Putting on a stirring rendition of The Man in Black would be a big ask for any performer.
Yet over the past six years, Daniel Thompson has built a national reputation touring the country with his Johnny Cash tribute act, bringing the famed songwriter’s black-as-tar country-folk to audiences in every state.
His new tour, The Greats of 70’s Country Music, sees him drop the character for a time to focus more broadly on the music he loves.
“It’s kind of given me an idea of what people want to hear, and the way to put a show together, certainly,” Thompson said of his experience impersonating Johnny Cash.
There’s a clear line of separation between Johnny Cash and country music of the 70’s: Cash was an instrumental element of the development of country, rock and roll, and folk music in that time.
The music Thompson is playing – John Denver, Kenny Rogers, Dolly Parton – also has the same classic appeal as Cash, and is treasured by fans just as much, another exciting aspect for Thompson.
“We’ve been throughout WA a heap of times, down to Albany and then back up, and we just decided to give the Johnny Cash thing up for a little while,” he said.
“When it come time to sort of think what I was going to do this year, I sort of sat down and just wrote down the songs that I know and the things that I love. It all sort of slotted in to this 70’s era.”
While it may be called The Greats of 70’s Country Music, Thompson’s tour could be seen as more of a general reflection of the music of the decade. Artists like Dolly Parton and Johnny Cash himself garnered mainstream success in the 1970’s, and the lines between what was country, rock or folk music were blurred.
“There weren’t sort of clear lines as to what certain genres of music were back then,” Thompson said.
“Some people might associate Dr Hook as pop or rock, but there was no clear difference between that or what was what back then. I think that made it a really great era for music, I think.
“I was actually trying to think of why I love this music so much the other day, and I think it’s exactly that. I grew up listening to The Beatles and The Rolling Stones, a lot of rock and roll, but between all that there were these great country songs.
“It was never made clear to me what the differences were, it was just music. And I think the 70’s really captured that idea, that music was just made for the sake of being music. That’s what makes it so powerful for me.”
