Albany’s Bob Rees opens up about the healing power of music ahead of the launch of his debut album The Journey

When Bob Rees takes to the Albany Town Hall stage next week, it will mark a new beginning for the singer almost three years to the day since his life changed forever. On July 19, 2019, Mr Rees and his wife Chris were on the adventure of a lifetime, part-way through touring the African continent from Cape Town to Zanzibar on their beloved motorcycles. The keen bikers had already toured the world, shipping their bikes across oceans from their home in Albany to ride through Europe, New Zealand and Asia. It was on that day of their African adventure, when the two were riding over a narrow bridge in a remote part of Malawi, that their bliss was shattered. A car smashed into them, throwing them from their bike and leaving them on the side of the road with critical injures. The couple were helped on to the back of a truck where they lay side by side, traversing potholes and dirt roads during a five-hour journey to the nearest hospital. He and Chris held hands for the whole journey. “She said to me what a fabulous 47 years we’ve had and that she wouldn’t change anything, because you can’t not do things in case things happen, and then she died,” he said. Chris succumbed to her serious internal injuries part way through their arduous journey to the hospital. “When she died, she just looked beautiful, and any lines on her face disappeared,” he said. “She just looked beautiful.” Mr Rees suffered extensive injuries in the accident, his spinal cord so badly compressed he said it was as if it had been “squeezed in a vice”. The injury left him with paraplegia. He underwent many surgeries in Africa, including having eight vertebrae screwed together and a metal rod inserted from both knees to his ankles. He had so many procedures that it wasn’t until he returned to Australia that X-rays revealed to both him and his doctors that he had also had his pelvis screwed together after it had snapped in half on impact during the accident. After leaving Africa with a deep bedsore on his back, he spent the first five weeks of his treatment being turned from side to side in his bed. During this time he became aware of the man in the room next to his who had also become paralysed around the same time. “I couldn’t get out of bed, but I knew he was there and he obviously knew I was there,” he said. “And when I eventually got into the wheelchair, I went down the corridor and he was coming the other way. “And I just knew who he was and he knew who I was. “We put our arms around each other and cried for 20 minutes, and everyone just walked around us.” This sparked a deep, understanding friendship that continues between the two to this day. “I obviously have terrible days as well as good days, and so does he, but we keep each other going,” Mr Rees said. In October 2019, he was brought down to Albany from Fiona Stanley Hospital to attend his wife’s memorial service. A long-time friend of the Rees family, Vikki Thorn of The Waifs, performed the couple’s favourite song during the service. With Mr Rees a guitarist since the age of 18, Thorn suggested that he take his guitar back with him to Perth. “And I took it up there in my room and I’d be playing and the spinal surgeon reckoned it was great,” he said. “She said it was fabulous because what I needed to do was to move my hands because they were all damaged.” Playing guitar again also rekindled his love for music and he continued to play when he was eventually discharged from hospital and back in Albany. “When I came home there was a big period of adjustment where I was flat out getting my life in order, and people were dropping around all the time,” he said. One of those visitors was Thorn, who suggested he make his own music. “She said to me, ‘Why don’t you try writing? You’ve had so much happen, there must be so much going on in your head’,” Mr Rees said. Finding himself with a lot of alone time that he didn’t know how to fill, he would “sit in front of the fire and think a lot”. “And then I remembered what Vikki said about writing,” he said. “And then I was thinking about riding along under the African sky, and I started humming a tune to it. And then I just started pouring out what was in my head.” The lyrics of his first song started forming. Riding along under the African sky, not a care in the world as the wildlife goes by. Couldn’t be more perfect, we didn’t need to try. But you never know what’s going to happen. He brought out his guitar and put some music to the lyrics and wrote his first song. “And I thought s... that sounds really good,” he recalls. He started writing more and more, and after receiving two vouchers for a recording studio as presents from his daughters, he decided to take the hint and lay down recordings of the songs. A positive reception from the producer spurred him on, and he wrote one song every night, channelling his feelings into the music. He then caught up with Thorn’s sister and fellow member of The Waifs, Donna Simpson, and played her some of the recordings. Simpson offered to take him to a recording studio in Perth. The plan was to create a “six-track CD for family and friends”, which has turned into a fully fledged 12 song album called The Journey. The blues album features a selection of the 60 or so songs he has written since the accident, some of which capture his thoughts in his darkest moments. There is The Door, which includes the repeated lyrics, “Feel like I’m dying. Can’t stop crying”, which he wrote late at night last Christmas when he was missing Chris. “I write it quick, and then I’ll play it six or seven times or whatever and then I change something and then when I’m satisfied with it, I feel better,” he said. “Then I’m right again.” The process of writing the songs, and getting his thoughts down on the page, has been healing. It has also proved therapeutic for the people he has played the songs for. The second song he wrote, Trapped, deals with his experience of feeling like he has to put on a brave face even when he feels terrible. He played the song for the friend he made at Fiona Stanley Hospital. “I sang it to him and said, ‘What do you think of this?’,” he said. “And he said, ‘That’s me — you’ve just gone and written a song all about me’.” There are also more upbeat songs on the album, albeit tinged with sadness, about the relationship he had with Chris and the good times on their motorbike travels. Part proceeds of the album will go towards The African Nurse Fund, a charity which helps women in Zambia enter the nursing profession. Mr Rees and a friend founded the charity in honour of Chris, who was the practice nurse at Albany’s Southern Regional Medical Group for 36 years. Since becoming paralysed, Mr Rees has been a strong disability advocate, lobbying the City of Albany and State Government for greater accessibility. He hopes to use his platform to change attitudes about people living with disability. “If people can see me out on the stage in front of people, getting on with it and having a laugh, hopefully that can encourage somebody to think, ‘Well, he’s done it, maybe I can have a go as well’,” he said. He will take all 12 of his songs to the stage for two concerts next week at the Albany Town Hall. Simpson, who produced his album, will play as the opening act and in his talent-stacked band. He then has plans to ride his modified Harley-Davidson motorcycle — which he joked is the only Harley in the world with a toilet on it, as he carries a commode with him — across the Nullarbor to Phillip Island at the end of September. “This is my second life and I want to make it worthwhile,” he said. “And so that’s what I’m trying to do.” For tickets, visit bit.ly/3bSPhGn.