G'day Sandra & Joe,

Here is the text of my review, from the Mulga Wire section of the Bush Music Club's Mulga Wire, June 2006.

The Songs Of Chris Kempster
NSW Folk Federation /The CK Project Committee CKP041

Ever since Chris Kempster's untimely death, his friends and admirers have worked hard to bring out a recording that does justice to the breadth and variety of Chris's music settings of Henry Lawson poems. Because the resulting songs were taken up by such a variety of singers around Australia – and overseas – a great part of this project was finding well-loved versions from singers over the years … and finding current singers to present their favourites.

The result is a selection of 30 tracks on a double CD set – with some two dozen different singers, solo or in combination and this great variety of voices and styles produces a virtual concert with something for everyone. The great Lawson songs – from Chris's setting of Reedy River … almost the anthem of the first Australian 'Folk Revival' of the 1950s (but sung very well by USA's Priscilla Herdman) … through the songs of Lawson's social concern (Faces in the Street … and Freedom on the Wallaby 0… marvellously rendered by Declan Affley, observations of the pioneering life of his youth – such as The Roaring Days… given a lively modern treatment by James Fagan … to later songs of racial struggle in post-war Australia like Dorothy Hewitt's Clancy and Dooley and Don McLeod… very forcefully presented by England's Roy Bailey – to Chris's 1993 tune.

There are several of those songs written by Henry Lawson and others with a sensitivity to the women of pioneering Australia: Chris singing his own setting of The Drover's Sweetheart…, Priscilla Herdman presenting Chris's tunes for that enigmatic verse The Water Lily… and Louis Esson's Bush Lullaby… … through to Chris's version of Dorothy Hewitt's words for her husband Merv Lilley The Sailor Home from the Sea…. Henry Lawson's troubled life combines with Chris's talent in tune-writing to produce masterpieces like Bertha… (addressed to Henry's daughter) stunningly sung here by Margaret Fagan … the brilliant refutation of lesser rhymers' carping Do You Think I do not Know? … - Chris's tune as it was first interpreted by Declan Affley … that piercing observation of Darlinghurst Gaol (Keep Step) One Hundred and Three… sung by Len Neary … and that song of acceptance and resignation to fate that Henry wrote only months before his death: On The Night Train… – brilliantly sung by Chloë Roweth.

Chris demonstrates his appreciation of others' work on the Lawson vein with a fine rendition of Henry's The Outside Track … to a tune by English singer Gerry Hallom and a nicely balanced performance is rounded out with a short instrumental treatment of Chris's tune to The Drover's Sweetheart ….

The 2-CD set was selling for (Aust) $25 at the Australian) National Folk Festival launch (Easter 2006) … and wonderful value!

Bob Bolton