Listen: Sam and Duncan chat with Colin Buchanan
By Clare BruceFriday 30 Aug 2019Hope BreakfastGuests and ArtistsReading Time: 3 minutes
Give Colin Buchanan a topic – any topic – and he’s probably got a song for it.
Galahs? There’s a song for that.
Blue singlets? Sure! Song for that.
Transport? No problem. He’s got an ode to paddock bashers (Farm Cars), and one about trains, too.
Then there’s the songs for kids. Mummies, crocodiles, ants, cough lollies, and ping pong are all covered; along with countless tunes about God, the Bible, and the love of Jesus.
So when Sam and Duncan asked him to sing a tune with a Father’s Day theme – no surprise, he had just the thing!
In honour of all the Dads and Dad-figures listening, the master song-smith performed his hilarious little ditty, Dad Jokes (are Bad Jokes) – adding a special tag at the end dedicated to Sam and Duncan. The song is from an album of comical tunes originally written and recorded for ABC Radio’s TGIF.
Catch Colin Live on his Kids’ Tour
Colin is currently touring the country performing shows for kids, and has just released his latest kid’s album, Catechismo Kids, a radio-show style collection of songs along with “50 questions and answers about God from the Bible”.
He named the album after a friend nicknamed ‘Catechismo’, which is based on the word ‘catechism’: a bit of faith-jargon that Colin describes as “your times tables of Christian doctrine”.
“Ironically the album is based around a catechism from the 1840s,” he said. “This Christian thing, it’s been going a long time!”
He’ll be performing in Glenmore Park, Albury, Canberra, Brisbane, Toowoomba, Buderim and Adelaide, and St Andrew’s Cathedral in Sydney. For details see his Facebook Events page.
Q & A With Colin
Above: Sam (left) and Duncan with Colin
What’s it like meeting people who are now adults, who’ve grown up on your music?
“It’s precious to be a part of [someone’s] childhood. I’ve had some very sincere words from grownups who’ve said ‘I grew up with that, it was really important to me’, and I love that. And to have a Christian dimension to it is really precious. There is weight [to it]. I take the truth that I’m teaching very seriously even though you’re [also] having fun.”
What’s the craziest thing that’s gone wrong at a live show?
“We arrived in Launceston in Tasmania and were waiting for Nudge [Colin’s yellow puppet-friend], who doesn’t travel business class or economy but goes in his box in the hold. And Nudge didn’t arrive on the luggage carousel. It was an hour and a half to the show. So we raced to a *large green hardware warehouse* and were walking around buying things to double as a puppet…a garden gnome, door handles, bucket, tape. Mal, Nudge’s handler, he did a brilliant job.”
What’s your favourite song that you’ve written?
“I wrote a song called The Lord is King and I wrote it for my daughter when she was scared about things that she was seeing on TV on the news. It was back in 2001, so the news was about 9/11. It’s a song based on Psalm 2 and it’s about how great God is, and how we have nothing to fear, and that even the kings and the rulers of this world will bow down to Jesus.”
Why do you love to sing about God?
“Because you can say wonderful things about God and you can never say enough of them. The words I use can never get big enough. I can’t sing enough songs. I can’t take enough time to sing about the greatness of our God. We’re going to sing forever and that still won’t be long enough to sing His praises.”
- Colin Buchanan Makes Fun of Hope 103.2 Techie with Impromptu Song [Video]
- After 9 Years’ Silence, Colin Buchanan’s New Album—For Grownups