Mayday (cover)

An empathetic vision for his home country, this is Mark Seymour and the Undertow at their rocking best.

Released In: [Australia / NZ].

Release Date: 29 May 2015.

Australian Chart Position:  #43 (ARIA).

Availability: Moderately common. Available new in CD and digital form.

Value: A$15-A$30.

Track Listing(s)

Legend:

 Commercial single.
 Promotional single.

Version: Liberation Records Australian CD album.

Album length: 53 minutes, 29 seconds.

ReplayGain loudness: -7.54dB (2015).

1. Home Free
2. Football Train
3. Two Dollar Punter
4. Irish Breakfast
5. Courtroom 32
6. Fifo
7. Carry Me Home
8. Oblivion
9. Asylum
10. Thirsty Old Men
11. Kosciusko
12. Lucky Land
13. Red Flags

Review

N/A.

Liner Notes

Home

January 25th, 2015. The Phillip Island bridge is jammed with R.V’s, air con flat out in the catastrophic heat, full of all the holiday bits, bikes and surfboards stacked on rooves, primus stoves, T.V’s, portable fridges full of frozen food and more booze than you can fit. Kids yell out of windows, draped in the Ensign of the Southern Cross, drives in wrap-arounds lean forward over steering wheels too hot to touch and curse the hold up. Thousands are backed up waiting to get on with the party, put down their roots for twenty four hours, watch the fire works, toast the nation then nurse the hangover on the way hack up to where they came from, back up the highway to the other home in the city, where they keep all the other bits.

A crew of bikers hits the service road. Why wait when you can fly? Harleys roar. Mums and Dads hit the horns, incense. Somebody yells, “Queue jumper”

What is Home? A refuge. A place of safety. Shelter from storm or drought, where food is stowed away, hidden in times of famine or way. Holes in the ground where people hide from persecution. Castles, caves, motels, mansions on cliff top, shipping containers in the desert where miners drink their regulation loan between shifts, and dream of Caloundra. Home is made from anything. Plastic sheets on poles weighed down with rusted car parts, blue chip downtown apartments made of concrete, glass and steel, floating in the sky above Melbourne, where lawyers keep their other stash and break bread with the rich and famous. Home is ‘The Frankston City Mission’.

I was born into a family that moved. We followed Dad’s work. Actually, we followed Dad. Someone once said to me, if you travel young, you travel forever. We moved and home moved too. Everything in a van. People do that. There’s a deep well of instinct in it. I have a home.. There’s a dog in the driveway. She does nuts when I open the car door.

But there’s another one. It moves around. We build it then we pull it apart. We’re in it and then we’re gone. Me and the boys in rehearsal rooms, jamming up tunes, collecting baggage, moving in vans through dark rooms full of people I don’t know and people I do who’ve been coming for decades, faces I’ve seen many times, names I try to remember in the night, in cities, downs and deserts.. We stand on a stage and sing songs. Rooms fill with people who listen and watch and then leave and we leave too and go somewhere else to repeat the story.

We call it “Home building.”

“Do you ever get tired of it?” some one asked. “Only when I’m waiting,” I said.

Today, there are more homeless people in the world than at any other time in human history. Ordinary men and women like us, waiting, dreaming of safety and comfort, if not for them then at least for their children, who stand with their fathers and mothers and know that they are loved by somebody at least for now. Civilisation is turning. We are witnessing a tectonic shift in the movement of people across the Earth.

All songs written by Mark Seymour (Mushroom Music Publishing)
LMCD0268. (P) and (C) 2015 Mark Seymour. Under exclusive license to Liberation Music.

The Undertow
John Favaro: Bass, vocals
Peter Maslen: Drums, vocals
Cameron McKenzie: Guitars, vocals, keys
Mark Seymour: Vocals, rhythm guitar

All songs by Mark Seymour except “Irish Breakfast” which was co-written with Geoff Goodfellow.
“Mayday” was produced and engineered by Cameron McKenzie at Station Place, Glenhuntly.
The “Sing Sing” Sessions were engineered by Mark Voigt, assested by Matt Neighbour, at Sing Sing South, Chapel St, South Yarra.
All tracks mixed at Station Place by Cameron McKenzie.
Mastered by Jim Demain at Yes Master, Nashville, Tennessee.

Live sound: Rob Miles
Stage: Stan Armstrong
Layout and Design: Lou Beach Design
Cover shot: Leanne Slater
Blood Moon shot: Rob Miles
Cronulla Motel shot: Stuart Space
Studio & all other Photography: Brian Purnell

Very special thanks to all who have inspired me: Michael Roberts at Loud & Clear, the Undertow lads for believing in that old war cry: ‘ a fair go for all!”. Kon Karapanagiotidis, the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre – Long may you run – and of course the home of all good music, Melbourne’s own Radio 3RRR FM 102.7.

Thanks to our loved ones, Jo, Eva, Hannah, Annie and Jodie and to those who have shared the road with us: Donna Jackson, Geoff Goodfellow, The Nicksters, Abby Dobson, Felicity Urquhart, Chuck Jenkins, Stuart Spence & Suzi Dhnaram.