Among the greats of Australian songwriting, few have had such a monumental impact on the country's political and social conscience than John Schumann and Shane Howard.
As a member of the political/ musical group Redgum, John penned the band's most well-known anti-war missive 'I Was Only 19'; meanwhile Shane brought attention to Australia's Indigenous people with the Goanna hit 'Solid Rock'.
“The songs that Shane and I have written over our careers are very much songs that have arisen from ordinary Australians' concerns and aspirations about things that are going on in their lives,” John muses.
“Both of us write the kind of songs that, at their best, touch the hearts and minds of ordinary Australians. That's what we do and we've been doing that for quite some time.”
John and Shane come together at this year's National Folk Festival (in Canberra) to perform their own show 'Songs That Changed Our Country'. “It's a very prestigious festival and I think Shane and I have played at it in years gone by, but certainly not together,” John says.
“The National Folk Festival is one of the great celebrations of music that is accessible to everybody. You don't have to have an honour's degree in fine arts to appreciate folk music, folk music being music that comes from the people.”
Both John and Shane share a passion for observing the world around them and speaking out on a range of issues they feel need greater attention from the listening public, and with a timeless quality that allows the songs to transcend generational boundaries.
“The fact that we play these songs breathes new life and new meaning into them. The other thing is that both Shane and I care about the state of the world,” John says.
“We're not the type of artists who are going to write songs about my broken-hearted girlfriend, that's not what we do – we write songs that reflect the values and aspirations of the country we live on and the people we share it with.”
Contemporaries, colleagues and close mates, John and Shane joined forces in 2017 to record 'Times Like These', a razor-sharp indictment of Australian politics and the apathy ravaging our consciousness.
Two years on from 'Times Like These', which likened Australia to a stricken and embattled ship in a storm, John has no hesitation in stating little has changed and that if anything, the situation has only become more tenuous. “We are singer-songwriters with a reasonable track record and we're not going to sit out and shut up just because that's what people think we should do,” John says.
“Shane and I have always written songs that have some kind of import… we don't want to write songs about 'strewing caraway seeds around the canyons of our mind', and we don't want to write songs about introspection, and we don't want to write songs about love or broken hearts; we want our songs to make a difference.
“It might sound pretentious but we really do want to make a contribution. Even something like 'Times Like These', written a few years ago, it's still us trying to shake Australia by the shirt-front saying 'wake up, you mob! There is more to life than 'Big Brother', 'The X Factor', 'The Bachelor' and home renovation!'”
