The Gathering Wool

I never thought I would write a shearing song. They seemed so blokey, so thumpy, so full of bravado. But then we got a call from my Mum while we were touring in Brisbane last year, “the are floods coming and your father can’t get any shearers. So he’s had to go and shear a thousand sheep by himself - and he’s over 60 you know!” 

Lach looked at me, “that’s a song we have to write” 

There wasn’t much else we could do being far away. I kept hearing about friends and family sandbagging, moving animals to higher, drier grounds and opening their homes to those whose houses were filling with floodwater. 

Worrying about all of this, my songwriting notebook quickly filled with sheep looking like the rain clouds and existential questions of changing climate and the future of the farm. But our song came out uplifting - a bit of a classic Australian country-folk song about a man and his community facing the elements and getting through (not unlike our bushfire song ‘Here is my Home’). 

We’ve been exploring what Australiana sounds like while recording our new songs and I think this song gets pretty close with our friends Emily-Rose Sarkova and Nick Henderson adding in gorgeous accordion lines, double bass and rousing backing vocals in the chorus. 

We shot a music video on the farm - from the back of the ute, in front of the old milking shed, the algae-filled dam and (of course) the shearing shed. Dad even shore a remarkably docile sheep for us (she was ready for her close-up, unlike Dusty the Chaotic Kelpie) 

JC Jacinta Scadden (who I grew up with and is now a fabulous film maker!) suggested we could place old photos around the farm to tell an embedded story. They have edited the footage together to make it look wonderful. 

My Mum (who is an incredible multi-media artist) created our artwork filled with collaged layers of photos, bits of wallpaper, vintage papers from Grandy’s house, old Women’s Weekly’s and acrylic transfers. 

This is our new favourite thing - collaborating with talented folks to create something new to share!

Check out our song and video here: www.brokencreekband.com/gatheringwool and let us know what you think!  

There is also a button to pre-save if you would like Spotify/Apple Music to automatically add it when the song is released this Friday 23rd June. 

The BIGGEST way you can help get our song out there is by recommending they check out the song so feel free to forward them the link.

Thanks for reading, watching and listening, you’re the best!

Erin + Lach