The Whitlams Black Stump Band formed in 2021 and sees Tim Freedman and long-time Whitlams drummer Terepai Richmond joined by an A Team of roots musicians, reconstructing the best of The Whitlams’ repertoire with an assortment of new songs and classic Americana.

The five-piece band features Rod McCormack and Matt Fell, two CMAA Producers of the Year, on banjo and bass, and young gun Ollie Thorpe on electric and pedal steel guitar.

The act debuted at the Tamworth Country Music Festival in 2022, and then wound its way down the East Coast in a three week tour that bonded their musical chemistry. The next step was selling out the capital cities on the Big City Debut tour, all the while chipping away at a debut album out January 2024.

The themes of the group’s repertoire are proudly parochial. Rarely have Australian stories sounded so good on American instruments as when The Whitlams Black Stump Band casts forth tales of John Sattler’s jaw, of Ned Kelly’s sister Kate, and of our national impulse to blow up the pokies.

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No Aphrodisiac (Black Stump)

Single released Friday, 28 July 2023

The Whitlams Black Stump Band refashions Tim Freedman’s biggest hit as a three minute slice of banjo heaven – “No Aphrodisiac”, the ARIA Song of the Year in 1998, and JJJ Hottest 100 No. 1 has a new sound , as a seductive  piece of Americana.

>>LISTEN HERE 

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“KATE KELLY (feat. Felicity Urquhart)”

Single released Friday, 3 March 2023

The Whitlams Black Stump Band releases its new single today, ‘Kate Kelly’, a gothic bush ballad about Ned Kelly’s little sister, Kate. The song has the intimacy of a violin and mandolin session around the campfire, with the dark energy of a Nick Cave murder ballad fluttering unnervingly through the ghost gums. 

Kate Kelly – the historical figure – has always been overshadowed by her famous brother Ned, but the talented young woman was a popular public identity in her own right. She was 17 years old the day Ned was hanged in 1880, and she appeared that night in front of 1,000 paying customers at the Apollo Theatre Hall on Bourke Street, Melbourne.

In August last year, during the band’s first regional run from North Queensland to Southern Victoria, Felicity Urquhart and Josh Cunningham joined the tour from Gunnedah to Queenscliff to open on five shows. It was on these nights that they started experimenting with Urquhart joining the band on stage to sing and play the part of Kate Kelly.

They realised straight away that the addition of Urquhart’s voice gives the song an immediate emotional depth, as she becomes the female inheritor brooding over the Kelly legend. Our protagonist knows the damage that notoriety has wrought on her family, but still needs to use the Kelly name to advertise her Travelling Shows by which she supports her family.

The song was written by Tim Freedman and Northern Rivers identity Jimmy Willing, using a narrative inspired by Jean Bedford’s book, “Sister Kate”, a fictional retelling of the bushranger family’s legend through Kate’s eyes. They wrote it at the piano in Freedman’s house in Newtown, the site of many early Whitlams’ rehearsals. A few years later in a delightful coincidence, after Freedman had moved a short distance away, Jean Bedford moved into the very same house with her late husband, the celebrated crime writer, Peter Corris. Subsequently, the couple formed a friendship with Freedman in their shared street in Newtown. Freedman says “The credo of the Black Stump project is to give Americana an Australian twist. We like recording songs with Australian themes and  Australian senses of humour, and then play them in towns as far and wide as we can.”

The last two singles have fulfilled this mission statement by bringing Freedman’s protest song ‘Blow Up the Pokies’ back onto the airwaves at a time when the issue had returned to the country’s front pages, and by enlivening the East Coast winter’s sporting culture with a story of Waterloo and Redfern waking up on Grand Final day 1970 – ‘The Day John Sattler Broke His Jaw’. Both songs settled at around No. 30 in the Countrytown Top 50 airplay chart.

LISTEN & SHOWS:

Linktr.ee/blackstumpband

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“BLOW UP THE POKIES (BLACK STUMP)”

Single released Friday, 28 October 2022

The Whitlams’ classic protest song from 1999 – ‘Blow Up the Pokies’ – has been reworked by Tim Freedman with his new alt-country line-up.

This fresh version was born when the Wesley Mission contacted Freedman in May 2022 and asked for a reworking of the song that could be used as the soundtrack to their poignant Gutful of Gambling TV ad (view here). 

Re-jigged from the original’s waltz time signature to a propulsive 4/4, sung in a lower key, and driven now by banjo and pedal steel guitar, this reconstruction wrings new emotion out of the story of a musician playing a poker machine on the same spot in a pub where he used to play in his band. A new audience awaits the song, whose message is as relevant today as it was upon release 24 years ago. 

The theme is still potent, and just two months ago a community movement in Alice Springs used the track in their successful campaign to stall a proposal to add poker machines to four venues with indigenous and lower socio-economic clientele (see ABC story here).

• “Blow Up the Pokies” was the second single from The Whitlams’ fourth album Love This City which was released in 1999 and sold double platinum
• The album was recently placed No.101 in Rolling Stones’ Greatest 200 Australian Albums of all-time list. The band’s third album Eternal Nightcap was No.27
• In 2000 the song was the No.1 researched song on the MMM Network and blared out over building sites across Australia

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“THE DAY JOHN SATTLER BROKE HIS JAW”

Single released Friday, 24 June 2022

“‘The Day John Sattler Broke His Jaw’ is the best Australian song you’ve never heard. Until now. The Whitlams’ country version is a revelation.” – Jeff Jenkins, Rhythms Magazine

In 2021, during the depths of Covid, Tim Freedman loaded his piano into the back of the car and headed out on a solo regional tour. While driving between Gunnedah and Mudgee, via Black Stump Way, he discovered that The Whitlams’ ‘Man About a Dog’ – a song about driving through the country after heavy rains have broken the drought – had been added to country radio.

“I must admit it was a surprise to be played on Kix Country and Triple A Murri Country, but it was very cool,” says Tim, who vowed: “I have to get out of the city more.”

In Mudgee, Tim hatched an idea. He called award-winning producer Matt Fell, who had worked on his solo album, Australian Idle. “Put together your dream band,” Tim said. “I think I want to make a country album.”

The result is The Whitlams, Black Stump Band, a surprising country detour for one of Australia’s most loved bands, featuring some of Australia’s finest musicians, including Rod McCormack (on banjo, papoose and acoustic guitar), Ollie Thorpe (pedal steel and electric guitar), and Matt Fell on bass.

After reworking The Whitlams’ ‘50 Again’, the next release from the Black Stump Band was ‘The Day John Sattler Broke His Jaw’, a song written by Sydney’s Perry Keyes, whose work has been praised by Peter Garrett, Missy Higgins and Tim Freedman.

Tim even wrote a piece about Perry – “an authentic voice from the heart of a disappearing world” – for The Sydney Morning Herald (read here).  

The video for ‘The Day John Sattler Broke His Jaw’ was made by acclaimed Sydney photojournalist and director Johnny Barker. “It’s a really special clip, with Johnny incorporating footage from the time,” Tim says.  It also features archival footage of Tim’s father, Barrie Freedman, reading the Channel 7 News in July 1970 tipping Souths for the upcoming Grand Final. Barrie proved correct in his prediction, and Souths went on to win the premiership in September against Manly Warringah, the team that Barrie had been taking his son Tim, then six years old, to watch at Brookvale Oval over the course of the season.

‘The Day John Sattler Broke His Jaw’ celebrates one of the greatest stories in rugby league.  When South Sydney’s captain John Sattler had his jaw broken in the third minute of the 1970 Grand Final, he famously told a teammate, “Hold me up, so they don’t know I’m hurt.” He played out the rest of the game, leading Souths to victory over Manly.  If you are quick, you will see the actual moment John Sattler’s jaw is broken at the Sydney Cricket Ground in the film clip, just as the guitar solo kicks in with Gough Whitlam, Frank Hyde and Brett Whitley.

But even if you’ve never seen a game of rugby league, ‘The Day John Sattler Broke His Jaw’ is an unforgettable epic that is more a social history than a song about sport, evoking the working-class suburbs of inner Sydney as Grand Final day unfolds.

And the tears rolled down like Reschs the day John Sattler broke his jaw

The song references legendary commentator Frank Hyde’s iconic call when a player was kicking for goal:

If it’s high enough
If it’s long enough
If it’s straight between the posts