Goanna to tour Australia for 40th anniversary of Solid Rock and Spirit of Place

Since disbanding in 1987, Goanna’s performances have been few and far between, but the Geelong-born rock band will tour nationally from June to mark the 40th anniversary of its debut.

The Goanna gang … Graham Davidge, Richard Tankard, Marcia Howard, Ruben Shannon, Shane Howard, Marcus Ryan and Rose Bygrave. Picture: Jay Town

On the 40th anniversary of the release of its most iconic song and accompanying album, Geelong-born rock band Goanna has announced a 21-date national tour to begin in June.

Best known for its distinctive Indigenous land rights-themed hit Solid Rock, Goanna formed in 1977 and disbanded in 1987 with just two albums to its name, including its multi-platinum 1982 debut Spirit of Place.

Since then, frontman Shane Howard, 67, has continued to work as a singer and songwriter who has regularly played a few tracks from that album in his solo sets, including Razor’s Edge and Let the Franklin Flow, but he hadn’t heard the other songs in decades – until recently.

“I fell in love with that album again,” he told The Australian. “There’s a lot of hurt attached to the record, with the demise of Goanna – but I heard all that youthful optimism, and I thought, ‘F..k it: what we were doing then was right. It was good’.

“Those songs work; they still hold true. As an old man, I’m able to look back and go, ‘The things that we said in that frisson of youthful vigour? They hold truer now’.

“It’s a bit like [Irish writer] Samuel Beckett: at 85, he said, ‘I wouldn’t want my youth back, not with the fire in me now.’ That’s how I feel about things.”

Goanna rehearsing in Drysdale. Back row: Richard Tankard, Ruben Shannon, and Marcus Ryan. Front row: Rose Bygrave, Shane Howard, Marcia Howard and Graham Davidge. Picture Jay Town

Since disbanding, Goanna’s performances have been few and far between: one concert in 1998 for the Melbourne International Arts Festival, and one in Geelong in 2002 at a benefit for Balinese victims of the Bali bombing.

This year, though, has already seen a flurry of activity. On Sunday at WOMADelaide festival, Howard was joined on stage by his longtime bandmates: his sister Marcia Howard and Roslyn Bygrave, as well as Spirit of Place guitarist Graham Davidge and new members Ruben Shannon (bass), Richard Tankard (keys) and Marcus Ryan (drums).

A week prior, the group played its first major concert in 20 years while supporting Midnight Oil at Mt Duneed Estate near Geelong.

Goanna has two more tour dates with the Sydney-born rock band – which is midway through its final national tour in support of its 13th album, Resist – at Sunshine Coast Stadium on April 9 and in the Swan Valley, at a date to be confirmed once WA’s current concert restrictions are lifted.

In the latter half of this year, meanwhile, Goanna will reprise Spirit of Place across about 25 dates from the Top End to Tasmania.

“I don’t want to go banging a drum and getting up on a soapbox, but I want to sing the songs,” said Howard. “I know there’s lots of people out there who feel the same way.

“Half a million people bought that album. They gave me a career as an artist; they gave us a career as artists, and we were pretty much a working-class band from southwest Victoria. It’s a great privilege to be an artist for your entire career, so the tour is a way to say ‘thank you’ to a lot of people.”

Goanna’s national tour will begin in Cairns on June 25, finishing on November 6 in Ballarat.