RORY McLEOD is currently on his fourth visit to Australia, promoting his new album, Travelling Home. In his last visit in 1990-91, he played outside Long Bay jail at a concert protesting against the frame-up of Tim Anderson and at one of the rallies against the Gulf War in Sydney. He was interviewed for Green Left by JOHN TOGNOLINI.
You went back to England through the United States, playing at some festivals.
There was the Festival of the Eagle in Texas. Floyd Westerman was there; he's a native American actor who sang a great song about missionaries trying to change people's religions and a great song about anthropologists who come with their pens and leave when they dry out.
You travelled around Australia with Kev Carmody in some pretty remote areas. What response did you and Kev get to the Woody Guthrie songs you played?
Sometimes we got responses to different songs. The most response I got was singing "The Witches Burning Time" which is about the dark ages. Roy Bailey sings it, and it resonates today with the land being burned and ecologically destroyed.
Kev played some didge, I played trombone and we accompanied each other. We enjoyed each other's company. It wasn't just the gigs, but meeting after them: you're in an area, you want to find out what's happening.
You've travelled and toured basically non-stop for the past two years. What was it like to be back in London?
I want to stay local. When you're away a lot, you feel a bit like a deserter. There's things going on at home. There comes a time when you realise, I'd be doing more if I was staying there, rather than travelling.
Unemployment's grown, people are being repossessed who took up Margaret Thatcher's idea of buying their own homes [council/housing commission dwellings]. They can't pay their mortgage, so they're being made homeless.
There's socialists in the Labour Party, but they're not in the leadership. In my eyes the Labour Party is becoming more American in a political way. They're going more towards the right. They're not as bad or as right wing as the Australian Labor Party.
This thing that's happening in Europe, with the attacks on refugee hostels by the right wing: these attacks are more organised than we are led to believe.
The whole of Europe wants to tighten those [asylum] laws. There was an asylum bill passed in Britain which seems to be part of the business club they're building up around the Maastricht Treaty. They don't want people coming from poorer countries. Basically they don't want black or Asian people coming in: it's a racist law.
You've always been independent with the production of your music. Can you explain the production of your latest album Travelling Home?
I produced it myself. It's a kind of vision I've had; it is doing a painting and having the money to afford the canvas. I work with a company, Cooking Vinyl, and give them the tapes, and they manufacture them, do the artwork, type up the lyrics. It's very tiring and stressful, but I've always wanted to do it. It's my way of having some artistic control.
Your songs are sometimes compared to a camera. Do you feel your songs describe historical events?
We've been making up some songs for a radio documentary about the fruit market in the East End of London. Some of the old fellas are still alive who used to haul carts with horses. The documentary is basically them telling stories of what it was like. It's oral history. We are going to be editing their stories together with songs I've made up. That's what songs do: keep a memory alive.
Here's a song about a farming woman whose sons went off to fight in Vietnam for freedom; she's there at home fighting the oil company who wants to mine her land. I'm trying to tell the history from working people's point of view.