Shona Laing "New on Earth" 1992

...Shona Laing’s ‘(Glad I’m) Not a Kennedy’ is a Top 20 hit in Sweden, which sounds pretty odd, but then so does the idea of Laing touring Australia with Midnight Oil.
With her new album South just released, she’s spending a month in Australia supporting the Oils in small towns and large. Their music may be poles apart in subtlety, but both Laing and the Oils share an opposition to things nuclear that provides a link. Maybe one of Laing’s new songs, ‘Soviet Snow’, about last year’s Chernobyl disaster, will become her next Scandinavian hit...
...With Shona Laing, Australia has taken another New Zealander under its wing. “‘Drive Baby Drive’ is going up the chart again,” she says, taking time out from watching television in her Armidale, NSW, motel room. “We went into Sydney’s Triple M station and did ‘Drive’ acoustically, and they’ve been playing that more than the record, which is ironic.”
Ironic? For anyone, let alone a foreigner, to play live on commercial radio here would be unheard of!
Laing says she and guitarist Gary Verberne were “freaked out” at first by the idea of doing the Oils support. “But I think the Oils’ audience has a reputation which is pretty unfounded really. On the second night we got ‘Oils, Oils’ during our set, but otherwise it’s been great.”
With various guitar delays and effects, the duo achieves a “big, powerful sound,” says Laing. “People don’t know what to expect. The band are on our side, which helps. It’s quite an honour to be invited on a gig like this. Touring Australia with Midnight Oil has to be the best gig in the world.”
But with the tour only four days old, Laing was yet to talk politics with the voluble Peter Garrett. “He’s pretty busy. The ID card thing is still happening, and he’s dedicating quite a lot of time to that, out and about talking to people. I think they’ve got to keep their heads together before gigs, so there’s not much socialising.”
There’s a lot of political content to your music now – how would you like being a spokesperson like him?
“Although I admire Peter Garrett, and what he does, he does extremely well, for me the music’s the thing. If people ask me what I think about things, I’ll tell them, but I’m not going to make a determined effort to go out and campaign for various issues. I’m a musician, a songwriter, rather than a politician.”
With songs like ‘Kennedy’, ‘Bishop’ (named after Bishop Tutu), and ‘Highway Warrior’ (about the road toll) on the new album, you must find it easier to write about specific issues or people, rather than personal things.
“Yes, I probably do – especially now that I’m [she laughs] a married woman! I’m very happy with my man, so there’s not a helluva lot to write about from an emotional point of view. So many songs about relationships are about the negative side, losing a lover or meeting a new one, and that just doesn’t happen in my life. I’ve tried creating scenarios in my head from past experiences, but it’s not easy. That’s making songs up as opposed to writing them.
“I get into a kind of musical mode. Sometimes I’ll just go out to the shed and write a drum pattern and work on a bass line and build it from there. Other times someone might say something in the course of a conversation that rings a bell, as with ‘Kennedy’. I actually said to Peter [McCauley, her husband] ‘I’m glad I’m not a Kennedy’, and that came from that...to be continued... - Murray Cammick and AudioCulture
trax:
01 Walk Away (42Nd Street) 02 White Water 03 Fear Of Falling 04 Hey 05 Thief To Silver 06 Freeze Frame 07 Larger Than Life 08 The Mercy Of Love 09 Just Before It's Too Late 10 Banned 11 Erica's Song
…served by zigzagwanderer + Gaius…