The SLIM DUSTY TRAVELLING COUNTRY BAND REUNION SHOW Live at Tamworth 1996

The SLIM DUSTY TRAVELLING COUNTRY BAND REUNION SHOW LIVE at Tamworth 1996

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REUNION

The get-together of The Travelling Country Band show was the second of Slim Dusty’s reunion shows at the Tamworth Country Music Festival in 1996.

It took place the day after the family reunion show, also held at the 1,000-seat Tamworth Town Hall.
  
Andrew Rodd (front of house): “It was not often you would get the entire Travelling Country Band together, so that was special. We knew it would be unique.

“Some of the songs were repeated over the two nights but they had totally different feels and different solos.

“Obviously it was different with different players. Lindsey Butler, for instance, played differently to Charlie Boyter.”

“The loyalty that Slim showed to his audience also extended to the musicians he played with,” reckons Rod Coe, who produced almost 40 of his records as a staff producer at EMI Records, and then on road with The Travelling Country Band.

“That in turn inspired loyalty to him. He was a real team man.”

Coe’s relationship with Slim went back 28 years, serving as music director. On stage it was obvious the two men – who were 18 years apart in age – had a very close relationship, often giving each other directions with their eyes.

New Zealand-born Coe, who appeared on the “Duncan” video and inducted into the Australian Country Music Hands of Fame in 2010, learned a lesson about Slim-type loyalty at the reunion.

On stage, Slim presented him with a plaque commemorating their very long association.

PLAQUE
“It blew me away as it was such an honour. That plaque is up on the wall in my house in the Northern Rivers (NSW), and a very valued piece of my memorabilia.”

He adds: “From the very first time we got together, and played, we had established a musical affinity.

“Both of us understood, and could virtually hear ahead of it happening, we understood what the form was, what the language of that particular piece of music was.

Rod Coe

“I responded so much to his rhythm guitar playing, which was just stellar. He was the best rhythm guitarist I have ever worked with.

“His playing drove the band, and that comes from the fact that he WAS the band in the early days when he started out.”

YOUNG TALENT
Part of Coe receiving the award was that he, like Anne and David, continually turned him onto the latest writers and players and kept things fresh.

Slim reached out to Cold Chisel’s Don Walker for songs, and he and Joy had a close relationship with Paul Kelly, bonding as much over books and literature as music.

Joy McKean and Paul Kelly

An example of a young player given a break was Mike Kerin. He came to Tamworth from Cairns to enter a bluegrass competition at the festival.

He won outright, and was the talk of the town. Slim quickly offered him a gig for two years. Kerin stayed close to 20.

“In the first week of rehearsals, he accidentally broke two chairs in Slim’s Sydney house by sitting on them the wrong way,” Lawrie Minson chuckles.

“Slim was like, “Hey focus, we’re losing furniture here!” But Mike was a masterful player, and still is one of the best.”

Dusty gave the careers of Troy Cassar-Daley and Lee Kernaghan, among others, a boost by recording with them.

Slim took a young Keith Urban out on the road. “Keith was so nervous about playing to Dad’s audience,” Anne Kirkpatrick remembers.

  
Keith Urban and Slim Dusty

“He said to Dad, Should I change my act? and Dad replied, just do what you do. The two were such a great contrast but Dad’s audience loved Keith.”

Urban had in fact met Slim as an 11 year-old when he lined up to get an autograph on the sheet music of “Lights On The Hill”.

15 years later in 1992, Urban learned a life-long lesson.

As the tour wound down, he and Slim were having a cup of tea outside his motel room, and a tired Urban said, “Oh, three more shows to go!”

Slim responded, “Oh three more songs and we’re done!” but he meant he was sad the tour was ending. To Slim a show was a song to all.

Keith and Slim

Urban, later reminiscing during Slim Dusty Day, admitted, “I was thrown back that he was bummed out. It was a kick in the pants for me. I thought that’s the attitude to have right there. His whole thing was about playing, about giving, and about being part of an audience, putting on a show.

“I’d never met anyone like him before. That moment changed my attitude to touring. It had a huge impact on me.”

NINE GUESTS
Despite hectic schedules, all nine guests invited to the reunion – including the Trenwith​s who journeyed from New Zealand – made it.

Respected and illustrious, they were considered legends on their respective instruments.

Like Slim and Joy, Charley Boyter and Lindsay Butler would go on to be decorated with the Order of Australia medal.  Paul Trenwith​ was awarded the New Zealand equivalent.

Paul Trenwith​ (banjo) and wife Colleen (fiddle) were among New Zealand’s biggest exponents of blue-grass, both live and hosting radio shows, when they came to Australia in the early 70s.

Colleen Trenwith and Mike Kerin

Slim allowed them to perform their songs on his show. In 1976 they returned to NZ to raise a family, and continue their Hamilton County Bluegrass Band. Colleen died in 2021, aged 74.

Guitarist Colin Watson’s first gig with country music was with Slim in the early 1970s. From then on he played with Colin Buchanan, Anne Kirkpatrick, Justine Clarke and John Williamson.

Mauritius-born Michel Rose​​ developed a love for pedal steel guitar at 14, and made a name for himself in various bands before he joined Slim, first for two years and then again for the mammoth Bicentennial tour.

Lawrie Minson first played guitar with Buddy Williams, expanding it to dobro and harmonica when he was with Slim in 1981 and 1982.

After that he joined Lee Kernaghan’s band (here also extending to electric slide guitar and piano accordion) and 20 years ago created the effects pedal Minson Pedal used by ‘Stuie’ French, Phil Manning and Dom Turner, among many others.

A member of the Stolen Generation, Charley Boyter learned to play guitar at church camps in his teens. Slim saw him in 1975, and promptly invited him on to the Travelling Country Band.

They stayed together for 20 years, touring Australia, Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands. Slim commented, “Charley has played on more of my albums than any other guitarist.”

Raised on a dairy farm in Tenterfield, NSW, Lindsay Butler played in bands since 1968, before moving to Tamworth to do sessions at Hadley Studios and Opal Records.

Around this time Slim arrived in Tamworth looking for a young guitarist as Barry Thornton was leaving after 20 years, and top radio host John Minson (Lawrie’s father) recommended him. After leaving Slim, Butler and his singer songwriter wife Shaza Leigh formed a band.

Born in Fremantle, WA, Ian Simpson was taught classical piano by his grandmother at age eight but fell for banjo at 13 from records, learning to play by slowing them down to 16 rpm.

At 16 he was playing in bluegrass bands around Perth before moving to Sydney at 21, becoming professional with Slim. He played on 20 Slim records and left in 1984 to form the Flying Emus.

From the 1950s on, Barry Thornton developed a distinctive guitar style, buying his first guitar in 1952 for £12. While trying to get noticed in talent quests, he came to Slim’s attention.

He was offered three months on The Slim Dusty Show. He stayed for 19 years, also playing on-stage comedy character Mulga Dan. He died in 2002.

BACKSTAGE
Backstage before the show, the nine guests and the band were “talking a mile a minute, some of them hadn’t seen each other for ages!” Rod regales.

“They had been part of the bonding of the band. Slim ran a tight ship, but there was a lot of good humour and bantering.

“There was something different to this band than any other band I’ve played with. It came down to Slim’s expectations of how lively the whole thing should be, and the fact that he poured so much energy into it all, into every performance. You respond to that, you lift to that.

Minson recalls: “Playing with Slim was virtually my first professional job in music. I was paid wages and holidays. I was really looked after, and it was a dream gig in the day.

“Slim was a great leader, charismatic, a real entertainer. You learn a tremendous amount from these people. He’d already been going for years and years before I came along.”

  
Lawrie Minson and Joy McKean

Playing with The Travelling Country Band was definitely a baptism of fire for Minson, a leap up in his career. “Duncan” had just hit #1, and the first show for the new lineup was to 60,000.

The event was so big that the band had to be flown in by helicopter. “I remember thinking, not bad for a kid from Tamworth!” Minson recalls.

“Right after that, we spent a week on the Gold Coast, doing eight shows including matinees on the weekend, and all were sold out.”

Minson accompanied Slim for his appearance at the exalted Grand Ole Opry in Nashville.

The other artists they shared a dressing room were not acquainted with Slim or his music.

“It was obvious right from the get-go that Slim was someone special.

“When someone walks into the room and there’s a glow about them – people call it charisma or the x-factor – and most of the old timers worked out, this guy’s big where he came from.

“We only did three songs. But Slim was at the top of his game. His ability to communicate, talking to the room and winning people over, that was the mark of a great showman right there.”

In Minson’s first year with Dusty, in 1981, they worked on his 49^th album.

“He was so prolific and in the studio all the time that I played on 20 of his albums.”

Slim’s career manager Kevin Ritchie, an EMI executive who became a prominent tour promoter, had the sort of global contacts where The Travelling Country Band opened for Elton John’s three shows in Brisbane, and invited to play before the Queen.

When he met Her Majesty afterwards, he was told it was protocol to remove his hat. He refused. “I wasn’t being rude, but I’m not Slim Dusty without my hat.”
  

Even his family sometimes had an issue. Slim confessed on radio: “My wife didn’t know my real name on the day we got engaged. When the wedding date was fixed, her mother asked, what’s his real name?’ and she didn’t know.”