RIP Archie Roach

Archie's family has given permission for his name, image and music to be used.

The last time I saw Archie Roach perform was in March. It was in one of the big tents at the Port Fairy Folk Festival - the same year that a stage was named in his honour.

As we listened in awed silence to the stories he told between his songs, the sound of his oxygen pump hissed through the PA system, amplified by the mic. He spoke in a frail, halting way, his voice trembling under the weight of the health problems that had plagued him for the last decade. 

But when he sang, his voice came from another place. It was rich, powerful and strong, soaring in that beautifully distinctive wide vibrato he's famed for, belying the image of the man before us who had to sit to perform and relied on a contraption to help him breathe. 

This image of Archie sticks in my mind because it's the best analogy I can think of right now for the man he was. He was a man who fought against adversity to share his message. No matter what life threw at him - and it threw a lot - Archie kept going. When he got knocked down, he got back up and sang his song. Even as his health faded, he worked even harder to share his truth, to inspire us all, to leave a lasting legacy of hope through song and story.

Every performance Archie gave was a deep experience, but some have taken on mythic status. The one in 1990, where he played just two songs opening for Paul Kelly at the Melbourne Concert Hall, his perhaps the most legendary. 

The second song was Took The Children Away - a song that never fails to make me cry, and is his best known track. 

"When the song finished, there was dead silence," Paul told Double J in 2019. 

"(Archie) thought that he bombed and just turned and walked off stage.

"As he was he was walking off, the applause started to build and build. 

"The audience had been so stunned that it had taken them a while to respond."

It was the birth of a legend. Later that year, Archie would work with Paul Kelly and Steve Connolly to record Charcoal Lane. The following year he won two ARIA Awards. And so his legend grew.

The other performance that looms large in his legacy came at the Port Fairy Folk Festival in 2010, where he was booked to perform alongside his wife and soul mate Ruby Hunter. 

Less than a month before the gig, Ruby passed away. She was just 54. 

Archie was devastated. He and Ruby had met nearly 40 years prior as homeless teenagers and been inseparable ever since. Archie told me Ruby's passing had felt like he'd lost a part of himself.

Ruby's funeral was held on March 5. Despite the enormous grief that weighed on his heart, Archie turned up at the Folkie the following day and performed, with an empty stool and mic stand set up next to him where Ruby would have been.

"You'll have to bear me up, I can’t do this without you," he told the audience.

"I need you today."

The concert became a tribute to Ruby, with Archie breaking down during River Song, a song he wrote with Ruby during a camping trip. He left the stage to a standing ovation that lasted long after he was gone, and was followed by a minute's silence for Ruby.

Later that year, Archie suffered a stroke, and the following year he was diagnosed with lung cancer.

But nothing could keep him down. He had a message to deliver to the world and wasn't going to rest until he'd delivered it. As soon as he was able, he headed into the studio to make Into The Bloodstream, one of many incredible albums in a back catalogue full of great records.

In July 2012, I got a phone call from my friend Lyn, inviting me to be an extra in Archie's new film clip. It was being filmed at the Crossley Hall, just up the road from the house where Archie would spend the last decade or so of his life.

Lyn neglected to tell me I was supposed to dress in old-style clothes circa the '40s or '50s. I turned up in my t-shirt and Converse. The costume lady rolled her eyes at me, and thrust a jacket into my hands. "Put this on," she said, before whisking herself away to more important things.

In between takes and set-ups, I sat at a table in my borrowed jacket with Archie, Jack Charles and Shane Howard, feeling unworthy and out of my depth as I interviewed them all for the paper where I worked. Archie told me about how his recent turmoil and triggered an expansion of his philosophy.

"A lot of my music just dealt with pain and sorrow - now it’s about joy and getting on with life," he said.

I barely made the cut in the clip, probably because of my Converse. That's me, bottom left-hand corner at the three-minute mark.

But I got to spend a lot of the afternoon watching Archie standing on the little Crossley Hall stage in his dapper suit, lip-synching to Song To Sing. Every time the camera rolled, it felt like I was in church, and Archie was the minister delivering a sermon. 

"When you are down, and you're feeling lonely,

"You've just got to breathe, you've got to believe,

"Just get up off the ground,

"You know you're not the only one down on your knees,

"Asking to be free from all your pain,

"Well come on everybody, you've got a song to sing."

After our scenes were done, Lyn came up to me. "You can sing," she said, "come with me."

Still wearing my borrowed jacket from Wardrobe, Lyn led me into the neighbouring church, St Brigid's, where Archie's producer Craig Pilkington had set up his recording gear. Before I knew it, I was part of a makeshift choir of south-west locals, adding our voices to Archie's soon-to-be-released album. Singing along to those songs, in the resounding reverb of that church, is an experience I'll never forget.

Today, listening back to those songs, and indeed much of Archie's back catalogue, I'm struck by a singular thought - almost every song now sounds like a self-penned eulogy. Archie was so focused on sharing his story, whether it was about life on the mission or on the streets or just life in general, that he imbued the majority of his songs with his truth and his message.

And that message was one of hope, usually amid sadness. His songs are often about finding a way through the darkness and the adversity, or about an acceptance of things we endure, and how those heavy hammer blows can make the sharpest sword. Archie was stolen, then homeless, and then a teenage alcoholic living on the streets. He suffered at the hands of prejudice and racism and a system stacked against him, but he rallied, turned his life around, and became a treasured Australian musician and an icon, not just for indigenous people, but for everyone. Later, he lost the love of his life and half of one of his lungs, but still he battled to tell his truth. 

In the final decade of his life, he released more albums than he did in the previous three. In the last few years, he also wrote a book, put out a live compilation, started a foundation to support young indigenous musicians, toured as much as his health allowed, and even began a YouTube series called Uncle Archie's Kitchen Table Yarns. It was as if he saw the end approaching, and realised he still had too much left to achieve; he had too many songs left to sing, too many stories to tell.

What he seemed to be trying to achieve was to leave behind a legacy of stories and culture to influence generations to come. It's a goal he achieved, and then some. He was working to inspire people with his message; a message present in so much of his music, but perhaps best exemplified by the title track from his 2016 album Let Love Rule.

"Let love rule

"Let it guide us through the night

"That we may stay together

"And keep our spirits calm."

Rest in power, Uncle Archie. I truly hope you're back with Ruby in the Dreamtime now. Your legacy will live on. Thank you.