IT’S impossible to overstate the impact of Archie Roach’s music.
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“There are young people that come to my shows that tell me their dad bought Charcoal Lane when they were about six,” Roach said.
“They’d tell me he’d sat down and put on the album and put on Took The Children Away and just wept and they’d say ‘I’d never seen my father cry’.
“When you get a response like that you don’t know what to say. It’s hair-raising. It’s spine-tingling.
“You feel so humble. You feel like hugging these people. You don’t know where your music is going to go – you just hope to write a good song and somebody will like it.”
Charcoal Lane celebrated its 25th anniversary last year, getting the deluxe re-issue treatment with a bonus disc of covers from Paul Kelly (who was the album’s producer back in 1990), Courtney Barnett, Dan Sultan, Emma Donovan, Marlon Williams, Urthboy, Briggs and Gurrumul.
“There were some great people covering those songs, listening to them interpret those songs, and I think wow, they’re taking that somewhere else,” Roach said.
“The way Briggs talks about the Aboriginal heroes (on his re-interpretation of Took The Children Away) – hopefully the younger people can look up to these people as role models. We need to focus on them and try and direct our effort into being great.”
While the Charcoal Lane re-release was a great opportunity to stop and look back, Roach is constantly moving forward these days.
The five-time ARIA Award winner has emerged from some dark times with a new lease on life. In 2010, he lost his partner Ruby Hunter and suffered a stroke. The following year he battled and beat cancer.
In 2012, he returned with new album Into The Bloodstream – a gospel-inspired record with a central theme of healing that was a response to the pain and hurt in his own life.
His new album Let Love Rule (due out November 11) goes even further, exploring the personal and global issues together and embracing a theme of love.
“Most of the songs deal with different aspects of love – not just the love between to consenting adults, but loving country, loving peace, and loving freedom,” Roach said.
“When I started writing the songs they seemed to gravitate towards love – that was the theme it took. I don’t know if it was conscious.
“The last couple of years, what’s been going on with the world and here in Australia, how we’ve been reacting to things – refugees being incarcerated, men, women and children. Terrorist groups have done a lot of damage and really put people on edge and now we lump a whole people that believe the same religion in the same category.
“I think maybe that prompted me to write songs about love and about accepting people. I remember growing up with foster parents and we had many people from different countries … in one suburb. They had come here to work and their children were there and they were good friends of mine.
“I was thinking about when I was child growing up and there were so many people in one area, all getting along, and making Australia what it is today. Now we’re trying to push people away rather than let them in – not just the country but into our hearts and minds.”
Just as the themes of Let Love Rule are an evolution of Into The Bloodstream, so is the sound. Into The Bloodstream was gospel-inspired, while Let Love Rule is more soul-based.
“Solomon Burke was a big inspiration for some of these songs,” he said.
“I sing a bit differently on some of them. It’s more soulful, a bit more gravelly on some tracks.”
Now living in Killarney, the Gunditjmara man said driving past Tower Hill and seeing the ocean whenever he returns home made him feel “like a big weight is lifting” every time. It’s one of the many reason why Roach felt it was important to launch Let Love Rule on country.
That release gig will be on October 8 at the Reardon Theatre as part of the Port Fairy Spring Music Festival. Roach will also take part in the festival’s opening gala – a world premiere of a new piece called For All Seasons.
The work by young Gunditjmara man Corey Theatre combines traditional language and the six seasons of indigenous culture with Vivaldi’s Four Seasons, connecting the Aboriginal songlines with the music of Australia’s European history.
Roach will also combine with Theatre for a Let Love Rule launch in Melbourne on October 29, before Roach heads off around the country to support US singer-songwriter Rodriguez.
Beyond that there will be more shows to launch Let Love Rule, but Roach is already thinking ahead to the next musical project.
“I’m aware of trying to do something a little differently, just as much for me as anybody listening as well,” he said.
“I’ve been thinking lately about doing something really stripped back, very minimal instrumentally, just vocals and guitars.”
But no matter what he does, Roach and his music will continue to have an impact. He played at an industry event at Coolangatta recently where he got a standing ovation and found himself besieged by some unlikely looking fans.
“People come up to me looking like heavy metal dudes and said ‘thank you – it was amazing’ and I said ‘really?’,” he laughed.