Musician Fred Smith doesn't think of his songs as protest songs. He's been posted to conflict zones in his role as a political officer with the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade since 1996, spending time in such places as the Solomon Islands, Bougainville and Afghanistan.
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"I don't think of them as protests, when I was in those environments I believed in what we were doing," he says.
"But I don't think you can spend too much time highlighting the costs of war and the human impact of that.
"People can draw whatever political conclusions they want to from that. I tell the story as accurately as I can."
And Smith is a gifted storyteller. Whether he's singing about the resilience of the people of Bougainville, or the beauty of those islands, or about the death of an Australian soldier in Afghanistan, his music always relays a personal, intimate insight into the conflict he has seen.
"There's a saying in DFAT: I report therefore I am. That impulse to report creates an impulse to observe, the instinct to observe is what leads to songs," he says.
"The process of reporting for Foreign Affairs and writing songs is very much a similar one, I just have to take out a certain amount of classified material."
He has a wry sense of humour, able to find details and turn a phrase that makes a statement without it turning, too, political.
To be released in time for Anzac Day, his new album Warries includes a collection of songs, a retrospective if you like, documenting a fertile phase in the artist's life.
He had a couple of songs left over from his time in Afghanistan that didn't make it onto the acclaimed Dust of Uruzgan. One, Derapet, is a seven-minute epic describing events before and after the death of Lance Corporal Jared "Crash"' McKinney at the Battle of Derapet - the longest running contact by Australian regular forces since Vietnam.
"Sitting at Crash's ramp ceremony in August 2010, a little voice in my head said 'Write a song about this soldier'," he says.
"But I never got around to it 'til I got an email from one of his mates a couple years afterwards."
Fred Smith will launch Warries at The Street Theatre on Wednesday, April 24, and at the National Theatre, Braidwood, on April 25.