Emma Donovan
In many ways Til My Song is Done is a return home for Emma Donovan. A getting back to the sounds of country, with the feeling of being on Country.
Before her soul-funk and gospel output with The Putbacks, before her Black Arm Band years and even before the Stiff Gins, there were Emma Donovan outfits of silk and sequins and two-song sets of the biggest country hits.
Little Emma, the 10-years old Aboriginal girl with prodigious talent, would take the stage at the Yarra Bay Sailing Club near La Perouse in Sydney to belt out Loretta Lynne and Tammy Wynette songs, accompanied by the likes of the Koori King of Country himself, Roger Knox, or Col Hardy, the first Aboriginal artist to win a Golden Guitar in 1973.
Nan and pop, Micko and Aileen Donovan, renowned in their own right on the country music circuit, had all the connections with Indigenous country music royalty, says Donovan. Just like they had all the cassettes.
“We’d be waiting for nan and pop to visit because we knew the latest cassette of Uncle Roger or Uncle Col would be travelling down to western Sydney from Macksville with them. A lot of Uncle Rogers gospel music already meant a lot to me. Those cassettes were like gold!”
And there was Little Emma at 11-years old, travelling out to Tamworth with nan and pop and the family country music band, The Donovans, which comprised of Little Emma’s five uncles and her mother Agnes.
It was Agnes that stitched the silk and sequins over the next half dozen years into diamanté-flash stage outfits for Little Emma to wear in the music festival’s busking competitions and talent quests.
“I was pretty shy growing up as a kid, so for mum to style me up in all the little outfits, I’d be like, ‘Oh, shame. Take me.’ But once I’d sing, and once I’d be there and doing a song, it was different,” says Donovan.
Armfuls of winner’s trophies came her way, but eventually so too did a time when 16-years old Emma began to think country music was all too daggy. After all, Christine Anu, Lauryn Hill and Maria Carey weren’t getting around singing country, were they?
Within a couple years, Donovan had co-founded The Stiff Gins, and shortly afterwards went on to sing with the Black Arm Band, and in collaboration with her heroes Archie Roach, Ruby Hunter, Christine Anu, Yothu Yindi and Paul Kelly.