Roll On Summer Holidays

The Drum Media - Issue 522 Novemeber 14, 2000
by Michael Smith

Over the past year, we've seen Paul Kelly releasing two albums in other guises - as a bluegrass musician with Uncle Bill on Smoke, and funk-groove kid with Professor Ratbaggy - reissuing and updating his collection of lyrics in book form, and collaborating with, submitting songs for and producing albums by Renee Geyer and Vika & Linda Bull, as well as writing for Christine Anu and Kate Ceberano.

Then there's the bit of work with Kasey Chambers. "Earlier this year while on tour together Kasey Chambers and I recorded two duets in a Perth studio," Kelly explains. "She wrote one and I wrote the other. I Still Pray is her new single backed with Heartbreak Heartmend and both songs, one holy and one sinful, are included as bonus tracks on the re-release of her debut album, The Captain."

Is it any wonder then that what's become the expected annual Paul Kelly album release hasn't happened this year?

"I'd planned on putting a new album out this year," Kelly admits, "but then I got a bit sidetracked by a few other things - a film score, and acting in a film for which I also collaborated writing music for. The film I acted in is a short film for the ABC, which is coming out next year. That's been sort of two years of stop-start collaboration with Kev Carmody, Lorraine Hannan, a Melbourne composer; John Romeril, Melbourne playwright; Rachel Perkins, and me. It's based on a true story of a child that goes missing on an outback property and the search party that's organized includes an Aboriginal tracker, but the father won't let him on the land, and the consequences that flow from that. The story is told through song and music, so the characters in the film sing songs, like a musical, without the lightness. It's pretty much a tragedy. The other thing is a low budget feature film called Silent Partner, based on Melbourne playwright, Daniel Keen's play. The film was made and then the director, who'd liked Smoke, wanted a bluegrass-style soundtrack, so I did on with Gerry Hale from Uncle Bill. So my songs kept going out to other people!"

Nonetheless, there has been a new Paul Kelly release, the Roll On Summer EP (EMI), on the back of which he's taking the band out on the road for a quick spin round the country.

"I had You're So Fine kicking around for a while, and Every Fucking City was something from last year that was starting to get out of date. I was really keen to get some songs out this year but I didn't really have time or quite enough songs for an album so I thought I'd make an EP, just to say hello, I'm still here. So it's really an odds and sods EP. I don't really want to have these songs on the album , because I think that will be something different again.

The title cut, Roll On Summer, is pretty much straight ahead pop, which sees Melbourne-based singer songwriter Kirsty Stegwazi adding some duetting lines and backing vocals, while You're So Fine is very much a groove-driven tune, in the mode of Professor Ratbaggy.

"Maybe I'm trying to join things up a little more. With Roll On Summer, I just wanted a lazy sort of sweet, casual, sexy voice and thought her voice might fit."

The other two songs on the EP are very much storytelling songs.

"I Was Hoping You'd Say That is about eight years old, and I'd always wanted to pair it with another storytelling song. As for Every Fucking City, I've never even been to Helsinki! I think I've been to all the other places. I guess it's a song about when you're in love or out of love, you feel like you're carrying your emotional state with you wherever you go. I guess the seed for the song came from a night in Temple Bar in Dublin. It's an old part of Dublin, all warehouses, a Bohemian artists part of Dublin that's become really trendy, and English tourists come over for their stag parties so you get these gangs of drunk people roaming the streets. It just struck me as I was walking down the street that night it could have been any city - Brunswick Street Melbourne or Darlinghurst Road Sydney."

After this short tour, Kelly will be back in the studio in December for a release in March or April not just here but in Europe and the US.