Warren Fahey AM
Warren Fahey AM
Winner of the 2010 Don Banks Music Award (among many others), Warren has been out there exploring the Australian identity through music and our cultural history for quite a few decades now. He is well known as an Australian folklore collector, cultural historian, author, actor, broadcaster, record and concert producer, visual artist, songwriter, and performer of Australian traditional and related historical music. He is the founder of Folkways Music (1973), Larrikin Records (1974) and a folk music ensemble, the Larrikins (1975).* His folklore recordings and Larrikin Record Library have been acquired by the National Library of Australia.
Would you please tell us about your connection to Bondi?
“My life has been intrinsically linked to Bondi. After my mother’s family fled Europe in the early 1930s they lived in Wellington Street - fifteen half-starving in the one house! My grandpa Sid had a barrow stall in front of Mark Foy's department store where he sold fruit and flowers. Years later I learnt that the older kids, (my mother was the eldest of nine), got up at 3.30 am, walked to Bellevue Hill where they ‘collected’ flowers from private gardens. At home they made them into bundles to sell! As a young kid I was a very keen body surfer and Tamarama and Bondi were my regular beat. Twenty-five years ago I was anointed godfather to Bondi local Rebel Penfold Russell’s son and along with it I got a key to their beachside home. Whenever they are travelling I am in residence. I am staying for the next six weeks and living like a local.”
We wondered what motivates someone so accomplished:
“I am fortunate that I am a self-motivator. After leaving the music industry in 2001 I retired - and since that day, I have never worked so hard in my life! My life as a cultural historian finds me at my desk at 8.30am until around 6pm. I am always creating projects - I have 28 published books, released hundreds of music albums (I still operate independent label Rouseabout https://www.undercovermusic.com.au/), give talks, occasionally perform and also make historical video documentaries. Oh yes, and when I am not impersonating a Bondi local, I live in Elizabeth Bay and co-administer the area’s equivalent of the Bondi Observer - https://www.facebook.com/groups/PottsPointers There’s not enough hours in the day!
How do you spend the first hour of your day?
“I learned years ago that I am a fowl, not an owl. I wake with the dawn and my brain immediately jump-starts into gear. I am the irritating type who sings in the shower and the older I get the more I value energy.”
Is there one thing that you’d like people to know about you?
“I suspect I am a conundrum and not easily pigeonholed. If anyone is curious as to what I do - check out my website www.warrenfahey.com.au It's recently been revamped and offers hundreds of historic music tracks, many of my early ABC radio programs, videos, and an amazing collection of what I describe as ‘curious’ history. Next week I launch a series of twelve video documentaries of Outback Stories about drovers, stockmen, shearers, bullockies and even a film on bush couture. https://warrenfahey.com.au/outback-stories/”
*Thanks Wikipedia
