Kev Carmody
Musician/ singer/ songwriter
| For Kev Carmody, it’s been a long journey from his childhood mustering cattle on the Darling Downs to where he is now – a kind of beloved elder statesman of music in Australia. Kev is sometimes called ‘Australia's Bob Dylan'. He can count revered artists like Paul Kelly and the Waifs among his many fans. | ||
| Age | 52 | |
| Language Group Area/s | Murri | |
| Home | Born in Cairns, and raised on a station near Goranba, west of Dalby on Queensland’s Darling Downs. His mother was a Murri woman, his father of Irish descent. "My mum used to travel eight to ten, twelve mile a day in a sulky with my brother in a fruit box on the back, dad put an old fruit box with a little shade on the top. She had no fridge, she had no running water, she had no - you know - all these necessities that we need these days in life and well, she moved that distance each day and put three huge feeds on the table,” Kev remembers. "Those first ten years of my life were fantastic because my intellect was socially engineered another way. It was in the bush, being aware of your moon cycles, your rain, your flaming flowering trees and stuff like that. So it was a really sort of basic education but crikey, it's still sticking to me today - and it's applicable today." |
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| Occupation / Pastime | Kev started university at 33, studying history, and has a PhD specialising in the history of the Darling Downs. | |
| Favourite place | Arthritis has now slowed Kev down as a guitar player, but he’s still able to indulge in one of his other passions – gardening. "The tomatoes are just about gone now, but the grandkids still love going over there,” he says. “The spuds are, just digging the spuds, oh the taste, the taste and the nutritional value. Of course, the pumpkins - devine pumpkins. I don't know, I just love that concept of the earth - you look after the earth, the earth provides for you. No earth, no carrots!" | |
| Hobbies | Gardening | |
| Inspiration | Inspiration for both his academic work and his music are the oral traditions which surrounded him as a child. Both his parents’ cultures have a rich oral history. Kev’s grandfather had a tremendous impact on him as he was growing up. "He had tremendous dignity and he'd says things to us like, "Boy, always listen to the wind. Sound is music.’ [He was] taking it out away from the homo sapiens sort of voice and guitar. He was saying... the natural sounds, the brolga sound, the crocodile sound, the rain, everything like that, you're surrounded by it." Kev believes that singing a playing the guitar is a valuable oral tradition, an oral history. "As a historian I'm always thinking to myself, wonder what happens when in two, three hundred million years time, when the crocodiles are running the universities - I mean, we're no longer here - and the crocodiles are archaeologists, going out with a little shovel and they're digging our civilisation up. I mean what sense are they going to make of an Ipod?" |
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| More Information |
Website Link |
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| Author | Jodie Vandewetering, ABC Wide Bay | |
Comments (2)
Erban Destruction Team
16 Aug 2008 11:53:19am
I remember when I was in Coles in the Brisbane city after school one day about 1996/1997 and I saw this man buying a big bunch of sausages. He was wearing a big Aboriginal flag bandana which caught my attention. Then I realised it was Kev Carmody, so I walked up to him and said. Excuse me are you Kev Carmody? He looked at me and said yes, I asked him what he was doing and he said that the sausages where for some youth at Logan and that he was throwing a BBQ for them. He was so down to earth and friendly. But I 'll never forget that day because right then when he told me he was doing that for the kids, I realised how much he really cares about the youth in the Indigenous Community. His lyrics are real and so is he.
16 Aug 2008 11:53:19am
I remember when I was in Coles in the Brisbane city after school one day about 1996/1997 and I saw this man buying a big bunch of sausages. He was wearing a big Aboriginal flag bandana which caught my attention. Then I realised it was Kev Carmody, so I walked up to him and said. Excuse me are you Kev Carmody? He looked at me and said yes, I asked him what he was doing and he said that the sausages where for some youth at Logan and that he was throwing a BBQ for them. He was so down to earth and friendly. But I 'll never forget that day because right then when he told me he was doing that for the kids, I realised how much he really cares about the youth in the Indigenous Community. His lyrics are real and so is he.
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