Many Australian music fans are familiar with Luke O’Shea, winner of 17 Golden Guitar awards for music from his nine albums, the latest of which is Different Drum. Many more should be familiar with him, because O’Shea is one of our great storytellers, tracing our history with all its strands as well as the vicissitudes of human life in the modern age. He is an observer of human nature in a way that makes him able to offer a different perspective that invariably leaves the listener enriched, whether we’re listening to a tale about Wayne holding his Stop/Slow sign at roadworks (‘Wayne and Wanita’) or a man feeling nostalgic for the car-promenading of his youth (‘South Beach Strip’) or a young woman in a pie shop saying ‘yes’ (‘Coastal Town’).
One example of this is his latest single, ‘The Art of Letting Go’, which is a song he’s been performing live for a little while. Drawing inspiration and some lines from the renowned poem ‘Clancy of the Overflow’ by Andrew Barton ‘Banjo’ Paterson, the song compares the life of drover Clancy and his ‘sunlit planes extended’ with the way our modern lives have shrunk to the size of a device.
O’Shea has much in common with The Banjo. Both know how to find the balance of rapture and reality; they also have the ability to appreciate the bigger picture, both literal – our landscape and what it means to live in and on it – and metaphorical, in terms of the questions we need to ask ourselves in order to live well in and on this planet. These days ‘Clancy’ is not as well known as some of Paterson’s other poems – the most famous of which is ‘The Man from Snowy River’ – but it’s perfect for this song.
Accompanying the song is a video which is having its premiere here today. Made by O’Shea with Jay Seeney of Blacklist Productions – the same combination that produced the exceptional and award-winning video for O’Shea’s ‘South East Queensland’ – it is the perfect accompaniment to the song, showing the wild and the free, the small and constrained.
And while O’Shea is a serious chronicler of the human condition, it also needs to be said that he doesn’t take himself too seriously – which is partly why he’s a very engaging live performer! You can see him live on the following dates:
Friday 9 October – Flamingos Live, Newcastle, NSW 7.00pm
Saturday 10 October- DAYTIME SHOW – Slim Dusty Centre – Kempsey, NSW 12.00pm – 2.30pm
Saturday 10 October – EVENING SHOW – Brush Turkey Books – Wingham, NSW 7.00pm
16-17-18 October – Kangaroo Valley Folk Festival
Saturday 24 October – Quirkz in the Hunter, Abermain NSW
6–8 November – Airlie Beach Festival
