Photo: Justin Edwards

Tribute concerts are one thing. A retrospective ‘best of’ tour is another. As we are welcomed warmly to The Riverstage by an Aboriginal elder (who delightfully forgets Carmody’s name) and Queensland Music Festival Musical Director Deborah Conway, there’s an excited feeling amongst this sold out crowd that tonight is something else entirely.

Cannot Buy My Soul: The Songs Of Kev Carmody is the penultimate and biggest event for the two week Queensland Music Festival, which has seen an imaginative range of one-off concerts play to communities throughout the state. This show continues that innovation, as the creamiest layer of Australia’s top rock stars walk through the crowd to join Kev and his family on stage, here to pay laid back tribute to a man whose 40 years of songs mightn’t have become part of mainstream radio playlists, but can’t help but stun with their descriptions of real people from our own local society.

Kev himself assures us we’re not going to see a corporate rock spectacular, but rather a group of people passing on music in their own voices, like it always has been until the last century. Dan Kelly starts the ball rolling with I’ve Been Moved, a song Carmody wrote during his droving days in 1968. It’s not so much a contemporary song as it is timeless, and to those of us who know Carmody better by reputation than the ins and outs of his songs, it shows why he and Paul Kelly have become such close collaborators.

As Kev sits on the corner of the stage watching almost 20 artists stride out for one song each, highlights don’t always come from where you’d most expect. Country crooner Sara Storer is a refreshing surprise, with a simply beautiful version of Moonstruck. Glenn Richards, Paul Kelly and Missy Higgins’ Droving Woman is a violent but amazing story, topped immediately by the most laconic Tex Perkins ever with stunning spoken word piece Darkside, reading aloud from a newspaper about kids living on the street in Logan. As an Aboriginal, a youth worker, a uni student, a musician over the past 63 years in Queensland, Carmody’s songs for the most part aren’t ‘Protest Songs’ per se, but his stories about real people make their message far more affecting than someone bleating on about ‘Issues’.

Blood Red Rose by Clare Bowditch, The Herd’s Comrade Jesus Christ, Bernard Fanning’s Elly and especially the unexpected rock climax of Dan Sultan and Paul Kelly’s This Land Is Mine are all enlightening to hear, though not every song hits the same mark. Indigenous hip hop duo The Last Kinection unfortunately leave the sad tale of Dancer Is Dead a little flat, and John Butler’s slide guitar version of land rights anthem Thou Shall Not Steal feels just adequate, perhaps weighted by not straying far enough from the source material.

With charming stories of Kev’s life throughout Queensland both delivered live and playing on the big screen between songs, the presentation works incredibly well, and performers offer backing vocals, and to play with the backing band, more as a sign of community spirit.

Two individual songs stand out from the rest. Steve Kilbey’s biting version of Images Of London shows The Church singer still has a fire inside, but it’s The Drones’ intense River Of Tears, belting the hell out of our ears, expectations and minds that is an instantly classic performance. I’ve seen this group many times, but this one song is up with their most powerful, gnarled, breathtaking efforts.

It’s no surprise that the show finishes with a group version of the alternate national anthem if ever there was one, From Little Things Big Things Grow. It’s an inspiring story of a downtrodden minority using patience and self-determination to attain what they deserve, and with tonight’s voices joining together with co-writers Kev and Paul Kelly, it’s moving and proud enough to bring a tear to this bear’s eye.

Cannot Buy My Soul is simply a triumph that has brought the songs of a Queensland treasure to new ears, but more importantly (and I don’t care if this sounds trite) it has lifted the soul.

SIMON TOPPER

Comments (5)

2. Written by Sophie, on 04-08-2009 17:25 Awesome review.

4. Written by Simon, on 05-08-2009 17:27 Shit Andrew, you're right, I was down the front in the seats and there was apparently an entirely different vibe down there. Totally love your review - it's a hell of a lot more incisive than mine - but I honestly left the gig quietly with proud tears in my eyes, thinking that just maybe there's been a shift in white bread community attitudes. Even if there hasn't been, sounds like I had a better time fooling myself in the rich seats.

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