When Cal met Harold

Boggabilla is a little village (population 500) only a few metres south of the Macintyre River, which forms the border of New South Wales and Queensland. When the river rises, Boggabilla gets wet.

Up the road is Goondiwindi, and down the road is Toomelah, an Aboriginal community with some 200 residents.

Despite its small size, Boggabilla has a reputation for music, one example being the subject of John Williamson’s famous recording of The Wobbly Boot Hotel (written by Stan Coster and also recorded by The Wayfarers), concerning the local pub. Funny how that catchy song enshrined Boggabilla in Australian country music lore.

Toomelah also has a reputation for music, having been the original home of renowned country singer Roger Knox, guitar-player extraordinaire Harold Brown, and the band Euraba.

Wow, Harold could really play guitar, and pedal steel, too. His creativity with the fretboard seemed boundless.

He had a perforated eardrum, and struggled sometimes with hearing, but that didn’t hinder his musical talents.

In the early 1980s, we lived in Boggabilla for a couple years (just a few doors to the south of the Wobbly Boot), and Harold and some of the other very musical Toomelah lads were interested in knowing more about written music, chord structures, progressions and substitutions…not that I knew very much myself.

So, we organised some lessons, starting with basic note reading and scales. Harold had a sixth sense for music. I had a feeling that, while these topics were new to him, he intuitively knew precisely where the chord exercises were leading and the sounds he would get.

I played a fun and interesting jazz progression in G, containing a dissonant suspended G chord, and he exclaimed, “I’ve been looking for that chord my whole life!”

He took that progression, which had a bluesy feel, and promptly turned it into a beautiful country riff. I was knocked out.

He could improvise so naturally, so seamlessly, so flawlessly. What a talent.

I said to Harold, “Who’s the teacher? I’m learning a lot more from you than you are from me.”

Those lessons were great fun. I could tell Harold was storing all those new chords and progressions into his cerebral music library for later use.

Harold loved the Travis-style fingerpicking I’d do on old traditional songs (Deep River Blues, Sweet Georgia Brown, Police Dog Blues and Vestapol (in open D tuning), My Creole Belle, Freight Train, etc), and he’d join in with a flat pick. He was magic with that flat pick, and our two different styles harmonised so well.

Through Harold, I had the privilege of meeting Roger Knox, an outstanding vocalist, performer and award-winning recording artist.

When we moved from Boggabilla, I lost touch with Harold, but I understand he played with Roger and Euraba for some years.

Harold passed onwards from this worldly realm in 2022. He was a dear friend. Vale Harold.