Guitarist, didgeridoo player, singer-songwriter, proud Yorta Yorta man, Indigenous activist and World Vision spokesperson Scott Darlow features in another cracking bill for the Melbourne Guitar Show this year.
The Melbourne Guitar Show weekender showcases performances (including everyone from UK guitar legend Albert Lee through to local guitar champs Phil Manning, Nick Charles and Brett Garsed), demos, workshops and the opportunity to see, try and buy at the biggest guitar pop-up shop in the country. For Darlow – the dude behind 2016’s cracking cover of the Goanna classic ‘Solid Rock’ – it’s another opportunity to rep his community and be an agent of change.
To say that Darlow is a passionate advocate is an understatement. While he’s played music since he was a kid, starting with the cornet in a Salvo band, he’s been using it for years as a conduit for a powerful message. When he’s not recording or touring locally and internationally, Darlow works a solid circuit of schools, prisons and juvenile detention centres, playing guitar and operating as a compelling demonstration of what’s possible. That said, Darlow admits to “shitting [him]self” the first time he went into a detention centre. “It’s not a prison farm – these kids are in a three by four metre cell, with the sheets attached to a bench so they can’t hang themselves, there’s no toilet seat, a perspex window on the cell so the guards can see in at all times, and they’re only let out from 7am to 7pm – it’s friggin’ brutal,” he says.
Darlow is spurred on by a shameful statistic. “70 to 80 per cent of kids in prisons around the country are Indigenous and we only make up three per cent of the population,” he explains. “For me to be able to go in there and say, ‘I’m an Aboriginal person. I’ve played VFL football. I’ve played premierships. I’ve had radio hits with my music. I’ve been very blessed, but the thing I’m most proud of is that I finished year 12 and went to university’. It’s an amazing opportunity to do that. Even if I inspire one kid, it’s closing the gap.”
You can see the pathway that’s led Darlow to this point. Starting out, Darlow was a high-school teacher down the surf coast for two years before his Dad died at age 57 from alcoholism, urging him to change paths. “When we buried him, I had a moment when I realised that life is really short and the only true currency we have is time, which you can’t replace,” Darlow says. “Life became about how best to spend my time, and I realised I wasn’t passionate about teaching kids English and music. I was just doing it to get paid.
“So what was I passionate about? I realised I was passionate about my people, and I realised that music is a great medium. So, I decided I’d go into schools and prisons, as an ex-teacher, and use my music to communicate with kids, talk about aboriginal culture and reconciliation. The focus became to challenge kids to consider who they want to be, and challenge them to be history makers.”
Two and a half years ago, Darlow had cause to take stock again when he dropped a trailer on his middle finger and severed the top. While his finger was re-attached with plastic surgery, there was a fretful period where he queried whether he’d be able to play guitar again. Up to that point, Darlow’s interest in the musical mainstream had been minimal. “I had an epiphany lying in the hospital bed though that if I was a bit smarter and played the game better, I could make even more difference for my people,” he recalls. So, when he was released from hospital, he finished his record Sorry, which included recording ‘Solid Rock’ with Goanna’s Shane Howard. Afterwards, he was signed to Mushroom Publishing, scored a booking agent and the rest is history. “It feels like my life has changed totally ever since.”
