• Prologue
• Winter Night At Liffey (excerpt)
• 1973 – The Air
• 1973 – Knowledge
• 1977 – Home
• 1980 – To The Guns
• 1995 – But Then (To Paul)
• 1998 – For Those She Loved (Marjorie May Brown)

• 1999 – How To Make Money
• 2007 – Secure
• 2010 – Ingrid
• 2018 – The Broadway (Sydney)
• 2021 – Toogee Hill
• 2022 – Gnarla
• Epilogue

Bob’s life is, to a certain extent, untellable except by himself. The “But then …” Project hopes to capture how Bob has considered his life through insights offered in his poems written between 1967 – 2022; penned in Australia, travelling through the USA, working and walking in the UK, fighting for the environment on land and sea. Bob’s words are accompanied by soundscapes, musical reflections on his written reflections, and short sharp notes on the genesis of each poem weaving a narrative thread through the whole collection.

E. M. Foster argued a novelist should cling to the idea of ‘opening out’ never ‘rounding off’. Bob’s poems reveal how he opened out across nearly 60 years and how he was never constrained by the past or fear of the future. The poems are convincing because Bob allows us to see his shifts and about-turns, his ups and downs, love and loss embodied in his sharp-edged mortality. He’s in one place – geographic or intellectual – then in another, then another; as he explains “The world moves on and it’s bittersweet …”.

Bob sees life as transformative and optimistic. Something happens but then something else, best depicted when Paul knocked on his door – the ultimate transformative ‘but then’ giving us the title for the telling of his life in this collection.

About 7 years ago I blurted out to Bob that I’d like to put music to his poems. He looked me in the eye and said “Well, start with Winter Night At Liffey”, a few chords of which are the musical entrance for Volume 1 of “But then …”. That was my ‘but then’ moment, transforming what I was doing musically. My music fills the ink wells for the words he has written about the extraordinary life he lives.

• 1. How ls lt (2021)
• 2. Along The Road (1970)
• 3. My Godfriend (1972)
• 4. Wynyard Station (1973)
• 5. Oddity (1973)
• 6. Considering Life (1973)
• 7. Thoughts While Staring at the Sky (1973)
• 8. Winter Night at Liffey (1974)
• 9. On Cradle Mountain (1974)
• 10. On Leaving New Orleans (1974)
• 11 . City – observation (1974)
• 12. Bathurst Express – radio play (1974)
• 13. A Boy ls Dead (1975)
• 14. The Birds (1975)

• 15. ln Balfour Street (1975)
• 16. Hidden Vale Part II (1975) words and music
• 17. Katie Kingston (1978)
• 18. Our Planet First – oath (1994)
• 19. Rock Sit – Kakadu (1997)
• 20. Marjorie May Brown – memoir (1998)
• 21. Life’s Challenge – observation (1999)
• 22. New Hope’s Black Pit – short story (2012)
• 23. The Robin – reminiscence (2015)
• 24. While Barbie Painted My Portrait (2015)
• 25. Robert Brown – premonition (1967)
• 26. Hidden Vale (1975) New solo reading 2024
• 27. Hidden Vale (Parts I and II) Music Ensemble
  BONUS TRACK

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In Vol. 2, we travel in time back to 1967 and Bob studying for his final medical exam in “Robert Brown”. We end with his questioning thoughts about “How is it?”… except … I’ve swapped these two around to provide different book-ends that make this Volume more an introspective and to demonstrate the continuity over 55 years of what Bob is striving for as an individual and a deeply committed citizen of our planet.

Volume 2 also takes us back in time to earlier products we did around his poems and my music: starting with the “Winter Night at Liffey” EP, the “Hidden Vale” album created in close collaboration with Monique Brumby, the “Considering Life” EP and, finally, a poem about Kakadu read as a solo vocal by Bob and, on the “Navigating Hope” album, sensitively orchestrated by Jabra Latham and performed by the finest of Tasmania’s classical musicians.

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Not many people know how much Bob loves playing the piano nor that he has written some inspiring music, though hints at that were given in Volume 1 with “Ingrid”. “Earth Song” is another gem, readily searchable on the internet. Most of the readings found on Volume 2 were done in one take, live to the music, or overdubbed where necessary.

Bob has never “wasted my time with an unworthy cause”, as Bob Dylan sings on “Key West (Philosopher Pirate)” (2020). For 50 years, Bob Brown’s voice has been like the pirate radio station in Dylan’s song, transmitting different ideas that helped change conceptions of what the world is and can be. Our ‘philosopher pirate’ has paddled in a raindrop, been healed by the wind, unsteadied by the spectacle of a 100 metre-tall flowering eucalyptus, lost in wonder looking down on the sparkling pink granite beach of the original Lake Pedder, awe-struck walking the storm-ripped West Coast of Tasmania, and mesmerised looking back from the Southern Ocean to the sun setting over his island home. As the palawa (Tasmania’s first peoples) have known for millennia, the land owns us, not us the land.

Steve Crump April 2025

Click to download …

• Considering Life – Steve and Bob full ensemble score (PDF)
• Forest Suite – Steve and Bob (PDF)
• Hidden Vale (PDF)
• Kakadu – Steve and Bob (PDF)
• Toogee Hill – Steve and Bob (PDF)
• Winter Night at Liffey – Steve and Bob (PDF)

Opening orchestral music is from “Winter Night At Liffey” as found on the soundtrack of “The Giants”, the internationally award-winning documentary about Bob’s life and Tasmania’s native forests www.thegiantsfilm.com

For full performance of “Winter Night At Liffey” please search Spotify or similar and for the video see www.stevecrumpmusic.com

But then … Vol. 1 is a collection of 12 poems put to music that covers the period 1973 <> 2022. All have a note written by Bob (narrated by Jane Longhurst) about the genesis of each poem, providing a chronological narrative to lead the listener through Bob’s experiences and thoughts.

But then … Vol. 1 Bonus Tracks provides the full unedited readings by Bob of the poems that were shortened to better fit and enhance the musical expressions; plus two “Elements” tracks of just piano and cello.