Spreading The Dream

SAIN Magazine - August 2001
By Clare Barker

Emerging from his garden shed recording studio, Paul Kelly spreads the dream about his new album.

"When I was younger I wanted to play football or cricket for a living," says Paul Kelly, on of Australia's most respected songwriters. "Then I started to write short stories and poems and when I was 21, I wrote a song and got hooked."

His new record, Nothing But A Dream marks a shift back to bare song-writing basics. "I guess the record started with the idea of making a traditional singer-songwriter record. I know I'm known in those terms but I've pretty much always worked with bands," says Kelly. "I set myself a rule with this record; that I would only work with certain kinds of songs." Songs which are, for the most part thoughtful, poignant and acoustically driven.

"That was the general approach, but there are a couple of exceptions," he says. "Love Is The Law" is a big noisy, multi-layered, band track and "Just About To Break" has a thunderous drum and bass backdrop. "I've always been interested in different styles," says Kelly, who admits to having been to "a couple of raves". However, the 46-year-old Melbournian is not a clubber and much of the electronic music he likes had been introduced to him by his DJ son, Declan. "He brings a lot of music into the house and I've always had pretty wide ranging tastes. I really liked Roni Size's New Forms and Underworld's Beaucoup Fish."

"I could talk for a whole week about who inspires me," says Kelly, who still has a lot of time for his childhood heroes: Hank Williams, Howling Wolf, Bob Dylan and The Velvet Underground. "I also love a lot of old Australian bands like the Triffids and the Go-Betweens." He adds.

Kelly recorded Nothing But A Dream in Melbourne then took it to London to work with producers James Sanger and Mark Wallis. The resulting package strikes the perfect balance between pure poetry set in sparse acoustic soundscapes and more upbeat numbers, featuring extra vocalists and more complex arrangements. These songs bring Kelly's Melbourne muso mates: drummer Peter Luscombe, guitarists Shane O'Mara, Gerry Hale and Spencer P Jones and keyboard player Bruce Haymes.

So he's in good, familiar company with Nothing But A Dream, but Kelly's at his most creative going solo. "Most of my ideas come from playing around with a guitar on my own," says Kelly. "Sometimes a lyric will grow out of that, from just singing phrasing over chords."

Many of the songs on the new record emerged in this way, while Kelly was fiddling around in his garden shed (which houses a recording studio rather than a collection of old spades and lawnmowers). Kelly plans to emerge from the bottom of his garden at the end of this month to spread the dream. "I'm itching to tour again," he says.