DANA LYONS
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Friday, July 5
City Diggers, Wollongong
Tickets: 1300 887 034
The order was given to turn cows to whoppers
Enforced by the might of ten thousand coppers
But on the horizon surrounding the shoppers
Came the deafening roar of chickens in choppers.
It was those inane lyrics that catapulted Dana Lyons to celebrity in the mid 1990s.
Other artists - even Weird Al Yankovic - have covered Lyons's Cows with Guns, the cult classic that blurred the lines between country and alternative music.
Oddly enough, it wasn't a bovine creature that inspired Lyons to write that song.
"It was pretty wild - my cat knocked something off the table and woke me up from a dream," Lyons says.
"And you know how you wake up from a dream suddenly and you can remember it all vividly - I had the chorus and the majority of the song right then."
He reckons about five of his songs have come from dreams.
But there's a lot more to the 53-year-old than goofy animal songs. He admits to using humour as a way to approach topics.
"In trying to convey a point, some things are so crazy they need to be approached in a funny way."
The American is on the phone from Arnhem Land, where he is being hosted through the region by Yothu Yindi's Stuart Callaway.
He started in Broome a few weeks ago and is moving across the Top End. In the Kimberley, he met Kimberley Toad Busters members to learn about the cane toad.
In fact, his latest song, Cane Toad Muster, is the story of how Australians are tackling the invader.
Lyons says he has been a conservationist ever since his childhood treehouse in upstate New York was bulldozed. So whenever he travels the world for his shows, he is also meeting new groups and learning how to help.
He has shared the stage with the likes of Willie Nelson, Neil Young, Dave Matthews, John Mellencamp and Steve Earle, travelling everywhere from Kazakhstan to the Great Barrier Reef.
He laughs at the suggestion that he's been described as an "out-of-control Johnny Cash".
"In all honesty I don't measure up to Johnny Cash," Lyons says.
After this Australian tour, Lyons plans to return to the US to finish off his new album.
