The Warumpi Band never really played by the rules, at least if those rules demanded they forgo the bonds of family and custom in exchange for international stardom and the dubious rewards of a life of rock'n'roll. That's why it's been nine years between albums.
Their last album was Go Bush, released in '86, and then Neil Murray decided it was time to stretch out his songwriting and has recorded and released three albums as a solo artist and with the band The Rainmakers, the most recent, Dust. But that didn't mean the end of the Warumpis. "The band didn't exactly fade completely away when I left in 1987," Murray explains. "We did about ten gigs in 1990, but we didn't really consider playing again until 1992 when we were invited to play the Stompem Ground festival in Broome in 1992. That went over really well, and since then our longsuffering manager David Cooke has been finding us a bit of work and each year we've done a short tour of a few weeks. And each time we've played together, we've jammed and worked up new material. Last year we did a six week tour of Europe and found we had enough songs at the end of it to record, and CAAMA were making us the offer to record an album so we went into their studio in Alice Springs in October and recorded it."
That album is Too Much Humbug, and includes the first ever single the Aboriginal label has ever released, Stompin Ground, inspired of course by the above-mentioned festival. It's also one of three albums CAAMA (Central Australian Aboriginal Media Association) have released this past year nominated for an ARIA award, and the toughest album the band has yet made, very guitar-oriented and chunky.
"That's probably due to Mark Ovendon's production skills and what he was trying to get out of us. He was really going for that heavier guitar sound. The songs came out the same they always have, various ways, collaborating together or someone with an idea which we work on or whatever. But the sound is pretty much Ovendon's influence.
"The riff for Stompin Ground came to us when we were rehearsing for the gig in Broome, and actually played it opening that night before we went into the set, so I thought we had to get some words together for that riff. So it's been hanging for a while before I finally whipped up some words for it that sort of work. The opening track was a story that George (Djilaynga) had, something that happened to him in his ancestral country that I kind of worked into verses with a guitar riff I had. There're a couple of tunes written by George and his other brothers, one I wrote with Sammy Butcher, an acoustic thing called Never Change."
Once again, their long-suffering manager has managed to get the band together for a short three week tour of the country to promote Too Much Humbug. Them who knows what the band are doing until Cooke gets them together for another lightning tour. Murray of course has his solo career.
"The band's as permanent as it'll ever be. It's always been a band that's something that, when it feels right it happens and if it doesn't it doesn't. We've long forgotten trying to be a permanent fixture. Everybody's got families and that, but if we can tour, we can record or we can do something, we'll do it. We certainly have long given up the idea of being in the maelstrom of the mainstream rock'n'roll scene and be committed to do x amount of touring and promotion and this and that, 'cos it never worked with us. We've all got other priorities and things. If we can do something with the band then it's extra special, it's an event."
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