In Conversation and Song with Jim Moginie

The Silver River

14 Apr

ABOUT THE SHOW

Join us for a night of stories and song with founding member of Midnight Oil, Jim Moginie, in conversation with Andrew Stafford celebrating the release of The Silver River: a memoir of family – lost, made and found.

For Jim Moginie, the band was a calling and a refuge, and a distraction from a growing feeling that something was missing from his life. Raised by a loving family, he’d learned as a child that his biological mother had given him up for adoption.

Gradually, alongside the Oils’ unfolding saga of stardom and controversy, Jim began a quest to find his birth family, these twin paths leading him from suburban Sydney through the nascent Australian punk scene and the uncharted musical territory of the Western deserts to the stadiums of Europe and America, the meandering roads and verdant hills of rural Ireland, countless musical collaborations, and poignant reunions with band members and long-lost relatives.

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Jim Moginie was raised in Sydney’s northern suburbs and attended high school by the banks of Sydney Harbour, where he befriended future Midnight Oil drummer Rob Hirst. Together with another friend, Andrew James, they formed the band Farm, before recruiting singer Peter Garrett and guitarist Martin Rotsey and changing their name to Midnight Oil.

Jim is best known as a songwriter, guitarist and keyboard player for the Oils, but his career has also spanned dozens of less well known creative adventures, from playing traditional Irish music with Shameless Seamus & the Tullamore Dews and creating soundscapes for eight guitars under the banner of Jim Moginie’s Electric Guitar Orchestra, to playing with punk-edged cerebral rock band the Family Dog and surf instrumentalists The Break.

Jim has also collaborated with prominent artists such as Silverchair, Sarah Blasko, the Warumpi Band, the Living End, Kasey Chambers, Neil Finn and the Australian Chamber Orchestra.

About your host: Andrew Stafford is a freelance journalist and the author of Pig City, a book about Brisbane, and Something to Believe In, a music memoir. In July 2007, Pig City was adapted into a major event by Queensland Music Festival, headlined by the first performance by the original line-up of the Saints in nearly 30 years. A 20th anniversary edition will be published by UQP in August. His journalism appears in the Guardian, the Age and many more. In 2017, he contributed liner notes for Midnight Oil’s Overflow Tank box set.

BOOK