Stanthorpe saddle tramp James Blundell has produced reams of roughage for his belated tenth album.
Stanthorpe saddle tramp James Blundell has produced reams of roughage for his belated tenth album. There’s two divorces, bankruptcy and true love with a young singer amongst its themes, and collaborators diverse as Mick Thomas and Nashville writers Kim Richey, Vince Melamed and Greg Barnhill featuring on tracks. And, to add stamina and tutelage, there’s a former Olympic athlete as producer. Fellow singer-songwriter Paul Greene was fast out of the blocks to ensure Blundell, 46 and father of two, had a disc worthy of nomination for a tenth Golden Guitar.
The former stockman may be home on the family range – near the tiny town of Texas – for more than just financial reasons, but he and co-writer Kim Richey set the mood on the satiric Move Into The City entrée that extols the virtues of country living. It segues into Orwellian Milk Me that finds a dairy herd rebelling against supermarket czars dictating prices for the cream of their crop (topical). The singer links Friesian with reason, mentions methane but doesn’t extend to politicians causing the ruin of family farms by turning climate change into a city growth industry.
By this stage, Blundell has listeners by the ears and he reaches to 1993 for Can’t Love Alone and former Danglin’ Brothers singer Kim Cheshire for Billy – the saga of a city junkie who flees after stabbing a man in a rail yard.
Fight Naked might be fantasy-fuelled but the vixen in Jezebel’s Birthday has her roots in New Mexico on Armistice Day – an interesting locale for Johland-born Blundell and Gippsland-reared co-writer Mick Thomas. The character resists lures of the mountain maid to ride a train after a lover in The 7:45 and flees another deceitful damsel in Walk On. If this sounds like Blundell is on a roll you’re right – especially as he empties both barrels into the reporter who exposed his partner change in Fat Man In A Van.
We’re off the hook as Blundell changes the gender of the writer and ends his disc with Juliana’s Footsteps – a Van Diemen’s Land tale learned while filming the TV show Bush Man in the shadows of The Nut at Stanley on the north-west coast of Tasmania. The ghost of a four-year-old girl haunts Highfield House many moons after her mysterious death – luckily Blundell didn’t venture southwest to Zeehan where ghosts outnumber humans.
But it’s a hidden track, not a ghost, that tests James’ vocals as he resurrects Old Paint – a tune the Blundell patriarch used to sing the artist to sleep to as a baby.
Blundell is no George Jones vocally but can spin a yarn as well as any of the old blokes on the block.
Best Track : Milk Me
If You Dig These, You’ll Dig This: Still Walking GRAEME CONNORS.
In A Word: A country boy finds peace at home on the farm after being lost in cities.
