Emma Donovan & The PutBacks Biography
Dawn The Album
Acclaimed indigenous vocalist Emma Donovan and Melbourne rhythm comboThe PutBacks come together to bringyouDawn – an LP of hard hitting andheartfelt soul songs telling stories of grief, struggle and redemption.Dawnis agritty, uniquely Australian record, simultaneously classic and contemporary.The songwriting is in turns optimistic,angry and melancholic, and onoccasions bruisingly honest. The music is fluid, live and raw, recorded in oneroomon eight channels of analog tape and the electric connection betweenEmma and the band comes through in everybeat.
Dawntakes some cues from the burgeoning soul revival, but it’s a far looserinterpretation than many releases in the style. This is no attempt at reviving abygone era.There’s no horn section. There’s more rock in there. There’smore country in there. There’s more, in Emma’s words, “blackfella music” inthere. The songwriting is moreakin to classic Aboriginal bands like ColouredStone than it is to Sharon Jones. The sentiment is personal, for both Emmaand the band, and forward looking, ratherthan revivalist. Shades of every soulrecord you ever liked sneak through: Al Green’s Hi Records era? Check.Aretha’s Classic Atlantic recordings? Check. Stacks ofStax? Check. It’s allthere, but all different. Dawn is it’s own thing, indigenous Australian soul.From the ferocious opening salvo of Black Woman to the sweet andgentlecomedown of Over Under Away, Dawn is above all a journey through Emma’slife written in song.
Emma grew up singing church songs with her maternal grandparents on theNorth coast of New South Wales. Herfirst secular gigs were singing in TheDonovans, a band comprised of her mother and five uncles. With her mother,Emma sang country for years, and in her youth was a fixture at the TamworthCountry Music Festival, but she alwaysyearned for the bluesier tones of herFather’s record collection, full of American artists like Laverne Baker and EttaJames and Indigenous Australian artists like No Fixed Address and ArchieRoach.
Years later, after touring and recording with many of the mainstays ofIndigenous music and developing as a soloartist in her ownright, Emma metmembers of The PutBacks, and finally she found a band with the gritty bluessoaked tones she had been looking for. She also found, in PutBacks bassistMick Meagher, a co-writer andcollaborator on the the soul songs she hadbeen waiting a lifetime to write and sing. The results are well worth thewaitand hopefully, only mark the beginning of this oh-so-right collaboration.