Adelaide band The Borderers call it a day, prepare for farewell show at The Gov
After a tumultuous few years post-Covid, SA music institution The Borderers will stop live performing to follow a different calling.
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How do The Borderers settle on the 20 or so songs for their final gig when they have a list of around 200 to choose from?
The selection is underway but the culling will be cruel because, after three decades, there are so many audience favourites.
February 18 at The Gov promises to be quite an event, given the band’s long association with the live-music pub at Hindmarsh, which happens to be where the golden-voiced singer Alex Alexander, from Belfast, met her Scottish musician husband-to-be, Jim Paterson.
“Alex and I met at The Gov and the date that we picked for the last show is the date that we met there 30 years ago,” Paterson says.
“The Gov, they’ve been going for 31 years and Richard Tonkin, part of the Tonkin family (who owns The Gov), was in The Borderers for the first three years, so we used to rehearse there and jam there from the very beginning.
“It’s always been part of our DNA.”
The decision to disband came from different directions, some negative and others positive. Covid was a big factor because The Borderers thrive on the live music circuit but work came to a halt, including festivals like the Port Fairy Folk Festival where they were regulars (and were voted “favourite band” by the public at the festival each of the 10 times they played).
“We couldn’t perform for two or three years, and we would normally have sold around 100,000 CDs but I don’t think we’ve sold 10,000 in the last five years,” Paterson says.
“At festivals you would sell 800 in one weekend but now you can’t sell eight in five years.”
That was definitely one of the negatives.
End-of-year royalties evaporated as well which sent their income into free fall.
With APRA sales gone, CD sales dwindling and live venues shut, The Borderers were grounded. Even since venues reopened after Covid, nothing has been like it was, and they are four years older.
“You know, we’re 61 now and going around the world performing just seems harder,” Paterson says.
“And we don’t need to have the ego thing any more; going onstage, a big part of it is ego, and acclaim.”
On the positive side, Paterson’s original music film about the extraordinary life of Irish Australian boxer Les Darcy has progressed with an unnamed UK billionaire investor on board as a backer.
They are working closely with Los Angeles director Paul Boyd, a Glaswegian with experience in Hollywood music filmmaking that includes the feature Endless Love, with Shania Twain and Lionel Richie.
Boyd also works with Dave Stewart from The Eurythmics and there is a hope that Stewart might become involved.
“I somehow tracked (Boyd) down and he’s written the script and he’s going to direct the movie,” Paterson says.
“The focus is on the love story not on the boxing – people around the world will relate to that – it’s a brilliant story, a love story of a selfless boy who died at 21.”
Their life focus has also shifted and they see the next chapter as a time of giving back.
In a way, that has already begun with Paterson spending the past few years volunteering at Teen Challenge which he was drawn to by the suicide of Alex’s son and his stepson, Rowan, when he was 18.
“Our son died 14 years ago and at Teen Challenge there’s lots of guys like him, and he would have benefited from that but he just never got the chance,” Paterson says.
“It’s only been in the last two or three years, I just felt a different calling, instead of it being about us.”
Alexander and Paterson both have faith.
Alexander reconnected with hers but for Paterson, who once spent time with the Orange People and their Indian mystic guru Bhagwan Rajneesh, it was something new.
Since then, Paterson’s faith has only strengthened and he was baptised again just a few months ago, calling his faith a direct link to God.
“I take religion out of it,” he says.
“My dad and my big brother and my uncle all died in the one week a few years ago and I couldn’t go back to the funeral so I went up to Cairns and something amazing happened up there, I had a bit of a transformation and a realisation.”
Being famous, gaining money and recognition and being popular lost its meaning and he wants to serve, rather than be served, as does Alexander.
“She runs a bereavement group for suicide support and I’ve been mentoring NDIS clients and doing a thing on Wednesday nights at a church where there’s ex alcoholics and drug addicts who have found God,” he says.
They have turned their attention outwards and want to make their lives about other people. Another project involves securing tiny homes for older victims of domestic violence and they have businesses lined up as backers while they search for suitable land.
“It’s just a bigger picture we’re trying to do now, you know,” Paterson says.
But their music will not be silenced.
There is the Les Darcy film and they are also hoping to start a gospel group called The Wellbeing Social Club to bring people together and counter the social disconnection brought about by tech-oriented modern life.
“We are trying to start a new group where we can have talks about mental health and sing, so it’s not all about ego then, it’s about bringing the community together,” he says. “This is a plan for the future.”
Their Celtic wildness and moving, joyous performances will be a loss to the music scene and The Borderers’ final show will be one for the ages at a venue dedicated to original music. Over the course of a long last gig, they will be joined by a pipe band, Scottish and Irish dancers and a line-up of special guests.
“People are flying in from all over the country so it’s pretty good,” Paterson says.
The last song is almost guaranteed to bring tears. They will close with We’ll Meet Again, a moving and deeply sentimental song from the late 1930s made famous during the heartbreak of World War II. Paterson says they heard Johnny Cash sing it which gave it a new take and it was almost universally loved.
Finishing will be sad but Paterson is convinced there is a bigger plan for the couple than crowd adoration.
They also consider themselves fortunate to have made a successful career out of entertaining people with music, an achievement in itself.
“My daughter (Asia) said that to me this morning, she said, ‘Dad you should be proud of that’ because when I got here, I mean I had $1 and when I met Alex, she bought me a bagel and a drink – so we haven’t done badly,” he says.
The film is yet to come but the Darcy clan was Irish and the movie will be filled with original Celtic music from The Borderers.
Paterson says their music will live on in a new way.
“The songs are really good, written by Alex and I,” Paterson says.
“I reckon The Borderers’ music will be out there in the next couple of years in the movie.”
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