Diamantina Drover
(A longer post than is likely warranted for not hearing lyrics correctly, but perhaps it's worth it if overseas readers (both of you) haven't heard the song before.)
I can't specifically remember it, but I think I first heard Diamantina Drover in the form of John Williamson's cover version on his album Mallee Boy. My parents had a few Williamson albums and that was definitely one of them. I recall later learning the lyrics in a primary school music class; I can't remember actually singing it, but we must have. Whether we sang something closer to Redgum's original or Williamson's more compactly arranged cover, I don't know, but certainly it's Williamson's version which remains one of my favourite songs (of any genre, and certainly within Australian folk).
The song's narrator tells us about how he moved from Sydney a decade ago to become a cattle drover. The first verse and chorus end with "I won't be back till the drovin's done." The last verse ends with "I won't be back when the drovin's done", a change kept in the final chorus as well.
I was at the YouTube video of the Williamson version of this song, and started reading the comments.
Musically i like Johns version but he should have stuck to the red gum lyrics. Changing that one little word at the end takes out all the impact and kind off the whole point to the song.
?????
I knew when reading this that the commenter was referring to the till/when switch, saying that Williamson had sung 'till' in every case instead of changing to 'when'. And I straight-up didn't believe this, until I played through the YouTube video, hearing "till the drovin's done" always and never hearing "when the drovin's done". I figured I couldn't have misheard the lyrics so consistently over so many years, so I checked the album version that I own... and I had misheard.
I'd obviously been taught the Redgum lyrics, and they'd stuck with me through many dozens of plays of John Williamson's version. Perhaps, many years ago, I noticed that John didn't make the till/when switch - having written this post I now recall noticing this sometime around 2000, listening to the song on cassette in Dad's car. But I'd long forgotten about it, if that is actually a genuine memory and not something I'm inventing for myself.
Someone not hearing lyrics right is hardly earth-shattering news, but this one feels much more interesting to me than others.
Having thought about this, I think a compromise would actually improve the lyrics even further. The final verse should switch to 'when', as in the original. But the final chorus should stay as 'till' - the final verse then would have that brief moment of raw honesty, before the narrator slips back into the lie that one day he'll move back to Sydney.
I can't specifically remember it, but I think I first heard Diamantina Drover in the form of John Williamson's cover version on his album Mallee Boy. My parents had a few Williamson albums and that was definitely one of them. I recall later learning the lyrics in a primary school music class; I can't remember actually singing it, but we must have. Whether we sang something closer to Redgum's original or Williamson's more compactly arranged cover, I don't know, but certainly it's Williamson's version which remains one of my favourite songs (of any genre, and certainly within Australian folk).
The song's narrator tells us about how he moved from Sydney a decade ago to become a cattle drover. The first verse and chorus end with "I won't be back till the drovin's done." The last verse ends with "I won't be back when the drovin's done", a change kept in the final chorus as well.
I was at the YouTube video of the Williamson version of this song, and started reading the comments.
Musically i like Johns version but he should have stuck to the red gum lyrics. Changing that one little word at the end takes out all the impact and kind off the whole point to the song.
?????
I knew when reading this that the commenter was referring to the till/when switch, saying that Williamson had sung 'till' in every case instead of changing to 'when'. And I straight-up didn't believe this, until I played through the YouTube video, hearing "till the drovin's done" always and never hearing "when the drovin's done". I figured I couldn't have misheard the lyrics so consistently over so many years, so I checked the album version that I own... and I had misheard.
I'd obviously been taught the Redgum lyrics, and they'd stuck with me through many dozens of plays of John Williamson's version. Perhaps, many years ago, I noticed that John didn't make the till/when switch - having written this post I now recall noticing this sometime around 2000, listening to the song on cassette in Dad's car. But I'd long forgotten about it, if that is actually a genuine memory and not something I'm inventing for myself.
Someone not hearing lyrics right is hardly earth-shattering news, but this one feels much more interesting to me than others.
Having thought about this, I think a compromise would actually improve the lyrics even further. The final verse should switch to 'when', as in the original. But the final chorus should stay as 'till' - the final verse then would have that brief moment of raw honesty, before the narrator slips back into the lie that one day he'll move back to Sydney.