Hitting the corrugated highway with John Schumann

Back in 1983, Redgum recorded one of Australia’s most iconic live albums, Caught in the Act, at Rose, Shamrock and Thistle in Sydney. Now, over forty years later, sold-out performances of The Redgum Years across Australia whipped up demand for a new live record, The Corrugated Highway, which was recorded over two nights in Melbourne in August. Now to celebrate, frontman John Schumann and the Vagabond Crew are setting out on The Corrugated Highway Tour, hitting Astor Theatre on Sunday, November 22, with tickets on sale now. NATASHA PAUL caught up with John Schumann to find out how the meaning behind the music remains as relevant today as when the songs were first written.

Congratulations on heading on tour to celebrate the release of your new live album, The Corrugated Highway! How does it feel to be on the road and performing in WA? 

Being on the road is nothing new for The Vagabond Crew! While we no longer do six nights a week for three months at a stretch—thank God—we get out and about a fair bit. Pretty exciting to be coming to Perth with The Redgum Years, though. Ever since we started to do it, I’ve had a gratifying number of people emailing and messaging me asking when we’re coming to WA. It’s pretty exciting for us because we haven’t brought this particular Vagabond Crew performance to WA, so everyone who comes will be seeing it for the first time.

As part of Redgum, you previously recorded the iconic live album Caught in the Act. Now, almost forty years later, you’ve recorded another live album! What made you decide to continue the tradition with The Corrugated Highway?

It’s a good question. The Vagabond Crew is a pretty accomplished band in the studio and on stage, but I think, like most good concert acts, we’re at our best in front of an audience. There’s that indefinable electricity that sparks between the band and the audience, and we wanted to see if we could catch that on the record. In all humility, I think we have. I’ve never been one of those lead singers who doesn’t say anything to the audience other than “….here’s a little song you might remember, and it goes something like this…”

I really believe that the audience wants to hear the stories behind the songs and the reason they were written. And I’ve always been a talker—that was obvious on Caught in the Act, so I guess that Corrugated Highway is the other bookend. I also think there’s a part of me that wants to put The Redgum Years to bed and get back to my solo and my Vagabond Crew catalogue. I mean, that said, we’ll always do Redgum songs in our shows, of course, because I wrote a little less than half of them. I suppose it’s also for those old Redgum fans who haven’t been able to get to a show for one reason or another. So, really, all those reasons… I hope that helps!

Tell us a bit about the experience of recording The Corrugated Highway over two nights at Melbourne’s Memo Music Hall this year.

The Memo Music Hall is one of our favourite venues in Australia. I know it’s been said before, but whenever we play there, it feels like we’re coming home—even though we’re from Adelaide. We recorded two shows there—one after the other, both pretty well sold out. A Saturday night and a matinee on Sunday afternoon. The crew made it really easy. Even though our production boss, Mark Kraus, wasn’t able to be with us, he liaised really heavily with the recording crew on the day. Shane Nicholson, who is a mate and has also worked with me on almost everything I’ve recorded since Hughie (Hugh McDonald) died in 2016, set it all up with Tom Strode, the recording engineer.

Interestingly enough, although we’re very experienced, it was a little nerve-wracking to come on stage and see all this extra recording gear—microphones and leads and lines and stuff—where they wouldn’t ordinarily be on our stage. In truth, I think we were a bit tentative on Saturday night even though the recording is absolutely fine. But at the Sunday matinee, I guess we walked on stage and thought, “Fuck it. We’ve got one in the can, so let’s just get on with doing what we do best,” and we forgot about the fact we were being recorded. When Shane got both performances in his mixing studio, it was pretty clear to him that the Sunday show had the best performances—mostly—though the audience vibe at both shows was absolutely fantastic.

You’ve sold out shows across Australia for your tribute concert tour, The Redgum Years. How has the experience of revisiting and performing old Redgum classics for an audience been? 

I’m not sure I am crazy about the word “tribute”—though I know what you mean. Frankly, the whole tribute movement drives me crackers—a whole lot of people pretending to be other people. Give me a break! But, I guess The Redgum Years is a tribute of sorts—a tribute to the songs and the audiences back in the day who came to the shows and bought the records and pushed Redgum into the first division of the music industry.

Originally, I really didn’t want to revisit the Redgum stuff—other than the songs that I wrote myself—because I felt that Redgum had a particularly special place in the music industry and I didn’t want to dishonour that. Redgum came from Adelaide, and most of the opinionated music industry commentators—always from the eastern states—have tended to overlook the fact that we were the first band to sing our songs in an unmistakable Australian accent. Combine that with our focus on politics and our insistence that we place our songs in an Australian geographic context, and we really did break down barriers. Great Australian artists like Midnight Oil and Paul Kelly soon followed, but those initial footprints were ours, and that tends to get ignored because, well, we were from Adelaide rather than Sydney or Melbourne.

So for all those reasons. I really did want to respect the Redgum brand and the band’s achievements. It was the Vagabond Crew members themselves who persuaded me that we could revisit these songs, respectfully and honestly, by calling it “John Schumann and the Vagabond Crew present “The Redgum Years.”

But to your initial question: when we started to rehearse the songs, update them a little, and make them ours—while respecting very much the originals—it became very clear to me that in most cases the songs work just as hard today as they did when we wrote and recorded them back in the day. That was a bit frightening and disappointing in one way for me because I’d hoped that the social, political and cultural changes we were promoting in our songs were bedded down in Australian society. But, as I said, I soon realised that there was still work for the songs to do and the battles that we thought we’d won—along with Goanna, PK, the Oils, etc.—were just battles. The war is still raging for Indigenous Australia, for the environment, for truth, justice, equality, compassion—all the really important things.

The Corrugated Highway album features classic Redgum songs with updated lyrics to reflect our contemporary world, such as Trump, right-wing politics, climate change and more. Can you tell us a bit about the decision to revise the lyrics? 

I thought it was important to maintain much of the fabric of the original songs for the reasons I’ve outlined above. However, the temptation to talk about Trump, right-wing idiots on television and on the radio, the denial of climate change, and injustices being done nationally and internationally was too strong to resist. Some of the lyric changes are designed to elicit a laugh; some of them are very pointed and real and bring the original intent of those songs kicking and screaming into the 21st century.

What can audiences look forward to with the upcoming WA show? Have you got any surprises in store? 

I think the audiences can expect some pretty faithful renditions, some “Crewed-up” arrangements which give the songs new life, songs to make you laugh, songs to make you cry, and songs to make you think. There’ll also be some interesting stories and insights about how the songs came about as well as bits and pieces of Redgum history and Australian history that people don’t know.

We are also including a new, non-Redgum song called Fishing Net in the Rain. It’s a co-write with my manager Ivan Tanner. Ivan wrote the music, and I wrote the lyrics. We released it just before Anzac Day this year. It’s an important story, bolting a human face on to the Royal Commission into Veteran Suicide.

One thing that might surprise people is the fact that we’re not going to put Corrugated Highway up on the streaming services, at least for the foreseeable future. So, until we get the dedicated website up and happening, the CDs and vinyls will only be available at the gigs.

Like a lot of Australian artists, we’re tired of getting ripped off, and we think the true fans will support Australian music by buying this record—along with records by other Australian artists. I’m calling on the Government to do something about it.

John Schumann and the Vagabond Crew’s The Corrugated Highway Tour hits Astor Theatre on Sunday, November 22, 2025. Tickets are on sale now from astortheatreperth.com