Pat Drummond
Encyclopedia
Pat Drummond from Sydney, New South Wales is an Australian Singer/Songwriter based in Leura, New South Wales who emerged from the Sydney Folk scene with his brothers in the 1960s; performed as a solo artist in the 1970s and then in numerous projects in different music genre
s including as a member of bush band
, The Bushwackers
.
He is possibly best known prior to 1989 for his 10 year solo residency at The Rest Hotel in North Sydney and in later years, at a national level, as The 'Tales From The Local Rag' Reporter, a travelling troubadour chronicling the true life stories of average, albeit often courageous, Australians in verse and song. He also owns and operates the 2003 Independent Country Music Record Company of The Year,Shoestring Records
Beginning with his spectacular stints as Sydney
's 'king of the hill' in the anarchic 'sing-along uni/ bar/ pub' scene of the late 70's and early '80s, Drummond became renowned for writing what were effectively musical mini-operas that included whole sections scripted for and performed by the crowds.
Although the music was actually 'folk rock
', it was a very ‘punk’ philosophy of performing in which the whole emphasis was on breaking down the' barrier' between the crowd and the stage.
For many in Sydney, his 10-year Friday night residency at Sydney's Rest Hotel was a 'rite of passage' and the pub saw well over three hundred thousand fans pass through its doors during that time. The night before its demolition in the late '80s the whole soundscape was captured by CBS
/True Blue on the Double CD, 'Live at The Rest Hotel' in a gig that saw over 2000 people turn up to a pub that only held 350; and traffic brought to a standstill in the surrounding North Sydney streets.
Always of a theatrical bent, Drummond's next project was the 1986 Rock opera
'Skooldaze'. This show provided his next 'character driven' reinvention and saw Pat and his six-piece Rock outfit in short pants and full Schoolboy Regalia, touring with Cold Chisel
and Marcia Hines in 1985 /1986. Drawing heavily on his training as a Primary School
teacher in the early 1970s, the album explored the concept of 'hidden curriculum ' (the lessons that children often actually learn from the school experience as opposed to the ones the curriculum claims to teach them.)
With the demise of 'Skooldaze' Pat was press-ganged by friend, Roger Corbett into a revived version of the Bushwackers
and shortly after became a duo partner to John Schumann
after having supported Redgum
on a national tour. Immersing himself in the nationalist Australian bush music style, it wasn't long before his next 'character' emerged.
With the release of his "Tales from the Local Rag' CD in 1990, Drummond adopted the on-stage persona of an 1940's newspaperman (complete with a 'Tamworth Daily Leader' press card in the hat band). On stage and off he dressed at The Reporter for his fictional paper, 'The Local Rag', interviewing at every opportunity those people who subsequently became the subjects of his songs.
In what was, at the time, an untried and ground breaking strategy in Australia, he began to 'live out the part' through a series of erratic tours across Australia working for community based organisations, schools, preschools, toy libraries, church groups and service club
s, staging fundraising concerts.
It was a theatrical and dramatic move that saw him firmly adopted by the Australian Folk
and Country Music
fraternity. By 1993 he had been Joint Winner of Male Vocal of the Year at the Australian Bush Music Festival and was Grand Finalist for Album of the Year, Producer of the Year, Heritage Award and Country Song of the Year in the Toyota CMAA Australian Country Music Awards (The Golden Guitars).
Drummond claimed that it was a conscious attempt to break the inevitable connection that had grown up between the entertainment and alcohol industries, as well as being a tremendous forum for meeting a broad cross section of Australians and gathering the kind of stories that were to become the basis of the next 5 albums.
The tours were remarkably successful. By involving local media and community networking
the financial outcomes for these groups and their recipient charities proved to be excellent. So successful were some of these fundraiser concerts that they sometimes became the springboard for the development of whole tours or even festivals, as was the case with The Volunteers for Isolated Education Fundraiser Tours, The Dubbo Ralston Homes Country Concert and most spectacularly 12 Years The Galston Country Music Festival which by 2005 had become Sydney's largest Country Music Event. In October 2000 Pat was awarded the Australian Independent Country Music Artist of the Year.
Meanwhile yet another strand in Drummond's career was about to deliver perhaps his most unexpected commercial success to date. Since "Laughter Like A Shield" in 1993 each of Pat's albums had incorporated at least one poem with his "Wheels and Wires" CD(1996) yielding the strikingly beautiful "Colours Of The Cross" . By 1998 Pat's long standing interest in spoken word
led to what was to be a highly successful association with The Naked Poets; a gathering of 5 of Bush Poetry's preeminent comedic performers.
The group featuring Marco Gliori, Shirley Friend, Murray Hartin, Ray Essery and Bobby Miller first performed with Pat at The Tamworth Golf Club in 1998- 1999 and again it was Drummmond's fascination with new technologies that led to his producing and recording their combined show on the newly developed Sony digital mini disc
recorder.
What followed was nothing less than a market phenomenon with the Lie...v (Naked Poets 1) album becoming the most ordered item in ABC Shops
and centres across Australia several times the following year. With sales in the tens of thousands nationally it would have been a significant release for any major Australian label but for Pat, and his wife, Carol's independent record company, Shoestring, it was an overwhelming success.
The hit single
, Murray Hartin's, "Turbulence" went on to win The Australian Bush Laureate Award - Best Single Performance in 2000 and the following year, the Naked Poet's second album, 'Newdirections' followed up by winning both the Album of the Year category and Best Single Performance (for a poem written & performed by Marco Gliori).
The runaway success of these albums at a retail level greatly expanded Shoestring's operations as record company and led to the radical development of its roster. By 2008, the company had a roster of 78 albums, was representing 15 acts and was supplying over 600 shops across Australia.
Meantime Pat's immersion in commercial country had shifted his songwriting style again... this time to a romantic country duets album with 2002 Independent Female Country Vocalist 'Karen Lynne'. Produced by legendary Australian Country Producer Rod Coe, "Six Days in December" saw them pick up the 2001 award for Contemporary Country Song of the Year with a duet called "The Rush", which had previously already taken out 2 sections of the Queensland Songwriting competition and prevailed in a strong field which included Slim Dusty's tour de force, "Looking Forward, Looking Back" penned by ex Cold Chisel veteran Don Walker.
What next? Well..... politics it seemed.
In 2001, apparently restless yet again, Pat confronted his following with an astonishing bipolar theatrical metamorphosis... The Chess Set, which created not one, but two new characters. Dressed half in white ... half in black ... with half a beard, Pat began an in-depth musical examination of the political divisions that had emerged throughout Australia in the first decade of the current century.
In a series of highly charged political songs almost calculated to completely alienate his conservative country music following, The Left Wing Black Knight and The Right Wing White Knight took up the cudgels over issues such as Australia's involvement Iraq War, The Refugee Detention Centres, Reconciliation and more..
For those who had been drawn to his comedic appearance in the Naked Poets, it was a very challenging contrast. A double boxed interactive CD which featured 26 new songs and enough script, background briefing and political speeches to fill a book, was released in 2004-2005 and Pat's live 4½-hour one-man theatre show from the project featured at The Blue Mountains Folk Festival and The National Folk Festivals in 2006.
In 2008 Pat's new close harmony
three-piece comedy outfit, the BBQ Kings was signed to ABC/Universal and their first album 'The Fellowship of the Grill'. was released nationally and received a Final Five Nomination in the 2009 ARIA Awards for Comedy Album Of The Year.
Back in the dress up box with fellow songwriters, Tony Williams and Chris O'Leary the show is set around three old mates who meet at a BBQ after not having seen each other for nearly a decade and seeks to explore through comedy the triumphs and tragedy of the middle aged male.
Complete with BBQ aprons, the piano set in to the BBQ six-burner and lots of laughs the show became an immediate favorite with Corporates and Rotary clubs around the Australia.
At an administrative level, Drummond has also served as a long term and/or founding director with a number of major entertainment bodies; including 5 years with The CMAA (The Country Music Association Of Australia), 12 years as Entertainment Director at The Galston Country Music Festival (Sydney NSW), and more recently with The Blue Mountains Folk, Blues and Music FestivalThe Hartley Big Backyard Bash and The 2lt OberonMusic Festival and The Steam and Vintage Fair. His off topic interests have also led him to serve as a director and/or to found a number of commercial Art
and Animatics organisations with his son, Matthew, including Electric Art Digital Creations, drummondesign and 2008 Emmy Finalist, Hive Studios International.
When will he stop? Well, Pat says, "It's all about never stopping, always changing and growing older creatively."
A Full '30 Years In Music' Retrospective (with masses of photos, history...etc.) is available at this page on Pat's extensive Website at -:
http://www.patdrummond.net/30yearretrospective/Alifeinmusic2.html
See Also 'The BBQ Kings.' Their first release 'The Fellowship of The Grill' was released on the 23rd of August 2008 through ABC and Universal. Featured tracks include Manboobs, Buggerit and Ode to Keith Richards
.
Music genre
A music genre is a categorical and typological construct that identifies musical sounds as belonging to a particular category and type of music that can be distinguished from other types of music...
s including as a member of bush band
Bush band
A bush band is a group of musicians that play traditional Australian folk music or contemporary folk music played in a traditional Australian style...
, The Bushwackers
The Bushwackers (band)
The Bushwackers Band, often simply The Bushwackers, is an Australian folk and country music band or Bush band founded at La Trobe University in Melbourne in 1971....
.
He is possibly best known prior to 1989 for his 10 year solo residency at The Rest Hotel in North Sydney and in later years, at a national level, as The 'Tales From The Local Rag' Reporter, a travelling troubadour chronicling the true life stories of average, albeit often courageous, Australians in verse and song. He also owns and operates the 2003 Independent Country Music Record Company of The Year,Shoestring Records
Biography
Pat Drummond's three-decade-long career has seen him pass through a half-dozen 'reincarnations' that have produced a large body of original work in as many different musical genres.Beginning with his spectacular stints as Sydney
Sydney
Sydney is the most populous city in Australia and the state capital of New South Wales. Sydney is located on Australia's south-east coast of the Tasman Sea. As of June 2010, the greater metropolitan area had an approximate population of 4.6 million people...
's 'king of the hill' in the anarchic 'sing-along uni/ bar/ pub' scene of the late 70's and early '80s, Drummond became renowned for writing what were effectively musical mini-operas that included whole sections scripted for and performed by the crowds.
Although the music was actually 'folk rock
Folk rock
Folk rock is a musical genre combining elements of folk music and rock music. In its earliest and narrowest sense, the term referred to a genre that arose in the United States and the UK around the mid-1960s...
', it was a very ‘punk’ philosophy of performing in which the whole emphasis was on breaking down the' barrier' between the crowd and the stage.
For many in Sydney, his 10-year Friday night residency at Sydney's Rest Hotel was a 'rite of passage' and the pub saw well over three hundred thousand fans pass through its doors during that time. The night before its demolition in the late '80s the whole soundscape was captured by CBS
CBS
CBS Broadcasting Inc. is a major US commercial broadcasting television network, which started as a radio network. The name is derived from the initials of the network's former name, Columbia Broadcasting System. The network is sometimes referred to as the "Eye Network" in reference to the shape of...
/True Blue on the Double CD, 'Live at The Rest Hotel' in a gig that saw over 2000 people turn up to a pub that only held 350; and traffic brought to a standstill in the surrounding North Sydney streets.
Always of a theatrical bent, Drummond's next project was the 1986 Rock opera
Rock opera
A rock opera is a work of rock music that presents a storyline told over multiple parts, songs or sections in the manner of opera. A rock opera differs from a conventional rock album, which usually includes songs that are not unified by a common theme or narrative. More recent developments include...
'Skooldaze'. This show provided his next 'character driven' reinvention and saw Pat and his six-piece Rock outfit in short pants and full Schoolboy Regalia, touring with Cold Chisel
Cold Chisel
Cold Chisel is a rock band that originated in Adelaide, Australia. It is one of the most acclaimed Australian rock bands of all time, with a string of hits throughout the 1970s and 1980s and huge sales that continue to this day, although its success and acclaim was almost completely restricted to...
and Marcia Hines in 1985 /1986. Drawing heavily on his training as a Primary School
Primary education
A primary school is an institution in which children receive the first stage of compulsory education known as primary or elementary education. Primary school is the preferred term in the United Kingdom and many Commonwealth Nations, and in most publications of the United Nations Educational,...
teacher in the early 1970s, the album explored the concept of 'hidden curriculum ' (the lessons that children often actually learn from the school experience as opposed to the ones the curriculum claims to teach them.)
With the demise of 'Skooldaze' Pat was press-ganged by friend, Roger Corbett into a revived version of the Bushwackers
The Bushwackers (band)
The Bushwackers Band, often simply The Bushwackers, is an Australian folk and country music band or Bush band founded at La Trobe University in Melbourne in 1971....
and shortly after became a duo partner to John Schumann
John Schumann
John Lewis Schumann is an Australian singer, songwriter and guitarist from Adelaide. He is best known as the lead singer for the folk group Redgum, with their chart-topping hit "I Was Only 19 ", a song exploring the psychological and medical side-effects of serving in the Australian forces during...
after having supported Redgum
Redgum
Redgum were an Australian folk and political music group formed in Adelaide in 1975 by singer-songwriter John Schumann, Michael Atkinson on guitars/vocals and Verity Truman on flute/vocals; they were soon joined by Chris Timms on violin. All four had been students at Flinders University and...
on a national tour. Immersing himself in the nationalist Australian bush music style, it wasn't long before his next 'character' emerged.
With the release of his "Tales from the Local Rag' CD in 1990, Drummond adopted the on-stage persona of an 1940's newspaperman (complete with a 'Tamworth Daily Leader' press card in the hat band). On stage and off he dressed at The Reporter for his fictional paper, 'The Local Rag', interviewing at every opportunity those people who subsequently became the subjects of his songs.
In what was, at the time, an untried and ground breaking strategy in Australia, he began to 'live out the part' through a series of erratic tours across Australia working for community based organisations, schools, preschools, toy libraries, church groups and service club
Service club
A service club or service organization is a voluntary non-profit organization where members meet regularly to perform charitable works either by direct hands-on efforts or by raising money for other organizations. A service club is defined first by its service mission...
s, staging fundraising concerts.
It was a theatrical and dramatic move that saw him firmly adopted by the Australian Folk
Folk music
Folk music is an English term encompassing both traditional folk music and contemporary folk music. The term originated in the 19th century. Traditional folk music has been defined in several ways: as music transmitted by mouth, as music of the lower classes, and as music with unknown composers....
and Country Music
Country music
Country music is a popular American musical style that began in the rural Southern United States in the 1920s. It takes its roots from Western cowboy and folk music...
fraternity. By 1993 he had been Joint Winner of Male Vocal of the Year at the Australian Bush Music Festival and was Grand Finalist for Album of the Year, Producer of the Year, Heritage Award and Country Song of the Year in the Toyota CMAA Australian Country Music Awards (The Golden Guitars).
Drummond claimed that it was a conscious attempt to break the inevitable connection that had grown up between the entertainment and alcohol industries, as well as being a tremendous forum for meeting a broad cross section of Australians and gathering the kind of stories that were to become the basis of the next 5 albums.
The tours were remarkably successful. By involving local media and community networking
Community informatics
Community informatics , also known as community networking, electronic community networking, community-based technologies or community technology refers to an emerging field of investigation and practice concerned with principles and norms related to information and communication technology with...
the financial outcomes for these groups and their recipient charities proved to be excellent. So successful were some of these fundraiser concerts that they sometimes became the springboard for the development of whole tours or even festivals, as was the case with The Volunteers for Isolated Education Fundraiser Tours, The Dubbo Ralston Homes Country Concert and most spectacularly 12 Years The Galston Country Music Festival which by 2005 had become Sydney's largest Country Music Event. In October 2000 Pat was awarded the Australian Independent Country Music Artist of the Year.
Meanwhile yet another strand in Drummond's career was about to deliver perhaps his most unexpected commercial success to date. Since "Laughter Like A Shield" in 1993 each of Pat's albums had incorporated at least one poem with his "Wheels and Wires" CD(1996) yielding the strikingly beautiful "Colours Of The Cross" . By 1998 Pat's long standing interest in spoken word
Spoken word
Spoken word is a form of poetry that often uses alliterated prose or verse and occasionally uses metered verse to express social commentary. Traditionally it is in the first person, is from the poet’s point of view and is themed in current events....
led to what was to be a highly successful association with The Naked Poets; a gathering of 5 of Bush Poetry's preeminent comedic performers.
The group featuring Marco Gliori, Shirley Friend, Murray Hartin, Ray Essery and Bobby Miller first performed with Pat at The Tamworth Golf Club in 1998- 1999 and again it was Drummmond's fascination with new technologies that led to his producing and recording their combined show on the newly developed Sony digital mini disc
MiniDisc
The disc is permanently housed in a cartridge with a sliding door, similar to the casing of a 3.5" floppy disk. This shutter is opened automatically by a mechanism upon insertion. The audio discs can either be recordable or premastered. Recordable MiniDiscs use a magneto-optical system to record...
recorder.
What followed was nothing less than a market phenomenon with the Lie...v (Naked Poets 1) album becoming the most ordered item in ABC Shops
Australian Broadcasting Corporation
The Australian Broadcasting Corporation, commonly referred to as "the ABC" , is Australia's national public broadcaster...
and centres across Australia several times the following year. With sales in the tens of thousands nationally it would have been a significant release for any major Australian label but for Pat, and his wife, Carol's independent record company, Shoestring, it was an overwhelming success.
The hit single
Hit single
A hit single is a recorded song or instrumental released as a single that has become very popular. Although it is sometimes used to describe any widely-played or big-selling song, the term "hit" is usually reserved for a single that has appeared in an official music chart through repeated radio...
, Murray Hartin's, "Turbulence" went on to win The Australian Bush Laureate Award - Best Single Performance in 2000 and the following year, the Naked Poet's second album, 'Newdirections' followed up by winning both the Album of the Year category and Best Single Performance (for a poem written & performed by Marco Gliori).
The runaway success of these albums at a retail level greatly expanded Shoestring's operations as record company and led to the radical development of its roster. By 2008, the company had a roster of 78 albums, was representing 15 acts and was supplying over 600 shops across Australia.
Meantime Pat's immersion in commercial country had shifted his songwriting style again... this time to a romantic country duets album with 2002 Independent Female Country Vocalist 'Karen Lynne'. Produced by legendary Australian Country Producer Rod Coe, "Six Days in December" saw them pick up the 2001 award for Contemporary Country Song of the Year with a duet called "The Rush", which had previously already taken out 2 sections of the Queensland Songwriting competition and prevailed in a strong field which included Slim Dusty's tour de force, "Looking Forward, Looking Back" penned by ex Cold Chisel veteran Don Walker.
What next? Well..... politics it seemed.
In 2001, apparently restless yet again, Pat confronted his following with an astonishing bipolar theatrical metamorphosis... The Chess Set, which created not one, but two new characters. Dressed half in white ... half in black ... with half a beard, Pat began an in-depth musical examination of the political divisions that had emerged throughout Australia in the first decade of the current century.
In a series of highly charged political songs almost calculated to completely alienate his conservative country music following, The Left Wing Black Knight and The Right Wing White Knight took up the cudgels over issues such as Australia's involvement Iraq War, The Refugee Detention Centres, Reconciliation and more..
For those who had been drawn to his comedic appearance in the Naked Poets, it was a very challenging contrast. A double boxed interactive CD which featured 26 new songs and enough script, background briefing and political speeches to fill a book, was released in 2004-2005 and Pat's live 4½-hour one-man theatre show from the project featured at The Blue Mountains Folk Festival and The National Folk Festivals in 2006.
In 2008 Pat's new close harmony
Close harmony
Close harmony is an arrangement of the notes of chords within a narrow range. It is different from open harmony or voicing in that it uses each part on the closest harmonizing note , while the open voicing uses a broader pitch array expanding the harmonic range past the octave...
three-piece comedy outfit, the BBQ Kings was signed to ABC/Universal and their first album 'The Fellowship of the Grill'. was released nationally and received a Final Five Nomination in the 2009 ARIA Awards for Comedy Album Of The Year.
Back in the dress up box with fellow songwriters, Tony Williams and Chris O'Leary the show is set around three old mates who meet at a BBQ after not having seen each other for nearly a decade and seeks to explore through comedy the triumphs and tragedy of the middle aged male.
Complete with BBQ aprons, the piano set in to the BBQ six-burner and lots of laughs the show became an immediate favorite with Corporates and Rotary clubs around the Australia.
At an administrative level, Drummond has also served as a long term and/or founding director with a number of major entertainment bodies; including 5 years with The CMAA (The Country Music Association Of Australia), 12 years as Entertainment Director at The Galston Country Music Festival (Sydney NSW), and more recently with The Blue Mountains Folk, Blues and Music FestivalThe Hartley Big Backyard Bash and The 2lt OberonMusic Festival and The Steam and Vintage Fair. His off topic interests have also led him to serve as a director and/or to found a number of commercial Art
Commercial art
Commercial art is historically a subsector of creative services, referring to art created for commercial purposes, primarily advertising. The term has become increasingly anachronistic in favor of more contemporary terms such as graphic design and advertising art.Commercial art traditionally...
and Animatics organisations with his son, Matthew, including Electric Art Digital Creations, drummondesign and 2008 Emmy Finalist, Hive Studios International.
When will he stop? Well, Pat says, "It's all about never stopping, always changing and growing older creatively."
A Full '30 Years In Music' Retrospective (with masses of photos, history...etc.) is available at this page on Pat's extensive Website at -:
http://www.patdrummond.net/30yearretrospective/Alifeinmusic2.html
See Also 'The BBQ Kings.' Their first release 'The Fellowship of The Grill' was released on the 23rd of August 2008 through ABC and Universal. Featured tracks include Manboobs, Buggerit and Ode to Keith Richards
Keith Richards
Keith Richards is an English musician, songwriter, and founding member of the Rolling Stones. Rolling Stone magazine said Richards had created "rock's greatest single body of riffs", and placed him as the "10th greatest guitarist of all time." Fourteen songs written by Richards and songwriting...
.
Solo and with Karen Lynne
- What You See Is What You Get (December 1980, Shoestring Records)
- Pat Drummond (1981, Shoestring Records)
- Skool Daze (February 1985, Shoestring Records)
- Age of Rage - Live at the Rest Hotel 1977-87 (1988, Shoestring Records)
- Tales from the Local Rag (September 1990, True Blue Records)
- Laughter Like a Shield (May 1994, Larrikin Records)
- Of Wheels and Fire (August 1996, Larrikin Records)
- Through the Cracks- Live at the Clarendon (March 1998, Shoestring Records)
- Six Days in December (April 2000, Shoestring Records)
- The Chess Set Volume 1 and 2 (2003, Shoestring Records)
- The Long Journey Home (2008, Shoestring Records)
- The Shark In The Bath and Other Tails (2009, Shoestring Records)
Singles
- "Flicker of an Eye" (True Blue Records)
- "Chippendale Song" (1981, Shoestring Records)
- "Age of Rage" (1988, True Blue Records)
- "The Kelly Option" (1989, Shoestring/True Blue)
- "The Sao Song" (1991, True Blue Records)
With The Naked Poets
- Naked Poets...live (1999, Shoestring Records)
- Naked Poets...newdirections' (2001, Shoestring Records)
- Naked Poets...buttseriously (2003, Shoestring Records)
- Naked Poets...swinginockers' (2005, Shoestring Records)
- Naked Poets...looseends&wobblybits (2009, Shoestring Records)