Bush poet and balladeer, Archer is guiding a camel train under the starry skies of Windorah in regional south-west Queensland when he's asked to describe himself.
“I'm only learning. I'm just an old bloke who's trying to teach himself new tricks, or at least string something together,” Archer laughs.
“At the moment I'm walking along with camels, which is good. They're very good singers; we should get them into [a] Brisbane nightclub and [give them] a microphone, I think they'd be wonderful.”
It's a long way from Queensland to Western Australia, especially when your walking with camels, but in October Archer will be performing at Mojos Bar with his new band. “It's pretty cutting-edge stuff,” he says.
“We're putting this band together called Kangaroos With Machine Guns, and that's got Luke Dux, Todd Pickett and Ryan Dux in it. We're going to be doing a fair bit of poetry and song, and we're going to make a record I think the day after that [show].
“The band's got together because it's all about teaching kangaroos how to use a machine gun, so they can defend themselves from humanity. That's the basic premise of the whole thing. They've been in the relentless spotlight for too long, so it's time to give them a fighting chance.”
Whether it's arming our native fauna or ruminating on the vast beauty of Australia's natural landscape, Archer has a deep affinity for the bush and the simple wisdom of its lore. “I guess I'm a fairly simple person and I don't go on [sic] a lot of gadgets and stuff, so I just like stuff like the bush and trees and stuff like that,” he says.
“I never got into pop music, so I guess I like simple stories that you can maybe learn something from. Too many ideas at one time just get lost, don't they, and the bush is where it's all at really. We've come a long way from there, but it's still out there. I mean a city is basically the bush, it's just a city on top of the bush and there's wild animals. Anywhere there's a tree can give you a fair bit.”
In addition to his Mojos show and the album he's recording, Archer is also working on a book that collects together his poetry paired with the drawings of Tiger Woodburn. “I'm doing the poems and Tiger does the drawings. I couldn't speak highly enough of that man, he's a very interesting man. He can channel drawings he can,” Archer says.
“We travel 'round a bit sometimes together, but he got sick of that, so I've been sending him poems and then he'll send me back a drawing after a day or two weeks or whatever it is.
“Often in the drawing, one of the figures in there is either someone who is close to me at the time or someone I've seen recently. Anyway, strange things are afoot. He's doing a drawing for every poem.”
