Allan Caswell’s latest bush ballad Feeding The Crew has been chosen as a finalist in the 2019 Bush Ballad Golden Guitar.
In the tradition of where a lot of Slim Dusty’s songs came from … people sending him poems and Slim carefully turning them into songs, Feeding The Crewcame to life in much the same way.
Kathy Berzinski lives in Far North Queensland and, when her husband was alive, they would do the grey nomad thing in outback Queensland … during the ‘boring bits’ Kathy would write bush poetry. Caswell was given some of her poems via a mutual friend, well known guitar builder Allan Tomkins and he loved them. One, in particular was the poem that became Feeding The Crew.
Allan Caswell recorded Feeding The Crew in Melbourne with producer Damian Cafarella after they had completed his MEXICO album, so the song was released separately.
So, here’s the story … a retired lady in Far North Queensland writes her first ever song … it gets recorded by a veteran country singer and goes on to be a finalist in the Golden Guitars … it sounds like a bush ballad itself.
Being the versatile songwriter, he is, Allan Caswell has long been known to explore all the different strands of the country music genre and his recordings reflect this. “I love the bush ballad because it is country music in its purest and most Australian form” Caswell has been a finalist in this section a number of times and won the Bush Ballad Golden Guitar in 2016 with Manfred Vijars for One Last Muster.
This is Kathy Berzinski’s first ever Golden Guitar final nomination … and Caswell’s 40th.