits show one of their other sides in thismysterious, airy song about rest and redemption and the road ahead.

7 I Scare Myself

Renee Geyer’s a scarily good singer. She works her magic in transforming this song fromthe hip sarcasm of its writer, Dan Hicks, to a journey down into the bloodroom of a soulat the mercy of a loved one. One take.

8 I’ll Be Gone

I mentioned to Broome born musician Alan Pigram that we were thinking of recordingthis classic for the album and it turns out it was already part of his brother Stephen’srepertoire. From then on, it wasn’t hard to decide to travel to Broome. Recorded on abalmy evening in Alan’s little studio, waiting for the dogs to stop barking. Sorry about theinvoluntary groaning at the end. That’s just me getting lost in it. The Pigram Brothers area national treasure.

9 Irene Goodnight Variations

The Leadbelly standard that Bird and Lu Fox hear spilling out onto the evening paddockson the night that most of them die in a rollover. Tim produced me on this one, telling meto play it tenderly, as if was late at night in my house with the family asleep. There’ssomething special about playing for people who can only hear you in their dreams.

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CD1

1 Every Morning

Kevin Moore grew up in S. Central L.A., an all-around musician, arranger and staffsongwriter before re-inventing himself as Keb’ Mo’ under the inspiration of Taj Mahal.This proto-blues, masterfully honed down to its basics, hints at gospel and country witha generosity of spirit sometimes rare in the blues.

2 Long Time Gone

Although this song seems to bemoan today’s overly polished, dumbed down country music,it’s not a complaint, but a celebration of an alternative – two monster players gettingtogether at home for the feel-good thrill of chasing a song. It’s not hard to feel like you’rein that room with them.

3 Watching The Wheels

David Hyams is a Fremantle guitarist whose 1999 CD, Miles To Go heralded a new voice forIrish music in Australia – with original instrumentals richly evocative of his journeys inIreland and Western Australia. This piece was inspired by having nothing else to do but sitat a Pilbara rail crossing as a huge iron ore train passed.

4 Got To Have You Be My Man

There’s a lot of Georgie Jutland’s go-get-it attitude in this song. Rory Block grew up inNew York City in a bohemian family where, on a good day, music, art and poetry were themost important things in life. In her early teens, she discovered the poetry of the countryblues and learned them first hand from the greats to become a master of the percussivedelta blues styles.

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audience that came there mostly for the laughs, but got a good healthy dose of great musicin the process. The mind boggles at what songs they would have eventually gotten around to.

% I Drew My Ship Into The Harbour / When The Boat Comes In

From a CD intended only for sale at Tristan’s gigs with the Chipolatas and John’s with theCowpersons comes this gem of a medley on marine themes. Eliza’s mighty vocal shows howtraditional songs are like wells from which successive generations draw new depthsof meanings.

^ Kokomo Blues

Since 1992, the Shooters have been playing country blues from the 20s and 30s atFestivals and in country towns in Western Australia. They find little known songs withunique twists, like this minor/major Scrapper Blackwell classic, and resurrect them in thestomping spirit of the country-dance tradition that they came from. I imagine that theFox’s group had a lot of the Shooters in them – people weren’t sure about the music theyplayed, but knew that they were good at it and could give you a good time.

& Keep Your Lamp Trimmed and Burning

I arrived in Perth in 1979 with my wife, daughter, a pedal steel guitar and Jim Fisher’sphone number. Since then, I’ve enjoyed playing with him in many different forms andwe’ve had a lot of great laughs as our families grew up together. Jim learned this song inthe studio, but sounds as if he’s been singing it for a thousand years. Trimming thecharred wick of a kerosene lamp keeps it burning strong and steady. Dig the slipperyguitar solo by Dave.

* One

When Lu flees to the north, he stops playing music, fearing the memories and pain thatit’ll bring back, but he can’t resist making an instrument by stringing some fishing linebetween two trees. From there, he re-enters music from the purity of the drone. This track

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0 He Fades Away

June is an exceptional singer. What sets her apart is the respect and intelligence she bringsto a song. Her poise and subtle gradations of intensity have breathed life into manydifficult songs – not least this chilling song of the ongoing suffering people endure in thewake of the asbestos mining at Wittenoom. Lu’s father dies of mesothelioma from the samemine and he makes a brief, surreal visit there in the company of some strange individuals.

! A River Runs Through My Heart

Tim’s hero from Dingoes days. No matter how many times I hear this, I can’t help butrespond with a sigh of pleasure and see a flower opening in my mind’s eye. Broderick’ssweet voice says more than a thousand words in this unfolding tale of love, memory andloss. Beautiful.

@ Look at the Moon

If the cello is the mellow voice of the comfortable burgher, as Tim says, the Dobro hassome of the unpredictable bark of the battler to offset its sweetness. For some reason,looking at the moon always suspends thoughts of plans and deadlines and allows dreamsand possibilities to quietly pour in.

£ White Point Breakdown

What a treat to play with the White Pointers! Fred has a way of responding to a soloist’sexcitement by giving a little extra lift and slap on the bass. I’ll trade licks with IanSimpson any day – he has this way of playing right on the front end of things that makesme smile every time. Like the White Point Breakdowns of the book, things are almost outof control here. Did I say almost?

$ I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For

The Cowpersons were a group of guys who loved playing bluegrass, but realised it had alimited audience. Luckily, they also had an exceptional knack for comedy, which drew an

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isn’t quite that austere, but it has a purity born of limitations – a steel bar slid on onebraided nylon string of an African harp-lute. Could be a first.

( Nobody’s Fault But Mine

Alone on his island in the Kimberley, Lu Fox resorts to this grim chant by Blind WillieJohnson as a means of enduring pain. He sings it as he extracts dozens of barnacle sliversembedded in his feet. Matt got so into the feeling that he found himself making up lyricsin character. The band throbbed like one being to make this version of a strange, rawsongby the master of strange and raw. There’s a track by Blind Willie on the record on theVoyager space craft. I wonder if whoever finds his music will be horrified by the level ofhis emotional pain or awed by his sublimation into a terrible beauty.

) Dirt Floor

He sounds like the quiet stranger who just rolled into town. Evocative, enigmatic songs,asymmetric lo-fi National playing and a tenderly breaking voice. His song Big Sky Country(Living With the Law) was an early source of agitation and inspiration for the novel.Many times, Tim found sustenance in Whitley’s work to find the mood and nature ofLuther Fox’s peculiar melancholic, pent-up, grief-wracked outlook. If Fox is anyone,he’s a mixture of Whitley and Kelly Joe Phelps. Dirt Floor has an elegiac tone to it.A sense of hope in the loss of illusions. A trip down the dirt road, to a world unknown.

Lucky Oceans

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Tim Winton and Lucky Oceans

4 Bach – St Matthew Passion: No. 53 Befiehl du deine Wege

Staggering half blind through the Kimberley wilderness, Luther Fox hears the strains ofsomething his mother used to sing. Beyond the next ridge he comes upon an eerieprocession. People trudging up the ridge dressed like German missionaries. Singing thisfrom the Matthew Passion. He follows but they take no notice of him.

5 Pärt – Cantus In Memory of Benjamin Britten

As Fox comes into Broome this is the music that almost undoes him. Bess, who hasdemanded ‘Arvo in the arvo’, seems to see her own imminent death in the piece. Theunrelieved emotion of it torments Fox. He’s shut music out of his life to avoid emotion and memory and this unravels him. Weeks later, alone in the rough country to the norththe spare phrase returns to him as if from the earth beneath his feet.

Tim Winton

1918

CD2CD2

1 Sculthorpe – Djilile

Walking along the vast saltpan of Lake Moore recently while mirages piled up in waves inevery direction, I thought of Peter Sculthorpe. There’s an amplitude to his music, and anopenness in this piece in particular that brings to mind shimmering open spaces. A senseof passage, too. I think of Luther Fox and the long road north. Cockatoos. Eucalyptcountry giving way to mulga.

2 Vaughan Williams – Symphony No. 5: III. Romanza (Lento)

Much of Luther Fox’s instinctive understanding of the world as a holy place is fed bymemories of his mother and by his reading of Wordsworth and Blake. This movement fromSymphony No. 5 speaks Wordsworth to me, of The Prelude and Tintern Abbey. I’ve neverbeen to the Lakes District but this piece takes me to an imagined version. It couldn’t befurther removed from the harsh wilderness that Fox knows but on his island beach and inthe poetry that sustains him he recognizes the same motion and spirit ‘that impels/Allthinking things, all objects of all thought,/And rolls through all things.’ This is dirt musicof another sort entirely.

3 Shostakovich – Piano Quintet in G minor, Op. 57: III. Scherzo (Allegretto)

On his long, withering drive across the Roebuck Plains in the company of the old coupleBess and Horrie, Fox has to endure their taste in ‘big music’. I always imagined the PianoQuintet in G minor, especially the austere first movement. For Fox who is more of a RyCooder man, it may have been a bit of a challenge, yet he’d instinctively relate to its sadspareness. But this, the third movement, with all its false jollity, would have been theliving end. Georgie Jutland, on the other hand, (the woman he’s fallen for), might takeironic pleasure in it.

Lucky Oceans

Fred Kuhnl

Ian Simpson

Jim Fisher

Tim Winton was born in Perth in 1960. His 18 books for adults and children havebeen published to acclaim at home and abroad. Twice winner of the Miles Franklin Awardand short-listed for the Booker Prize, his work has achieved the rare distinction of beingboth critically admired and loved by readers. His work has been translated into twelvelanguages and has been adapted for stage, radio and film. He lives in Western Australiawith his wife and three children.

Lucky Oceans was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA in 1951. He co-foundedthe group Asleep at the Wheel and won two Grammy Awards playing with them. He currentlyplays with the Zydecats, a group he co-founded in 1993. Lucky Oceans has been called“possibly the most influential and imitated steel guitarist of his generation” by Cornell Hurd,a man who has been described as “Garth Brooks’ worst nightmare.” Besides playing steelguitars, he presents the acclaimed daily music show, The Planet, on the AustralianBroadcasting Corporation’s Radio National (http://www.abc.net.au/rn/music/planet/).He married an Australian in 1979 and now lives in Fremantle, Western Australia with his wifeand three children.

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Tim WintonTim Winton

Fred

Kuhn

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Jim Fisher

Matt Taylor

Mat

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ylor

Dave

Brew

erIan Simpson

Matt Taylor

3

Produced and Compiled by Tim Winton and Lucky OceansExecutive Producers Martin Buzacott, Lyle Chan and Robert PattersonEditorial and Production Manager Hilary ShrubbPublications Editor Natalie SheaCover Design Gayna Murphy/Greendot DesignCover Image National Geographic/Getty ImagesBooklet Design Imagecorp Pty LtdMastering Don Bartley (Studios 301)Photographs Alan Edwards. Used courtesy of Satellite Recording Studio.

The following tracks were recorded especially for this album:CD1 5, @, £, &, ( Produced by Tim Winton and Lucky Oceans. Recorded 2 August 2001 at SatelliteRecording Studio. CD1 8 Produced by Lucky Oceans, Alan Pigram and Stephen Pigram. Engineered byAlan Pigram. Recorded 18 June 2001 at Pearl Shell Studio. CD1 9 Produced by Tim Winton and LuckyOceans. Recorded 18 September 2001 at JHM Studios. CD1 * Produced by Tim Winton and LuckyOceans. Recorded 5 September 2001 at JHM Studios. CD2 5 Produced and Edited by StephenSnelleman. Engineered by Andrew Dixon. Recorded 6 September 2001 at the Studio of the TasmanianSymphony Orchestra, Hobart.

The following independent Australian record labels and musicians may be reached as follows:Dark Horse Records (www.darkhorse.net.au). Backsliders (www.backsliders.com.au). W. Minc Productions(www.wminc.com.au). Melodeon (www.flyingcats.com.au/reality). Ten Cent Shooters(members.iinet.net.au/~accessb). Pigram Brothers (www.pigrammusic.com).

Eliza Carthy appears courtesy of Topic Records and Warner Music.Tristan Glover’s performance is sponsored by Hyde Accordions.

Lucky Oceans would like to thank Jenny Darling, Denise Fitch, Chris Gosfield, Jacob Gosfield fortechnical assistance, James Hewgill, Dave Laing, David Waldman, all the musicians, and his parents,for taking him to see everyone from Son House to John Cage.

ABC Classics would like to thank the following people for their assistance with this project: David Waldman,Angel Stewart and Sarah Reardon (Sony Music); Brad Hunt (Howdy Skies Records); John Bechard andShaleen Tethal (Rounder Records); Dom Turner (The Backsliders); Graham Lee (W. Minc Productions); ThePigram Brothers; Nick Ember (Cooking Vinyl Ltd); Anna-Lisa Whiting (ABC Classics); Sara Walker, Jo Phelps,Robin Frost, Pat Sergo (ABC Music); Jim Fisher; John Reed; David Vodicka (Rubber Music); Jonathon Bird,Cyrus Meher-Homji and Kim Townsend (Universal Music Group); Belinda Webster (Tall Poppies).

Dirt Music by Tim Winton is published by Pan Macmillan

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