DUSTY DAYS: The Slim Dusty tapes

SNIPPETS FROM THE ARCHIVES OF A BYGONE ERA

Returning from his 2023 performance at the Tamworth Country Music Festival, stand-up comedian and impressionist Greg Hayes, who spent 10 years touring with Slim Dusty, gives us an insight into those heady days when he was a performer and the compère of the Slim Dusty touring shows, which played to packed houses every night.

I caught up with Greg Hayes who does a breakfast radio show at Myall Coast Radio, and also hosts a mid-morning Dusty Diamonds of Country show. Greg was happy to share some of his memories of touring with Slim Dusty around Australia and New Zealand.

“People say he was big in the country, but he was very big in the city as well. He used to play the concert halls in the cities and pack them night after night, and he was very big in New Zealand,” said Hayes.

Hayes did his first Slim Dusty tour in 1989. “We called it the ‘Fairlane’ tour because they hired new Ford Fairlanes for the tour, and I travelled from Sydney to Mackay in one of those with a couple of other musicians,” said Hayes.

The ‘Fairlane’ tour was officially called Two Singers One Song, named after the album of the same name featuring Slim Dusty and his daughter Ann Kirkpatrick.

Slim Dusty’s love of the Ford Fairlane goes back to a ZD model Fairlane 500 purchased by Slim and his wife Joy McKean in 1971, which was nicknamed Old Purple.

“Slim had Old Purple garaged at his home in St Ives, Sydney. He had great affection for that car,” said Hayes.

Old Purple towed a large caravan on tour around Australia clocking up a total of 560,000 kilometres. Both Old Purple and the caravan can be seen on display at the Slim Dusty Centre Museum in Kempsey, NSW.

It was Geoff Mack, the man who wrote ‘I’ve Been Everywhere’, who recommended Greg Hayes for that one month Two Singers One Song tour in 1989; a booking that turned into a ten-year stint touring with the man who released more than one hundred albums in his enduring career.

“Geoff Mack told me, ’Don’t underestimate him, he’s got a really good ear.’ Slim could pick if a guitar was even slightly out of tune, and he was super fussy about his musicians; he would seek out musicians that he liked,” said Hayes. And Greg Hayes’ love of country music and Aussie larrikin style of stand-up comedy was a perfect match for the Slim Dusty shows.

Artists on the shows often included Slim Dusty’s wife Joy McKean, their daughter Ann Kirkpatrick, their son David Kirkpatrick, and a host of other noted country artists. Hayes says that Keith Urban, who was living in America at the time, turned up one night in 1991 and toured with the show for about a week.

“Keith Urban grew up idolising Slim. He did a version of ‘Lights on the Hill’ (written by Joy McKean), and performed it with Slim on that tour,” said Hayes.

“You would expect that when you support somebody you’d do the first twenty minutes or half hour. But Slim would open the show and do three or four songs and then I would come on and do ten minutes, and then I’d introduce a guest artist,” said Hayes.

Greg Hayes would do other spots as the show progressed. His spots included stand-up comedy and impressions, some sung with guitar accompaniment including an impression where he would feature Slim Dusty’s hit ‘A Pub With No Beer’ as sung comically by Bob Dylan, Johnny Cash, and even Alan Jones.

“At the end of the show Slim would invite all the guests back on stage for the finale. He was a great believer in doing a variety show, you weren’t just a support act,” said Hayes.

People who have never attended a Slim Dusty concert often conjure up an image of one man and his guitar, but Hayes points out that these were big production variety shows that were fully miked with FOH and foldback engineered mixes, and a full lighting rig always travelled with the show.

“Slim Dusty was a stickler for good sound. He loved good foldback; it was his number one concern. Slim wanted the foldback to sound like an old-time country hall. His sound checks went on for ages. He’d get it down to where he was absolutely happy with it,” said Hayes.

Hayes says a Slim Dusty touring show could last anything from three or four days to six weeks. They were mostly road shows with the exception of flights to New Zealand, and one tour in Australia during a pilot’s strike saw him and the touring entourage board a military Lockheed C-130 Hercules.

“Slim had put together what he called the flying tour, which meant we were going to fly to everywhere we performed, but it was right in the middle of a pilot’s strike, so they sent us from Melbourne to Launceston in a Hercules,” said Hayes.

Hayes says that even though the shows were one hundred percent Australian, Slim Dusty did have a love of American country music. “I used to walk into his motel sometimes and he’d be listening to Hank Williams Jnr; he loved Hank Williams Jnr.”

Despite Slim Dusty’s love of American country music, his passion was to embody a unique element of the Australian way of life through his music, mostly that of the outback communities.

“Slim’s music was a catalogue of the history of this country and the struggles of people in the bush. It was all about the appreciation of the people in the bush, the pioneers and also the truck drivers. Slim understood the people; he had a very good insight into the way his audiences thought, and he had such great diction in his voice. If Slim Dusty was singing about cooking damper around a campfire you could taste the damper. Or if he was singing about having a nice cold beer in the afternoon, you’d feel like a beer. It was a voice that was totally believable,” said Hayes.

Slim Dusty holds the record for the artist signed for the longest period to EMI Records, and pre-orders saw some of his albums go platinum before they were released.

“Slim started at EMI in 1946; he released 107 albums during his career, and he recorded right up to 2003, the year that he died,” said Hayes.

In 2014 a statue of Slim Dusty and his wife Joy McKean, singer and songwriter nicknamed the ‘Grand Lady of Australian Country Music’, was unveiled during the Tamworth Country Music Festival. Joy McKean celebrated her 93rd birthday this year on January 14, coincidentally, one day into the Tamworth Country Music Festival.

Greg Hayes says he has never seen an artist give as much time after the shows to their audiences as Slim Dusty and his wife Joy McKean gave.

“Slim and Joy used to sit on a seat at the edge of the show every night where there would always be a long queue waiting in line to get records autographed or even to lament the passing of a loved one who was a fan of Slim’s music,” said Hayes, who adds, “It was almost religious.”