The Davidson Brothers, Hamish and Lachlan, have been at the forefront of Australian bluegrass for over 20 years now.
They have witnessed first-hand the peaks and troughs the scene has experienced over that time, from a virtual drought in their youth, to the widespread resurgence it is enjoying today. Their first album, Blue Spruce, was recorded when the 13- and 15-year-old brothers took the day off from school, and their fledgling eighth album is in the works as we speak. As Hamish figures, bluegrass is back with a passion, and won’t be fading away again anytime soon.
“To be honest, I think there were some obvious turning points that affected [the genre] in a positive way,” he explains. “The Dixie Chicks were quite big at one point, maybe the late ’90s. They were playing a bluegrass sound and really reaching a big audience. O Brother, Where Art Thou? came out maybe 12 years ago, and then there’s Keith Urban who started making the sound popular, using banjos and fiddle on his records. He’s had a big worldwide effect. I think in the last five years we’ve really started to see other bands really taking it on as well; there’s real competition. There’s an actual scene here now! It was a long time coming, but there’s a lot of it now. We meet people and it’s like, ‘Hi, I’m such-and-such, I play banjo, and this is my sister, she plays mandolin, and that’s my brother, he has a bluegrass band.’ It’s kind of casual now, but we were the youngest bluegrass band to be playing Australia for around 12 years there. I never thought I’d see it come back to what it was like in the ’70s.”
Given the calibre and popularity of some of Australia’s bluegrass talent today – bands like Mustered Courage and The Morrisons, both name-checked by Davidson – it’s hard to understand how a style so raucous and entertaining ever slid from view. But as he colourfully illustrates, it’s not like the genre magically endows performers with talent; that sense of showmanship must still be there.
“It is hard not to enjoy, even if you have only half a knack for entertaining in front of a crowd. Though some bluegrass bands we’ve seen, they look like four stale bottles of piss strumming away up there. But if you can connect with the crowd, you get that synergistic effect. If you can project outside the tent, people walking by will hear it and be attracted to it, the place will be full by the third song in, and off you go. It’s an exciting thing. If you’re a folky, for example, and haven’t seen bluegrass, it’ll easily turn your head and get you excited.
The Davidson Brothers will next be appearing at The Gum Ball Festival alongside You Am I, Dan Sultan, Jeff Lang and many other local and international luminaries. It is peak performance season, as Davidson styles it, and will provide a fine chance to catch some of their most recent bluegrass experiments in action. Of course, with a catalogue stretching over two decades, they will also be showcasing their celebrated history.
“People order old albums off the website now, and I’ll take them off the shelf, put it in an envelope and think, ‘Ooo eee, that one? Why couldn’t they have ordered a new one?’” he laughs. “We still pull out those old standards, though. But the standards that we grew up on aren’t the current standards. There’s a shift. When we were learning, there was no YouTube, and the records we could get were quite out of date. Now, the younger players are having a harder time getting that older stuff while the new music is quite accessible. There’s a lot of mess online, with a lot of middle-range, amateur bands making a lot of noise. The best music doesn’t necessarily rise to the top in that environment.”
The Davidson Brothers are on The Gum Ball Festival 2016 line-up, along with You Am I, Oka, Dan Sultan, Caitlin Park and more. The festival runs Friday April 22 – Sunday April 24 at Dashville, Lower Belford.
