Using previously unpublished primary material, Peter explores the 'Australian-ness' of Shearston's work - they'll get 'A Kick Out of You'!

Gary Shearston’s Dingo with Peter Mills and Ryan Walker

When Gary Shearston released his worldwide hit version of "I Get A Kick Out Of You" in 1974, he had already been recording for over a decade, and years of creative adventure lay ahead.

His most commercially successful album, Dingo, provides a lens through which to study his role in establishing and developing a purposefully Australian variant on '70s pop and rock music with its poetic evocations of Australian landscapes, topographies, character and cultural identity, mixed with a dramatis personae including Bob Dylan, John Peel, and Germaine Greer. These blend with the Bush Ballad tradition, native Australian music and rhythms, the '60s folk and protest song boom, of which he was a key figure and prime mover. All these elements combine on this album to provide a fresh and enduring evocation of what Australian music was, is and could be, and provides a link back to traditional forms and a signpost forward to acts such as Paul Kelly, The Go Betweens and Nick Cave.

Drawing on the author's correspondence with Gary Shearston from 2008-2013, this book contains previously unpublished primary material from the artist himself. Peter Mills digs into the "Australian-ness" of Shearston's music, and how such a term came to defined.

Copies of Peter's book will be available to buy at the Festival and there'll be dedicated book signing after his event.

About the Author:

Peter Mills is Senior Lecturer in the School of Humanities and Social Science at Leeds Beckett University. He is the author of books including Hymns to the Silence: Inside the Work of Van Morrison (Continuum, 2010), Media and Popular Music (Edinburgh University Press, 2012), and The Monkees, Head, and the 60s (Jawbone, 2016), which was praised by Jack Nicholson, Bob Rafelson and Michael Nesmith.

His book about Australian singer-songwriter Gary Shearston is being published by Bloomsbury in September 2026 and he is currently researching the history of music in UK Student Unions.

He has appeared in, written and presented music documentaries on BBC TV and Radio and hosted World Music events at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden.

Peter is singer and lyricist for Innocents Abroad, who released their third album Late Spring (Stormfield) in 2025 and the band are to record their next album The Long Beyond in 2027.

Description supplied by the event organiser.