“Tarkine Sunset (takayna)” used for the Bob Brown Foundation 2017 Christmas video

As reported in earlier “Breaking News” (see June 2018 below), Bob Brown, Australia’s most respected environmentalist, used Steve’s music “Tarkine Sunset (takayna)” as the soundtrack for his photo montage for the Bob Brown Foundation 2017 Christmas video message. In March 2018, happening upon a book of poems (In Balfour Street, NewPrint 2010) by Bob, Steve commented that maybe one day he would put some of Bob’s poems to music. Bob unhesitatingly replied, “Then start with “Winter Night at Liffey!”. Fortuitously, this was Steve’s favourite poem but his knees started shaking at the thought. After some false starts, Steve came up with music interpretations for four of the poems and in July Bob and Steve went to Reel to Reel studios in Margate, south of Hobart, and recorded them “live” in just a few takes. 

Watch the video here!

Heath Cullen mixed the tracks at 9 to 5 studios in Candelo NSW, using software to mimic the gorgeous sound of Ocean Road Studios in LA (Frank Sinatra, Beach Boys, The Rolling Stones, Willie Nelson, Radiohead…) and Mick Wordley from Mixmasters in the Adelaide Hills did his magic thing mastering the tracks for MAD CDs to produce; all under the umbrella of the Bob Brown Foundation.

The result is Winter Night At Liffey, a CD package featuring poetry read by Bob Brown over interpretative piano pieces by Steve. The package includes a physical CD, booklet of the 4 poems, notes from Bob and Steve, and a bonus free unique download code. It’s also available as a stand alone download card, and there is a sheet music and poetry folio available on the “Music” page of this website.

Bob says of Winter Night in Liffey - “The poems were written between the 1970s when I was in my Twenties. “Winter Night..” is at Liffey, under the Great Western Tiers in Northern Tasmania. The original shingles of my 1904 farmhouse had been replaced with corrugated iron. It was unusual for snow to settle long at the house but, often, I’d awake in the morning to find the mountain behind ladden with white.”  Steve sees Bob’s poems as vivid, rugged, gentle, funny, brave accounts of various events in Bob’s life in the 1970s. Steve’s musical sketches were improvised by conjuring up what the poems meant to him focusing on key events in each - in this case, the peacefulness of the snow at the end of a night time storm at Liffey under the Western Tiers / Taytitiheeker (Dry’s Bluff) above Bob’s old house he shared with Paul (now cared for by Bush Heritage Australia). The other three poems on the CD are “Katie Kingston”, “In Balfour Street” and “Wynyard Girl”.

Reviews have started coming in with Heather Rose (Award winning author of The Museum of Modern  Love etc) observing “What a poignant thing this is. Together, Bob and Steve have created a little bit of wonder. Enjoy!”. Raewyn Connell (Internationally acclaimed author of “Southern Theory”, busy sociologist, obscure poet and ever-hopeful feminist) sees the CD as “Music and poetry – a classic combination, put to new use evoking moments in an Australian life where complex emotions are linked to place, landscape, and mysteries of relationship. Steve Crump’s music works from, and beyond, Bob Brown’s reading of his own texts, creating subtly different pieces that will remain in memory.”

If you would like to purchase “Winter Night At Liffey” please visit the Bob Brown Foundation Online store: https://www.bobbrown.org.au/onlinestore $20 includes postage