Ballad Singer Graham Rodger Releases New Album

Australian Multiple Golden Guitar finalist Graham Rodger has teamed up with Jeanette Wormald to record a duet which is included on his new album The Fire Within Me.

Graham Rodger is a Multi-Award winning country music songwriter and recording artist specialising in Australian Ballads. His songs have been played all over Australia and have been recorded by a number of country music artists including the late Slim Dusty. On this new album, Graham teamed up with Jeanette Wormald for a duet. Jeanette travelled to Brisbane in January to record the duet in producer, Michael Fix’s studio. The song is an Australian classic about a little lake in South Australia’s outback Carra Barra Wirra Canna. Jeanette tells that Graham rang her up and asked whether she would consider doing a duet with him. “I was honoured,” Jeanette says. “But our initial choices for a duet didn’t work out. I was in the studio listening to Graham’s new songs and was really excited by the direction he was heading. I did the vocal arrangements for him on Diamantina, and then realised that Carra Barra Wirra Canna would work really well for us. We learned it that night and recorded it the next day. I was so excited by the harmonies I got teary and Graham got goose bumps. Even Michael was excited and called Susan Jarvis in to have a listen.” The duet features on Graham’s seventh album which was launched in Queensland the first weekend in April.

Farmers in Australia Protest Water Crisis

The day he turned the taps off, dairy farmer JR Williams of Torrumbarry near Echuaca, got an idea. He had been unable to irrigate his pastures for his dairy herd and so he decided to raise awareness of the struggles of his region through music. And so this gifted songwriter-farmer put his passion for music into words with a song called “WHO GIVES A STUFF ABOUT THE FARMER”. JR believes the song which was released nationally in Australia in December 2007 when the water crisis hit hardest will help spread the message about what is really going on in Australia’s bush lands. His song expresses the region’s frustration of seeing water run to waste in the south of Australia as the government decided to pipe water out of the struggling northern irrigation system to supply the cities int he south. JR is also concerned about the social implications of young people on the land being forced to leave rural areas and move to the cities in order to feed their families.

“We need to work together to find positive long term answers for our irrigators along the Murray Darling River System.”