Better late than never, Broderick Smith's ''friendlier'' memoir

The photograph of the artist as a young man is a recurring album cover cliche now. Paul McCartney, Eric Clapton and Jimmy Barnes all have their reasons, but Broderick Smith's latest comes with extra irony.

The sepia print shows a 20-something with piercing gaze, locks to his denim shoulders and a neckerchief tied like Billy the Kid's handsome brother. The title, Man Out of Time, would have fit even then, back in his '70s salad days with Carson and the Dingoes.

Broderick Smith's Man Out of Time, the album and the book, are out now.

Broderick Smith’s Man Out of Time, the album and the book, are out now.

"I was looking for Clancy of the Overflow when I came out here," the UK-born dreamer turned Australian rock pioneer says. Growing up in Hertfordshire, he conflated the Wild West of his cousins' Buffalo Bill annuals with the wild bush country his father had his sights on.

"I watched the movie Smiley and I thought 'Oh, great, when I get to Australia I get a horse and a gun'. My brother got the gun," he says with a lingering note of injustice.

"I still love westerns to this day. I'm quite happy sitting watching two tiny little figures on horses in this beautiful big landscape. I'd rather look at that than some art installation in Melbourne."

The love of bushland, open sky and the unpretentious people who live in between is central to the ex-Dingoes frontman's 10th solo record.

Led by blues guitarist Matt Walker, its wood-grained arrangements wrap around Australian histories spanning 150 years, from Angus McMillan to the Black Saturday lament, The Birds Fell From the Sky.

Other narratives draw from the space between witnessed events and imagination: Prayer Flags comes from a seaside caravan park; Living Above the Law from whatever footy player is trending for the wrong reasons this week.

The match with Walker has been good for 25 years, on an off, as heard on their Unknown Country album of 2009 and countless gigs. Tennessee blues man Sleepy John Estes is Smith's musical hero. "I heard rural blues before I heard urban blues," he says, and something about Walker's style and attitude rang the right bells.

"He was playing before me at the Esplanade front bar. He was about 18 and he had that thing. I couldn't tell you what it is, it's just that it cuts right through.

"A lot of people get into the music game and they spend every day sitting in Brunswick Street smoking French cigarettes the wrong way around."

Other growling asides describe one "rich hipster dude who wants to be a coal miner" and another as "one of those coastal hippie guys banging on lots of stuff."

If he comes across a tad crotchety, it's leavened by ample humour, and the kind of brutal self-knowledge that will doubtless spill from his memoir, also titled Man Out of Time.

The Dingoes, circa 1977, from left, John Dubois, John Lee, Broderick Smith, Chris Stockley and Kerryn Tolhurst.

The Dingoes, circa 1977, from left, John Dubois, John Lee, Broderick Smith, Chris Stockley and Kerryn Tolhurst.

"I've got photos of me as a teenager and I've got this silly, mournful look on my face. I'm so desperate to have the blues," he laughs. He's not much more charitable about his Dingoes years, when the world was briefly at his feet until a big US tour with Lynyrd Skynyrd was cancelled after that infamous 1977 plane crash.

"Like any kid in his 20s, there was a while where I was an egotistical arsehole but I hope I got away from all that," he says. "I'm quite happy living in the country and going into town when I need to do those things you gotta do." He mumbles something about Dancing With Idiots and It Takes Two To Bugger Up a Good Song.

His book has been a long time coming, he says, after "a dark, Gothic, pretentious" false start under the influence of Cormack McCarthy. "I put it aside for about 20 years and that was the best thing because when I went back I calmed down and wrote a friendlier book," he says.

"Sex, drugs, rock'n'roll — there's hardly any of that stuff. I wrote it more as a social history because I realised my story was not that different to a lot of other people's. Born in another country, migrated here on a ship, went to a tough, working-class area, got drafted, you know…

"A lady writer friend of mine said, 'It reads like the journey of a klutz through history'. I said 'Well, that's just fine'."

Man Out of Time, the album and book, are out now through Bloodlines Records and Starman Books. Broderick Smith plays the Dog's Bar, St Kilda, on Friday,  October 5; the Music Lounge, Brookvale, on Friday, October 12; and Foundry 616, Ultimo, on Saturday, October 13.

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