As history has it, after Midnight Oil toured outback Australia for several months in 1986 playing to and connecting with remote Aboriginal communities, the band’s experiences manifested into 1987’sDiesel And Dust.
Fitting, then, that Shining Bird listened to that iconic album en route to shows between Adelaide and Alice Springs last month.
“We listened to a lot of Midnight Oil in the desert,” says keyboardist Russell Webster. “Diesel And Dust is a classic desert album, and being out there, the rhythms and the space of it made so much sense.”
With their sound equally worthy of road-tripping through Australian landscapes, Shining Bird’s own experiences somewhat paralleled those of the Oils. Chatting from their South Coast hometown of Austinmer, Webster is still pensive about the encounters they had while playing in the middle of the country last month.
“[It was] incredible,” he says. “It was probably the most special tour we’ve ever done. None of us had ever been out there before … there’s nothing like it, really. We’d heard it was a special place that we had to visit, and I just don’t think anything really prepared us for how special it is around Uluru in particular. I think even a hardcore atheist would have a hard time not being moved out there. It’s just a feeling out there. It’s actually not even so much about the rock, it’s more about the atmosphere.”
From Wollongong to Uluru, the first half of their tour for new album Black Opal not only had Shining Bird driving 90 hours straight through the middle of the country, camping out along the way, but most significantly, it saw them connect with Uluru’s Mutitjulu community. For anyone who has followed their music, it’s easy to imagine how significant such an experience was for Shining Bird – potentially the most rewarding they’ll have in their whole career.
“I reckon hands down,” Webster agrees. “I don’t think a sold-out worldwide tour would even compare to having that kind of experience. Luckily we were invited out there to play a show for the elders, and that was the most interesting kind of reception that I think we’ve had. I think it was more of a cultural exchange than just playing a show to an audience. It definitely felt like a lot of the lyrics resonated in a different way when we played them in that setting.”
The respective releases of their 2013 debut Leisure Coast and now Black Opal have clearly established Shining Bird’s Australiana aesthetic, alongside a solidification of their social purpose, both as a band and as individual artists. Having previously collaborated with notable Australian talents across video clips and shows, Shining Bird’s interaction with the Mutitjulu people resulted in another collaborative performance at the Museum of Contemporary Art last month.
“It was another kind of bizarre part of the whole thing,” says Webster. “Sarah Dalby did the sand drawings for us and she was like the liaison to the outside world. [Saha Jones] who was working out there – who invited us out there – she was asked to curate an event at the MCA, and so she came up with this idea of trying to recreate what happened and also to bring Sarah to the city … she’d never been out of the community before.
“That was first time she’d seen the ocean. It was incredible, really. She took it really well. She didn’t seem stunned, she was just more like a child just looking and staring at everything and pointing and laughing. It kind of makes you look at everything in a different way when you’re with someone like that. She was kind of just standing out there at the MCA looking at a huge cruise ship. She didn’t even really have a way of describing the ocean; it was just, ‘That’s big water.’ Mutitjulu’s a lineage of 6,000 years, which is the oldest culture in the entire world. It was great, it was an honour.”
As Shining Bird commence the second half of their tour, also on the horizon is a nomination for Best Live Act at the National Live Music Awards this month, and a slot at Newtown Festival. However, the medium-term focus is working on new music.
“We’ve got a lot of songs that didn’t really fit on Black Opal that we’re going to get stuck into next year,” says Webster. “We’re going to go away somewhere and just try and work hard, spend more time actually making music than talking about it or thinking about it,” he laughs. “Just get more productive! It’s just important to get away from where we live – even though we live in paradise, somehow being in a different place allows your mind to do something slightly different.”
Conveniently for the band, however, the tour will conclude in Thirroul, the neighbouring town to Austinmer – a date that will be all too welcome after hundreds of hours of travel in a van.“Oh yeah, it’s amazing! There’s literally no drive home, just walk home. The gear can stay down there until the next day!” Webster chuckles.
Black Opal is out now through Spunk; and Shining Bird appear at at Newtown Festival 2016, Camperdown Memorial Rest Park, Sunday November 13; thenNewtown Social Club onWednesday November 16 with Solid Effort and S M Jenkins.
