Midnight Oil are bringing their Makarrata Live tour to the Hunter Valley in March to rock our collective socks off in honour of the band's long-time bass player Bones Hillman.
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The band have scheduled a gig at Pokolbin's Hope Estate on March 13, having last performed there in 2017 to a sell-out crowd.
Makarrata is a Yolngu word meaning "coming together after a struggle" and inspired the mini-album recorded by the Oils - with Hillman - last year. The Makarrata Project debuted at number one on the ARIA charts and its lyrics address the displacement of First Nations people.
The end goal is to further reconciliation between First Nations and non-Indigenous Australians.
Midnight Oil will be joined on stage by First Nations collaborators who will perform songs from The Makarrata Project plus iconic songs from throughout the band's career.
If you happened to catch Midnight Oil's stirring live performance of First Nation on ABC TV's The Sound recently with Jessica Mauboy and Tasman Keith, you will know that audiences are in for a treat.
The lyrics are as hard-hitting and poignant as anything the Oils have written to date.
"Everyone's looking forward to seeing what shape all the music from different eras takes as those gifted First Nations singers add their voices to it live," the band's guitarist and keyboard player Jim Moginie said.
"We've never done anything like this so it feels good to still be pushing the envelope a bit."
The Makarrata Live tour will, though, be bittersweet for the band who are still coming to terms with Hillman's passing.
"Bones said to us 'You've got to keep playing, no matter what' but we will truly, truly miss him," singer Peter Garrett said.
Fortunately, Hillman lived to learn that The Makarrata Project he was so proud of had debuted at the top of the ARIA charts. Midnight Oil last achieved this with the release of Blue Sky Mining in 1990.
"Bonesy was very determined to do a Sinatra and do things his way, which he did, and he left a great legacy as a beautiful man, a wonderful singer, a fine musician, and a brother," Garrett said.
Many of Midnight Oil's most loved songs, like Beds Are Burning, The Dead Heart and Truganini, challenge listeners about their understanding of Australia's history. That trend continues with The Makarrata Project.
"Midnight Oil starts from the point of having an acute and mindful interest in the place that we grew up, and the history of the country that we started touring in," Garrett said.
"Because we've never really had our eye on the prize as such, we have to make a sound that still rattles our cage. We've never spent much time thinking about what happens after that."
Read more: Midnight Oil rock the Valley
The intent has never been, he says, to convince anyone of anything. Rather, the lyrics are written with the aim of broadening people's understanding of First Nations people and their experiences.
"An audience can come at Midnight Oil from any angle they want - whatever works for them," Garrett explained.
"That's their right, as much as our right is to make the music we want to make. But I don't think you can be a Midnight Oil fan and at some point not realise what we're on about. We want to create a storm of music and through that, we want to thread thoughts and words and ideas and stories, and then find ways to push back against what we call the forces of greed.
"We're happy to take all those steps and people don't have to come with us all the way but if they do, great."
It's not enough for a country such as Australia to "paper over the cracks" when they appear. We need to be - and do - better than that.
"To be a truly unified nation we have to get right," Garrett said.
"The Makarrata Project is all about asking people to join us again in this new era where the possibilities are so great for a proper settlement to take place.
"When you bring people together and you tell the truth, and you don't play games and protect your own self interests, then you can take those steps forward.
"If you don't do that then you just end up with a festering sore, and that is not good for the soul of the country."
Catch Midnight Oil at Hope Estate on March 13. General public tickets are on sale at 2pm on December 16 via frontiertouring.com/midnightoil. Presale starts December 14: Midnight Oil members from 11am; Frontier and A Day on the Green members from noon.
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