Interview: Paul Kelly on the eternal present and the attraction of opposites

artwork for Paul Kelly interview

Kelly has got the fever (longing still).

‘Back to the Future’ is one of a dozen songs on Paul Kelly’s “Fever Longing Still,” which could just as easily been titled “Back to Basics,” for that is what the Australian singer/songwriter has done with his 28th (and counting) album. He brought most of the old band back together, including Peter Luscombe (drums) who has been with him for more than 30 years, and 20-year veterans Bill McDonald (bass) and Dan Kelly (guitar). Even the young’uns Cameron Bruce (keys) and Ash Naylor (guitar) have been with Kelly since 2007.

“Looking back on what we’ve done with these songs, it is really a band record,” Kelly said. “That made me reflect on the longevity of the band, this squad.” The album is his first with new original material since “Nature” six years ago. Love And pensiveness are two of the themes running through the record. One song title – ‘Hello Melancholy, Hello Joy’ – reflects both these emotions like two of his oldest and best friends.

Kelly has been spending time leafing through old photograph albums of family and friends, posting some photos with interesting backstories on social media sites. It is what some of us do when the idea of mortality beckons. Another one of the new album’s tracks, the shuffling blues of ‘All Those Smiling Faces,’ could be seen as a scrapbook set to music. I’ve been talking to the dead, with this photo album here in my bed, picnics, parties, long ago, some are strangers, many I know, all those smiling faces.

“Fever Longing Still” is not necessarily some nostalgia trip. Kelly may as well have written the songs for the album channelling Eckhart Tolle’s “The Power of Now,” where the author encourages us to stay in the moment, be present, the past is in the rear view and the future has yet to happen. Enjoy the present for it’s really all we have. As Kelly sings further along in his song, perhaps with echoes of a sixties soul hit by the Supremes, Ooh, get on the floor and dance, you don’t have forever, Ooh, get out there and dance, soon we’ll all be together.

Kelly’s affection for poetry and Shakespeare are evident in this record, no less than it’s very title, taken from Shakespeare’s ‘Sonnet 147.’ “My love is as a fever longing still for that which longer nurseth the disease.” Old Will is struggling to cope with his lover’s infidelity along with his reluctant desire to continue enjoying her pleasures. The album’s opening track contains some of that overt sexuality, modernized of course. Put on your houndstooth dress now, darlin’, slip it on, I’ll zip it up before we go …. Somebody else must have shrunk or else outgrown it, but that dress sticks to you like a judge sticks to the law.

He likes to think of his records in vinyl terms, like having a fondness for an old girlfriend. Similarly, side B begins with ‘Let’s Work it Out in Bed,’ which he sings in a duet with Reb Fountain. If we lay down tooth and claw, and never let the sun go down, let’s work it out in bed, baby.

Certainly, the album is not all fun and bedroom games. ‘Double Business Bound’ is a line from Hamlet’s uncle Claudius and concerns a shadowy character caught in life’s crosshairs. I’m going nowhere you won’t find me, I’m double business bound, Trouble before and behind me, and my clock is winding down. ‘Taught By Experts’ is an electric re-working of a song that first appeared over thirty years ago on Kelly’s bluegrass album, “Smoke.” A bitter lover thinks of revenge, You put the weapon in my hand, you made me what I am, I was taught by experts, don’t it hurt?

It was the eighties when I first saw Kelly play a live show in Massachusetts. He hadn’t yet written most of the over 300 songs you can find the lyrics to on his website. The title of his memoir – “How to Make Gravy” – was nothing more in his mind than a cooking quandary before becoming a vehicle which obliquely discussed in alphabetical order the inspirations, motivations and memories lurking behind so many of his songs. Of course, he had yet to compile enough material to put on his A to Z extravaganza where he played 100 of his songs in alphabetical order over four nights and made themed compilations to memorialize the occasion. But the performance was no less memorable. It was plain to see that here was an artist worth paying close attention to every step along the way.

It’s the closing song on the latest album that speaks to his attachment to memories, the longevity of bandmates and a rather large family. Going to the River with Dad,’ concerns a fishing trip he went on with his father, departing while his brothers and sisters were still asleep in their beds. Kelly is half awake and half dreaming but still fully aware this was a special occasion, a meditation on memory he could re-acquaint himself with many years later. “Even though he’s talking as a child at the start of the song and then later on thinking he’s lived longer than his dad, obviously 50, 60 years or more have gone past, he’s still in his eternal present.” Like Paul Kelly’s music in all its many styles and guises, it’s another memory, That everlasting thing that’s never gonna die.

Hello, Paul. It’s been 40 years thereabouts since the last time we’ve spoken. You were playing the Iron Horse Café in Northampton, Massachusetts, and I was doing a piece for a daily newspaper.

Yes, I’ve played there quite a few times over the years. Quaint spot.

Let’s talk about your new album first, informing our readers some of what went into the songs on “Fever Longing Still,” your first record with new material since 2018. Starting at the top is as good a place as any with  ‘Houndstooth Dress.’

That one is a song I’d written just before we went into the studio, so I hadn’t had time to rehearse it with the band. I wrote it on piano, and we were lucky enough to get it on that first take. You can hear that I started a bit slow and then asked everyone to speed up. I thought that song would be a good way to start the record because it kind of jumps out of the blocks with drums on the intro and then the band leans into it, like opening a door and saying, “Here, come inside. Come and join us.”

When you sequence a record, is that something you tend to put a lot of thought into or do the songs just fall into place? In other words, is there a particular method to the organising process?

It’s a method, but there’s quite a lot of thought or what you might call rumination that takes place. Once I have the beginning song and the end song, it really helps me with the rest of the record. I knew I had the beginning song with ‘Houndstooth Dress’ and the end song, ‘Going to the River with Dad.’ It takes you out with the feeling you are on a river. That song is a meditation on memory and how to live a good life. It’s completely opposite to the first song, which is much more urgent and in the present. ‘Going to the River with Dad’ spans a lifetime. The song is written from the perspective of a child at the start, and then he’s a much older person at the end, but still in the present moment. Now we’ve got two opposite songs. These are the poles of the record, the alpha and the omega. Actually, there were quite a few songs containing opposites, like ‘Hello Melancholy, Hello Joy’ and ‘Northern Rivers.’ They contain contradictions and paradoxes.

Other musicians have said they try not to put two songs that are similar, either in tempo or in content, back-to-back on a record. Do you consciously think that way?

It’s all done by feeling, but one of the things we were conscious of for this record was to make each song in its own completely different world. There are little parallels, however. I’m thinking also in terms of vinyl – side one and side two. So, I wanted to begin each side with sort of urgent songs.

The second song, ‘Love Has Made a Fool of Me’ has a reggae beat with the sound of the throwback Farfisa organ. Would it be autobiographical?

The title is one I’ve had in my head for years, waiting for the right place. I’m not interested in autobiography at all. My songs are fiction. I guess you could describe it as a lover’s catastrophe or the bright new start coming to the old dark end. Again, it’s got these opposites driving the song, which is probably kind of a theme of the record.

‘Taught By Experts’ was a song first appearing on the bluegrass album, “Smoke.” You also played an acoustic version on the live album in ’92.

You could call this a revenge love song or a table-turning song. The singer has got the upper hand on either love or life, I’m not sure which, but it’s pretty straightforward. I’d recorded that about 25 years ago as a bluegrass track, but I always had a hankering to do it with the electric guitars and two guitar players are in my band. That was right within our wheelhouse, you could say.

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Kelly might as well jump.
What caused you to want to re-record the song?

My nephew Dan sort of knows my old songs better than I do sometimes. He reminded me of the song and suggested it would suit this particular lineup with the bass and drums and guitars and keyboards. So, during a recording session, I threw it to the band, and it came out sparkling. Everyone liked it, so it was going to make the record.

You have 300 or more songs recorded after all these years. How do you remember them all? You must have to refresh your memory at some point, for example, when you’re going to play out and you want to select something from the back catalogue.

I do various things to keep those old songs under my fingers and in my muscles and bones in order to revisit them. I started doing these A to Z shows about 14 years ago, no, more than that, 20 years ago, where I did a hundred songs over four nights in alphabetical order by title. And I did that several times in different places. We ended up putting it out as a live record, and then writing the liner notes for that record led me to write a memoir “How to Make Gravy.” That sort of kept a lot of those songs in play by going back and learning them to play the shows. Then in recent years, I’ve made these compilation records or what I call mixtape records, collecting my songs around themes and making a mixtape. I’ve done five of them in the last couple of years. One was called “Time.” Another was called “Rivers and Rain.” Then there was “Drinking,” and one called “Poetry,” and “People Songs About Real People.” For me, this is a way of not doing the same show over and over again and being able to set up different expectations for the audiences that come.

Those mixtapes are available still on your website?

Well, they’re on streaming services. They’re also physical and not just as CDs. I think we also did vinyl.

Returning to the album, next comes “Hello Melancholy, Hello Joy.” The vagaries of love.

That’s one of the older songs on the record. Again, it’s just the contrast of love. The guiding thought behind that song is John Keats – Ay, in the very temple of Delight, Veil’d Melancholy has her sovran shrine. So, really that song’s just playing around with the idea that melancholy and joy are both sides of the same coin, and all the different couplets in the song reflect that thought.

Melancholy is something that most of us have some  familiarity.

We all do. It’s part of the human condition.

Is “Northern Rivers” set in an area where you live?

Yes. There’s an area in the temperate North, but not the far North of Australia. It’s actually called the Northern Rivers in northern New South Wales. Of course, you understand when we say northern, it means hot, very hot, unlike the US or Europe where hot is South. You’ve got to get your head around that. I’d say this is really a song about holding love lightly, being with someone that is unique and special and is very much part of where they came from. And they might be with you for a while, but then they might go off just like the bird at the end of the song, heads back. Our birds fly North for the winter, not South.

We’re on to “Double Business Bound,” which features that marvellous bluesy piano.

That one comes from “Hamlet.” The line, double business bound is about Hamlet’s uncle Claudius, who is the fellow that murdered Hamlet’s father, and he’s praying and saying that he’s caught double business bound because on one hand he’s trying to get forgiven for the sin, but he also wants to hold on to all the wealth and the riches that the sin gave him. So, he’s caught double business bound. I just love that phrase. It just started as an idea, and it’s not really related to Hamlet apart from just lifting that phrase from the play, but it’s kind of a shadowy song. The figure, the person in the song doesn’t quite know what he’s up to, but he is trying to get somewhere to a place of safety and grace. But there are obstacles in his way. Another thing is, I really love the way the rhythm section comes in, and that sort of slow shuffle with a bit of slide guitar really seems to suit the character in the song.

Well, ’Let’s Work It out in Bed’ has a quite different rhythm. Almost a song you could dance to  or perhaps make love to.

I was thinking about writing a sort of soul song. It is a bit like ‘Love Has Made a Fool of Me’ where I’ve got a soul type feeling in my mind and the band gets hold of it. It becomes something a bit more mutant. I always knew that song should be a duet. So, we asked a favorite singer of mine to come in.

Reb Fountain, wasn’t it?

Yeah, she’s a New Zealand singer. We wanted to make it this conversation about the differences between people, so we sing the lines together and give both voices sort of equal prominence. It’s to give it that depth.

‘All Those Smiling Faces’ seems like mortality is in play. Enjoy your time here while you have it. You say, “I’ve been talking to the Dead with this photo album here in my bed.”

The idea for the song started off from looking at old photo albums. I come from a big family in a big clan, and of course we all get older. Funerals increase. There’ve been quite a few family funerals in recent years, and every time the photos are usually sent around on emails, people sharing them. So, I had that idea of a song based on the old photos, and several poems are behind that song. There’s a poem by Thomas Hardy, called ‘Heredity,’ which starts off, I am the family face; Flesh perishes, I live on, Projecting trait and trace Through time to times anon, and leaping from place to place Over oblivion. The last verse of my song is pretty much that poem paraphrased, and then I came across another poem by the Californian poet Dana Gioia, called “Finding a Box of Family Letters.” And he has some lines in that poem saying, Get on the floor and dance, you don’t have forever, get on the floor and dance. I used those lines and then contacted him to get permission, and he’s listed as a co-songwriter. That story ended nicely because we played in L.A. a few weeks ago and looked him up. He took me out for lunch to L.A.’s oldest Mexican restaurant. His dad’s Italian and his mom is Mexican, an interesting heritage. Can’t remember the name of it.

That’s okay. L.A. is not a city I have visited. Then we come to ‘Harpoon to the Heart,’ a nod to Melville? Joking, of course …

Right, no whale, it’s just a song. Written as a bit of fun with not a lot of thought. I took it to the band, played it, and again, my nephew Dan said, I have a little idea for the instrumental that I’d like to try out. He loves what we might call that wild playful side of old-time music, what people call hillbilly music from the forties and the fifties. He likes Les Paul and Mary Ford, some of the songs they did where they played guitars together and just had a lot of fun with their songs. That song was our nod to Les Paul, Mary Ford, Speedy Bryant and Jimmy West, all those old-time guys we loved.

Next, we go ‘Back to the Future,’ but not as the teenager Marty McFly driving his time-travelling DeLorean.

Well, not that exactly (chuckles). I liked the idea of that song the Beatles had out called ‘Things We Said Today,’ one of theirs I really loved. I think it’s got one of the greatest middle-eights ever written, but it’s an unusual premise. The singer of the song is saying, someday in the future, we’re going to look back on the things we said and did today. I guess I took a little bit from that. I wanted to write a song about seeing if we can bring the future back. So, when young lovers first get together, and they’re talking about the future and making plans, then maybe they break up and then that future disappears. The idea of this song is that the person in love will say, well, let’s not give up on the future. Maybe we can get it back. Maybe we can go back to the future. It’s a little play on that. Musically, it owes a bit to Lou Reed’s ‘Coney Island Baby,’ I’d say.

Interesting. It reminds me of a movie that has nothing to do with your album, about the end of the disco era and the young people walking off into an uncertain future yet looking back on past events. It’s really about the impermanence of life, which you address often in this record.

That’s definitely running through it, which is why that song belonged on the record. The bridge is from a poem by Robert Burns: But pleasures are like poppies spread: You seize the flower, its bloom is shed; Or like the snow fall on the river, A moment white – then melts forever.

There’s one that I know – ‘Tam o’ Shanter,’ about a working class, 18th century Scottish town with some unforgettable characters. Moving on, however, to ‘Eight Hours Sleep.’

That one was written with my friend Billy Miller. He had this beautiful piece of music, which I loved and asked him if I could put words to it. To me, it’s like a love song to sleep. As we were making the record, I thought one of the themes, as it became apparent, was all kinds of love songs. I thought, well, let’s have a love song to sleep. It earned its place on the record.

Are you a good sleeper, getting your eight hours in?

As I get older, not very often. So, that is a little autobiographical there. I’m not the world’s best sleeper, but these days, I don’t think many people are. I think the way the modern world is going, a lot of people are having trouble getting the full amount of sleep. When I do get a full amount of sleep, it feels like a blessing.

Well, here we are at the end, ‘Going to the River with Dad.’ You’re half-awake and half-dreaming. “All my brothers and sisters are still sleeping.” The lyrics flow in a way, like the current of a river.

I noticed afterwards that the song is full of “ing” words, verbs ending in “ing.” That’s present participle verbs like in the kitchen the kettle singing, and I’m going to the river, the cockatoos are calling, I’m half-awake half-dreaming, the river’s appearing and disappearing, a cup of sweet tea steaming. It’s just pretty much every line’s got these “ing” verbs in it. I decided to count them up; I think there’s 23. This thing of how songs happen, you don’t really know what you’re doing sometimes until after it’s finished. And I realized that’s what kept the song in this sort of eternal present. Even though he’s talking as a child at the start of the song and then later on thinking he’s lived longer than his dad, so obviously 50, 60 years or more have gone past, but he’s still in his eternal present. That’s one of the things I really like about singing the song.

We’ve discussed the entire album and love and opposites, so let’s touch on social issues. You’ve written quite often about Australia’s indigenous population. Last year there was a referendum on whether to amend the constitution to include the Voice, an advisory board made up of aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. At first, it looked as if it would pass but, in the end, failed. Do you have a particular view on the referendum and its outcome?

I think it was pretty obvious from a fair way out that it wasn’t going to work. Normally a referendum needs both sides of government, both major parties to back it, and that didn’t happen, so it was pretty much doom from then. Also, the case wasn’t well made. What was the point of the referendum? It was to give constitutional recognition to the original inhabitants of Australia, to indigenous people who’ve lived here for 60,000 years. The land has never been ceded; it has been taken. This disposition has led to a lot of unhappy outcomes for Aboriginal people. So, the idea of the Voice was having Constitutional recognition of the Aboriginal peoples by having a voice in parliament, non-binding, but the having a say in matters and legislation relating to them. It was a fairly simple proposition that I think got misrepresented as people felt that it was divisive, that it divided the country along the lines of race. There was nothing wrong with bringing up these arguments, but they weren’t rebutted properly. It wasn’t about race; it was about sovereignty. So, we didn’t quite get that right.

Getting back to music, you’ve learned to play the piano somewhere around time of the “Life is Fine” album, wasn’t it? What caused you to take up that instrument?

I intended to take off most of 2014 and have a break. I’m well aware that I’m a very basic musician, and I just wanted to sort of upskill. This is my job and I think all people in jobs, especially these days, you’ve got to keep learning new things. I just thought it was time to widen my palette, my range of chords. So, I did lessons with a jazz pianist who was steeped in a lot of New Orleans stylings. I worked on that for a year, and it helped me to write different kinds of songs. I’ve forgotten most of those lessons now, but it’s just that all writers have their own habits. I mean, I do. I fall into my own habits and having lessons to learn new things was a way of breaking those habits. That’s why I still like to learn songs by other artists. I think it’s important to keep learning on the job, finding out how other songs work helps you to write your own.

If you want to listen to music by another artist, who have you listened to lately?

There’s a new artist called Raye from England, and she’s made a great record, “21st Century Blues.” Some bands over here like King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard and another band called King Stingray, lot of king bands. Emma Donovan is an indigenous artist here in that sort of border area between soul and country. I really like her music, especially a song called ‘Pink Skirt.’

You mentioned Dan Kelly on the album and in your band. He is your nephew on what side?

Dan is my oldest brother’s son, and we’ve played on and off for 25 years now and done probably some overseas stuff as a duo. That’s when I can’t afford to take the whole band. The beauty of his playing is there’s deep roots, but he’s also modern and fresh and idiosyncratic. He is able to make it sound like more than two people when we play as a duo, quite sort of cinematic what he does.

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Backstage with Dan Kelly at Teragram Ballroom, LA, getting ready for our first US show in seven years. Photo by Steve Rood.
In 2013, you did the “Goin’ Your Way’ shows with Neil Finn. That must have been an enjoyable project with family aboard.

We did a series of live shows in 2013, only just around Australia, where we played each other’s songs but we didn’t just do it just like he played his songs and I played my songs. We decided to really weave the show together properly, so we made it one long show. The band was Neil and I, Dan Kelly again and Neil’s son, Elroy, on drums, so it was a family band. Although the bass player was a woman called Zoe Helpman. She was the only one in the band that wasn’t related to someone else, but she became very much family. That was very enjoyable for those reasons. It was the first time I think that Neil had done a tour with Liam, his son, who was pretty young then and a beautiful drummer. We all played in each other’s songs. There is a live recording of it.

I saw a post where you said your brother Dave was coming down from Queensland for the album release show.

He was just coming down to visit because his daughter’s moving to Melbourne, and he drove down because he bought some stuff for her. I just made a joke about him driving down from Queensland to get first dibs on the family merch.

There was another post about you never being able to catch up to Slim, who has made about 100 albums. You’re at 28 presently, a long way to go.
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Kelly with Slim Dusty

Slim Dusty was a very well-known country artist here since the fifties. He died in 2003. Quite the storyteller. He probably started off sounding a bit like Jimmy Rodgers but made his own style pretty quickly. Much loved here and last count he’d made over a hundred albums, that was another joke.

There’s a photo of your dad and mom and you said: Hello, dad! You look like the cat with the cream, beer bottles in both hands and your beautiful brown-eyed girl with the first of nine children budding, biding in her belly.

Well, I was going through old family photos to do with that song, ‘All Those Smiling Faces.’ We just released a video with all these old family photos and that photo is in it. That’s on YouTube now. There’s also another video of the band playing the song live in the studio. That was a fun little project, going through the family photos and putting a clip together. She’s pregnant in that photo, and he looks pretty pleased with himself.

You spoke of coming from a large family. How large are we talking?

I am one of eight. Lots of first cousins, 42 of them.

Do you have children?

Oh, yes, three of them and three grandchildren.

No great grandchildren as of yet?

I should hope not. My oldest grandchild is 15.

In this one photo you say, “I’ve never played in an AFL grand final but I’ve coached the Rockdogs in The Community Cup.” What sport is that?

That’s Australian Rules Football.

Undefeated three years in a row, you say?

Yeah, two draws and a narrow win, so I’ll take that.

Are you still coaching?

Oh no. The last time I coached was about 10 years ago, but that game’s still going. It’s a fundraiser for disabled people to be able to play sport, an organization called Reclink, and it’s always a game every year with the independent community radio stations, you might call them, similar to NPR. Melbourne has a number of independent radio stations, and the presenters make up a team. And then all the people in indie bands make up a team. It’s a good turnout and a good fun day.artowrk for Paul Kelly interview

Paul Kelly with the band from “Smoke” and a dog named Lester

There is one with Uncle Bill on Brunswick Street, Fitzroy. It was the time of your bluegrass record in 1999. You had Adam Gare on the left then Peter Somerville and Gerry Hale with his dog Lester named after Lester Flatt. Too bad he didn’t have a second dog to name Earl for Scruggs.

 I thought I’d find some interesting photos and put some posts up, tell some stories. So then of course we got busy with the record, but I’ll probably get back to doing some of the posts next year, as I find there’s a lot of good old photos in the archives that bring back memories. As I sing in ‘All Those Smiling Faces,’ I’ve been talking to the dead With this photo album here in my bed …. you don’t have forever …. soon we’ll all be together.

You don’t have  forever, but you’ve had a long and distinguished career and are still on your game.

Well, that’s the point of it all, isn’t it?

 

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John Doe

This is a fascinating interview which provides great insight into Paul Kelly’s creative process.