IAN McNamara might be all over Australia each Sunday on the ABC Radio network, but on Saturday he’ll be in Tamworth entertaining the locals.
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Macca is hitting the road with his Gumboot Band and his musical mate Digger Revell – “the man with the big hat” – on a 12-month national concert tour to celebrate more than 30 years of Australia All Over, the ABC Sunday morning radio show that connects Aussies all over the nation and around the world.
“Being a reporter is a wonderful way to get job satisfaction,” he said.
“You talk to different people every day and get to travel all over Australia, which ultimately became my life. I suppose the travelling started much earlier when I was a musician. You often had to travel to get work, a bit like a shearer or a contract harvester.”
The Macca concert tour, which started in Gosford in October and zig-zags across the country to finish in Tasmania in September 2013, will showcase the songs that have touched him and his listeners, spin a yarn or two and bring to the stage his love of country that makes Australia All Over part of the Sunday morning ritual for so many people.
“The Sunday morning show has become the focus of my life, really – not only because I enjoy revealing some of the characters of Australia, but also because I have made so many wonderful friends,” he said.
As he travels the country, Macca will be joined by special guests, singing songs from his best-selling top 100 CD.
And, just like Sunday morning, you never know who will show up.
Macca said the real privilege of what he did was being taken into the confidence of so many Australians and then meeting them at outside broadcasts or concerts.
His concert in Tamworth on Saturday will be a night of music, song and laughter, including a video montage of Macca’s many outside broadcasts, and he might just reprise his rock ‘n’ roll days as one of Col Joye’s Joy Boys.