Breakfast with James Blundell

One of the delightful things about being in a slightly bigger remote town in the middle of nowhere is that, just sometimes, things happen in Warburton that wouldn't happen elsewhere.


Like James Blundell doing a special Warburton gig.


The Tamworth Country Music Festival On Tour was visiting about 20 remote towns in country Western Australia over 8 weeks. Warburton was on the list. The line up: James Blundell and Felicity Someone (she just won a Golden Guitar).


While I'm not much of a country music fan, other than the Dixie Chicks, even I know James Blundell and Way Out West.


So, with more careful attention to detail than usual, I made sure to be in Warburton last Monday night for a private concert with James Blundell.


The main Yarnangu cohort I hang out with at any community events are the West family women. They urged me to find out if James would do requests. I hardly needed prompting. After all, when else would I get the chance to speak to James and with a valid pretext.


Once I'd tracked him down in the little battered caravan next to the stage, he amiably agreed to dedicate 'Way out West' to the West family. We settled down in a pile of blankets, surrounded by the cool April fog and a clear night sky, to listen to the show.


The show as on a temporary stage down by the oval. Family groups sat around in small circles, dotted around the oval. Utes, landcruisers, troopies, and battered cars surrounded the smaller circles, just outside the low white fence of the oval. A game of touch footy was being played by the kids up the back.


The local coppers wandered around, smiling. Probably hoping that Yarnangu weren't too pissed off about being booked for traffic offences by all the visiting coppers on a marijuana sting operation the week before. The visiting coppers swaggered about, forgetting that they're the minority and not that ninti for anything really.


And Felicity and James played on. In between songs, there was a smattering of applause, but mostly just a quiet audience, watching the show, enjoying the music. A few nurses got up to dance, but only young kids joined them. Intermittently, one in a bunch of adolescent girls would jump out of the security of their group, and gyrate their hips to the music, arms in the air (this particularly erotic form of dance is the only one I've seen out here, apparently copied from black American music video clips).


After Way out West, with the cold setting in, and only one more song to go, we packed up and started to retreat to the comfort of our respective beds. Just at the final set ended, Debra and Nyingurta decided to ask for their photos to be taken with James. Like true groupies, we clustered around the caravan door, and finally emerging, we converged upon him. Like a true star, he was friendly and willing to pose for any number of photos. But was he just being nice, in a practiced star-like manner? Regardless, much was made later when we poured over the shots of Nyingurta being 'held tight' by Mr Blundell. See the squeeze at the top of her right shoulder!:



But what of breakfast?


The next morning, while poking around the roadhouse camp kitchen, I suddenly realised that my other breakfasting companion was none other than James himself. As often happens in the kitchen with passing visitors, we struck up a conversation and had a nice little exchange about what we were both doing here and what it meant for each us respectively.


And yes, he really is a nice bloke! I'm won over. He looks good in jeans, and perhaps it's time that the Dixie Chicks had some competition.