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John Schumann & The Vagabond Crew
@ Concourse Theatre,
Chatswood, Sydney,
17th February 2024
(Live Review)

Review and photos by Alec Smart (@alecsmart_fotos)

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John Schumann & The Vagabond Crew, Concourse Theatre, Chatswood, Sydney. Photo: Alec Smart

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John Schumann, the co-founder of veteran folk-rock band Redgum (1975-90), performed a tribute set of Redgum songs at Concourse Theatre in Chatswood, accompanied by his six-piece band The Vagabond Crew.

Schumann is best known for his chart-topping song I Was Only 19, released by Redgum in 1983 and covered by, among others, Fairport Convention and a rap version by The Herd, and recently re-recorded by Schumann with The Waifs.

The poignant ballad is about an Australian soldier’s experience in the Vietnam War, and returning home with PTSD and mysterious rashes caused by exposure to the defoliant herbicide Agent Orange.

Redgum were renowned for their social commentary and edgy satirical humour, releasing five studio albums in their 15-years together, although Schumann left in 1985 to pursue a solo career after their fourth album Frontline.

Although Schumann was the principle songwriter and vocalist with the politically-charged South Australian folkers, at the Chatswood Concourse Theatre concert he performed distinguished Redgum songs written by other band members, ably assisted by his black-clad troubadours, The Vagabond Crew.

These included Killing Floor and Ted, by Michael Atkinson and Diamantina Drover by the late Hugh McDonald. McDonald joined The Vagabond Crew when they formed in 2005, touring and performing on two albums, Lawson (which also featured Atkinson and consists of Henry Lawson poems set to music) and Behind The Lines.

Sadly, McDonald succumbed to prostate cancer in 2016, aged 62.

Onstage, Vagabond Crew keyboardist Ian ‘Polly’ Politis sings McDonald’s poignant ballad about an ageing stockman reflecting on the passing of time, because he can (almost) reach the high notes McDonald effortlessly sang.

Some of Redgum’s lyrics have been updated by Schumann to include contemporary themes and subjects.

For example, in his humorous song I’ve Been To Bali Too, recalling a Bali holiday, he originally sang about airport baggage inspectors: “they went through my bags like McCartney in Japan.”

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John Schumann & The Vagabond Crew, Concourse Theatre, Chatswood, Sydney. Photo: Alec Smart

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This referenced an infamous incident in January 1980 when Paul McCartney was arrested at Narita Airport for carrying 200 grams of marijuana in his luggage (which he claimed was for ‘personal use only’).

The revised lyrics now mention Schapelle Corby, the Australian woman who was convicted of smuggling cannabis into Indonesia, hidden in her bodyboard bag, and spent nine years imprisoned on Bali in Kerobokan Prison.

Schumann also revealed that the reference to ‘Redgum bootlegs’ in the aforementioned song arose from a shopping mission in Bali when Midnight Oil vocalist Peter Garret tasked him to bring back some illegally manufactured Oils’ cassettes.

Whilst gathering a selection, he asked the stallholder if he also had any Redgum bootlegs, to which the trader replied, “Yes, I have their new album, I Was Only 19!” Spoiler alert: Redgum never released an album with that title.

In a Facebook post in September 2023, Schumann revealed that The Waifs’ sisters Vikki and Donna’s first introduction to Redgum was via a bootleg purchased in Bali.

This reporter also has a bootlegged Redgum cassette from that era, although the band is wrongly called ‘Redgums’!

There was a lot of humour throughout the Chatswood show, from witty sledging between the Vagabonds to Schumann’s renowned between-song banter, which has long characterised and enlivened his live performances.

The audience weren’t spared either. During an audience singalong for the chorus of It Doesn’t Matter To Me, Schumann singled out a man in the second row and teased him for not joining in.

When introducing the autobiographical canticle Peter The Cabby, Schumann revealed that most of the eight solo and six co-authored songs he contributed to Redgum’s first two albums, If You Don’t Fight You Lose and Virgin Ground, were “written from the front of his cab” while he was a taxi driver in Adelaide.

Two of the parody ditties Redgum penned were also included – Fabulon (adapting the tune from The Melodians’ Rivers Of Babylon, which Boney M popularised in 1978) and Bomb Iran (adapting The Regents’ Barbara Ann, which Beach Boys popularised in 1965, but was re-purposed as a pro-war song around the time of the 1979 Iran Hostage Crisis, and then Redgum re-wrote it, mocking American jingoism).

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John Schumann & The Vagabond Crew, Concourse Theatre, Chatswood, Sydney. Photo: Alec Smart

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One of the concert highlights (for this reviewer especially) was a grand performance of one of Redgum’s most lyrically and musically complicated songs, Gladstone Pier. The subject deals with a rollercoaster relationship that is ground down and broken by the twin assaults of poverty and failed aspirations.

Schumann revealed the residents of Gladstone took a while to accept his portrayal of their coastal port city as a “dirty old town” mired in economic depression.

And then we reached the inevitable crowd-pleaser, I Was Only 19, which begins tugging at the heartstrings the moment the picked strings of the A-C-G-D-A chords on the acoustic guitar set the verse in motion.

The revised version recorded with The Waifs in 2023 celebrates 40 years since its release.

Royalties for this heartrending ode go to the Vietnam Veterans Association of Australia. The central lyrics describing the landmine-stepping death of combatant Frankie Hunt, as told by the song’s protagonist Mick Storen (John Schumann’s brother-in-Law), are inscribed on the face of the Australian Vietnam Forces National Memorial in Canberra.

For the finale of the Chatswood concert (before an extended two-song encore), Schumann deviated from the Redgum script to play a more recent composition, Graduation Day, praising the police force and the “thin blue line between your loved ones and those who’d do them harm.”

Returning to the stage after a short break, Schumann narrated how the up-tempo, optimistic Long Run was written because “Redgum had a bad accountant who gave bad advice,” which included dispensing with their characteristic clever lyrics and concentrating instead on catchy melodic hooks with repetitive words.

Repetition is the key in this jaunty, albeit fun number: apparently “it’ll be alright in the long run” is repeated 137 times!

The night’s actual closure saw the band perform Schumann’s slowed-down version of Waltzing Matilda (another song not associated with Redgum).

Schumann famously played this with former Redgum bandmate Hugh McDonald at the ANZAC Day Aussie Rules football match between Essendon and Collingwood at the Melbourne Cricket Ground on 25th April 2009.

He also performed it more recently at Rod Laver Arena before the Mixed Doubles Final at the Australian Open tennis championship on 26 January 2024.

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John Schumann & The Vagabond Crew, Concourse Theatre, Chatswood, Sydney. Photo: Alec Smart

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Set List

One More Boring Night In Adelaide
Beaumont Rag
Stewie
Poor Ned
Peter The Cabby
It Doesn’t Matter To Me
Killing Floor
100 Years On
Fabulon
Last Frontier
Where Ya Gonna Run To?
Bomb Iran
Ted
Diamantina Drover
Working Girls
I’ve Been To Bali Too
Gladstone Pier
I Was Only 19 (A Walk In The Light Green)
Graduation Day

Encore

Long Run
Waltzing Matilda

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John Schumann & The Vagabond Crew, Concourse Theatre, Chatswood, Sydney. Photo: Alec Smart

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Check out Alec Smart’s (@alecsmart_fotos) full gallery of this event HERE

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AMNPLIFY – DB