That's The Spirit

Over the last 13 years, Xavier Rudd has become one of the most iconic musicians in Australia. There's a couple of reasons for his idiosyncrasy: his ever-expanding one-man band setup; his poetic lyricism, steeped in traditional lore; his activism for Indigenous rights; and his passionate, almost obsessive, tie to the land, and his hope that others will eventually share that tie.

Last year, Rudd released his seventh studio album, Spirit Bird. It was a huge success, but then again, Xavier Rudd albums usually are; it marked his fourth top ten Australian chart position in as many releases. While there's always deep, resonant meaning in Rudd's songs, Spirit Bird is something of a profound awakening in the man. The story goes that, on a trip up north, Rudd was faced with a huge old galah sitting on a tree. The way that the bird's eyes pierced him gave him the name for the album. Fanciful stuff, you may think, but it's as important to Rudd as anything else has been in his life, to hear his words.

“Well, I guess it's a documentation of the time, really,” Rudd says from Sacramento, California, where he's currently touring with kindred spirits Donavon Frankenreiter and Nahko & Medicine For The People. “Spirit Bird really represents the last few years leading up to its release. It was all about... well, not all about, but a huge influence on the record was my time in The Kimberly. I started going up there in support of the James Price Point issue. And then from there, ended up on some pretty powerful personal journeys that started to come through pretty strong in the spirit of that place.

“I kinda feel like it was a great gift,” he says. “It's hard to explain that, but I'd been through a lot of changes in my life, and over the last five years I've been taught some interesting lessons, you know? Like, high highs and low lows, and stuff that I needed to digest and work through. It was all about finding myself and finding balance. And The Kimberly and the whole spirit bird thing was a big part of that. I feel like now, I'm coming to an interesting place where I'm... I don't know. Finding a sense of balance that I never really had, I guess. I feel like I'm just beginning in a lot of ways.”

The resulting album ably reflects the change that Rudd went through. It's incredibly dualistic in nature; past and future, despair and hope, love and loss. It's all on there in some form, whether it be the paean to ancestors in the title track, or the rousing travel song Follow The Sun. A year on from its release, and with its success pushing him around the world (the current US tour follows a European one earlier this year), it's still as powerful now. “The things that happened to me up there, you know, it's not a definite picture, it's kind of like a blur,” Rudd says. “It's almost like a dream, now that I look back at it. It was all these places and these stories that just seemed to appear. They were like memories, but they weren't my memories. I'll never really be able to explain that, and I don't know what a lot of it meant. But I am a musician – I write songs – and what came out of that place, a lot of the music was a conduit of that.”

Talking to Rudd, his passion and earnestness of message is clear; he truly believes in what he's saying. This, understandably, rubs people the wrong way sometimes. His very active association with the protests against the James Price Point project – as well as other developments – and his constant attempts to bring Indigenous issues to the fore are mistakenly seen as preaching, a lot of the time. This scribe has admittedly been guilty of that. But, in truth, Rudd's view could not be more opposite. Hell, Bow Down is basically all about admitting that we all have busy lives, but that we can make a change if we want to. “Look, I don't really set out to give anyone a message,” Rudd argues when quizzed on the subject. “My music is a reflection of how I feel, and what's coming through me. If someone else can relate to that on their journey, I mean that's great and that gives me confidence in knowing that what I'm doing is good. But by no means am I setting out to force that down people's throats, because the kind of things I'm talking about have to be genuinely felt, you know? You can't fake it.”

With the success of his last album, Xavier Rudd has found a new strength and a new avenue to travel the world and bring it to the multitudes. The “profound experiences” he went through in The Kimberley are down on tape, leaving him room to explore new territory. Where he goes from here is anyone's guess. “I know I'll be doing this 'til I'm an old silver dog,” Rudd laughs when asked just how many stories he thinks he has left in them. “I mean, I'm travelling around the US right now, playing all these shows, y'know, and basically making people happy. And then I get to go home and do the same thing. What other jobs let you do that? I know I'm real lucky to be in the position I'm in. Yeah, it's something I'm sure I'll be doing this 'til I die.” That's one thing, thankfully, that won't change in Xavier Rudd's life.