DAWN

Acclaimed indigenous vocalist Emma Donovan and
Melbourne rhythm combo The PutBacks come
together to bring you Dawn, an LP of hard hitting
and heartfelt soul songs telling stories of grief,
struggle and redemption, Dawn is a gritty, uniquely
Australian record, simultaneously classic and
contemporary, The songwriting is in turns
optimistic, angry and melancholic, and on occasions bruisingly honest, The music is fluid, live and raw,
recorded in one room on eight channels of analog tape and the electric connection between Emma and the
band comes through in every beat.
Dawn takes some cues from the burgeoning soul revival, but it's a far looser interpretation than many
releases in the style, This is no attempt at reviving a bygone era, There's no horn section, There's more rock
in there, There's more country in there, There's more, in Emma's words, "blackfella music" in there, The
songwriting is more akin to classic Aboriginal bands like Coloured Stone than it is to Sharon Jones, The
sentiment is personal, for both Emma and the band, and forward looking, rather than revivalist, Shades of
every soul record you ever liked sneak through: Al Green's Hi Records era' Check, Aretha's Classic Atlantic
recordings' Check, Stacks of Stax' Check, It's all there, but all different, Dawn is it's own thing, indigenous
Australian soul, From the ferocious opening salvo of Black Woman to the sweet and gentle comedown of
Over Under Away, Dawn is above all a journey through Emma's life written in song.
Emma grew up singing church songs with her maternal grandparents on the North coast of New South
Wales, Her first secular gigs were singing in The Donovans, 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 Tamworth Country
Music Festival, but she always yearned for the bluesier tones of her Father's record collection, full of
American artists like Laverne Baker and Etta James and Indigenous Australian artists like No Fixed Address
and Archie Roach.
Years later, after touring and recording with many of the mainstays of Indigenous music and developing as a
solo artist in her own right, Emma met members of The PutBacks, and finally she found a band with the gritty
blues soaked tones she had been looking for, She also found, in PutBacks bassist Mick Meagher, a co-writer
and collaborator on the the soul songs she had been waiting a lifetime to write and sing, The results are well
worth the wait and hopefully, only mark the beginning of this oh-so-right collaboration.