Russell Morris has had a decades-spanning musical career that has made him a legendary Australian songwriter and voice of Western Australia’s tourism campaign. Morris exploded back onto the scene last year with his album ‘Sharkmouth’.

OUTinPerth’s Graeme Watson had a chat with the iconic songster about his latest offering ‘Van Diemen’s Land’.

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Have you got hundreds of interviews back to back?

I’ve got a few, with is really lovely because without your help, and other people’s help you know, you’d never get your album heard and the support that I’ve had has just been absolutely fabulous.

It’s interesting because the last album you brought out was huge!

Surprisingly so, yes. Because when we first did it I only had pressed 500 copies that I was going to sell at shows to try to make some of the money back that I’d spent recording it. And at the eleventh hour, Robert Rigby came along from Ambition Records and said ‘Listen, give me a shot at this. I think I can make this work.’ And that was it. And the first time they rang me up they said ‘Guess what, you’ve made the charts.’ And I thought ‘You’re kidding me! Really? After thirty-five years.’ And they said ‘Yeah, you’re eighty one.’ And I said ‘Fantastic! I can’t believe I made the charts!’ I was so excited and then they rang back the next week and said ‘This has jumped to sixty.’ I just couldn’t believe it. I thought ‘That’s enough for me, I’m just happy’. And it just kept going each week until it finally reached the Top Ten and stayed there for a long time.

And you’d walk in the stores I remember going to things like JB HIFI and it’d be there, front and centre in a big display.

Well JBHIFI have been absolutely stupendous. They’ve been such great supporters. What happened strangely enough we did one of their conferences and I got up and played all of ‘Sharkmouth’ and all the young people from the floor that sell the CDs and things were there, and they just loved it.

So what happened was virtually every one of them went back to the shops, put it on the turntables and started playing it in the stores and it just took off, it was unbelievable. They’ve been absolutely wonderful. Sanity did the same thing. All the leading stores they all did the same thing, they just pushed it.

It just goes to show that you don’t need the commercial FM stations, like the big pop stations to break a record.

I’ve spoken to a number of artists in the last month who have mentioned your album and its successes as kind of reinvigorating them as well.

It has, it’s worked really wonderfully. I’m hoping they’re albums are received just as well. There’s lots and lots of artists like Joe Camilleri, Brian Cadd, James Reyne, Richard Clapton. They’ve all really got good things to offer. It’s just a matter of listening to them and it has inspired a few people and they’ve all gone and done new albums which is great.

Now this new album it’s definitely got a very Australian theme to it.

When I decide to do Blues/Roots, I decided that I couldn’t sing American songs. See I was a big fan of Howling Wolf and John Lee Hooker and all that sort of stuff. But I thought ‘Well I can’t sing their songs, because they’re singing about America and they’re Americans and that’s their roots, and my roots are Australian.’

So I thought ‘Well I’ve got to do it, but I’ll do it and sing about my country, and sing about our country and talk about our stories.’ Sometimes the Blues doesn’t allow you to tell quite a long narrative. It doesn’t work because Blues tends to be 12 bar or it’s on one chord. So I’ve had to expand it just a little bit and change it slightly. Some of them are almost Irish in their approach. I guess Irish blues or something like that. So just to get my stories out but I’ve tried to keep it rootsy all the way through.

All these musical styles are connected aren’t they? One musical style to the next they’re all pretty close neighbours.

Yes well if you look at country music in Australia it’s derivative or Irish and that bluegrass American stuff that came out and it’s a bit of a hybrid of all that. If you look at the Rolling Stones when they first started they were blues and roots and now all of a sudden they’ve developed into a rock and roll band. SO it is all derivative of each other, yes.

‘The Real Thing’ is the soundtrack to WA.

To WA, is it?

It’s on all the commercials, ‘come and see the real thing’. Apparently it’s about us now.

Oh that’s right! [Laughs]

Does it surprise you all the places that that song has ended up?

Yes, it has. The most horrifying was SPC baked beans. That was very strange. That was out of my control, it was Johnny Young that was allowing them to do it because he wrote it. I would’ve said no to that one but. [Laughs]

You’ve got to pay the bills [laughs]. Do you still like getting on the road and playing live? I saw you play live many years ago. DO you get tired of being on the road or do you ache to get out there?

Oh, we’re on the road non-stop. I’ll be on the road now till March next year. So non-stop right through. I’m coming over there in three weeks for the West Coast blues festival. I’m really enjoying it at the moment because I’m getting to play these new songs and people are really readily accepting and embracing them which is just fabulous fun, especially for an artist because you always write to try and communicate to people. But if you’re singing the same song over and over again it’s a good feeling because people are loving it but you’re not communicating anything new and as an artist you really crave that feeling, to be able to do new stuff.

There’s quite a lot of collaborators on this new album as well. There’s a lot of guest artists.

Oh yeah. I always love to use other people on there, it’s great.

This is a lineup that just shows the amazing talent that we have there, Joe Camilleri and Ross Hannaford who I’ve seen play who is amazing. Do you seek people out? How do those collaborations come about?

Some because they’re friends, others because I figured they’d add something to the song that I would not expect. Ross Hannaford was one choice in that area. He’s still a friend but also I picked him because I knew he would so something really different and really strange. And he did, it was great. Scott Owen, from The Living end, I really love his bass playing so we picked him because we knew he would add something very special. So you usually pick the player that you think is applicable for what you’re trying to achieve.

The only case where it was strange was Rob Hirst who is a great mate and a great player. And once Rob Hirst played on the song, that was it. It was Rob Hirts’s song, and we had to follow him. He just made it his own. He’s such a strong musician. Once he’d played the drums on it was like ‘wow, this is not where I thought it would go. He just turned the whole song into his. So he is very very strong when you work with Rob. Now I know why Midnight Oil is so much like they were. He was the engine room that made them what they were.

Russell Morris’ new album is available now.