Kasey Chambers First New Album Of New Material In Six Years Is Out Now…

ARIA Hall of Famer and multi-platinum singer songwriter Kasey Chambers has released new album Backbone, her first album of new material in six years today, along with new single and video, A Love Like Springsteen.

Kasey’s week kicked off with the release of her book Just Don’t Be A Dickhead (Hardie Grant Books), the material informing and inspiring Backbone. She was also honoured at the Australian Women in Music Awards with a Lifetime Achievement Award.

Never one to shy away from home truths, introspective storytelling and unfiltered honesty, Chambers’ distinctive brand of writing weaves through both Backbone and Just Don’t Be A Dickhead. Pressing play on the self-produced Backbone will take listeners on a journey through not only where Chambers has been over the years, but where she’s at right now. Kasey talks to Hi Fi Way about the album and tour.

Congratulations on album number thirteen, is it a feeling of relief that it is done?
Oh yeah, it feels like that part of the journey is coming up with the release date being so soon and I reckon I’ll feel a fair bit of relief when it comes out. Album number thirteen when you just said that then I was like, oh wow it is too.It’s staggering, really.I’m just joke that I’m still able to make albums. Honestly, I’m just like, I don’t know if I really have ever thought about it too much about doing anything else but making records. So, I’m glad that people are still remotely interested in in hearing them. I’m still going to keep making them whether people want to hear them or not. It is a nice end to it if people do want to actually listen.

I know you said you can’t see yourself doing anything else and I can’t see you being like an accountant or something like that!!!
Definitely not. My other favourite hobby, I just say hobby, is cooking. I love cooking and my partner and I have a home recording studio on our property and whenever he’s recording other artists, I do all the catering for the studio because it’s not far from our house and I just love cooking. so I can kind of see myself doing that. But if I had to and it was my job, I probably wouldn’t even want to do it. I’d probably wouldn’t find the enjoyment in it that I do now because I don’t have to do it.

Does the process of writing and recording get any easier?
It’s a funny thing writing for me. Recording is great. I love recording because you’re around a lot of people and you’re hearing your songs come to life for the first time. I actually find that a really beautiful process. It’s very creative and you get to bounce off a lot of other people and stuff comes to life. The writing process for me is a little bit different, I think because I’m often going to a really deep, vulnerable place when I’m writing songs, sometimes it can feel really uncomfortable and excruciating and hard to get through. I always want to make the song as good as I can. I don’t like to just rest on, yeah, that’ll do. I do work really hard at songwriting. So, I actually don’t even know if that is an enjoyable experience. Sometimes they just fall out I guess, but I’m not always sure why they do sometimes and then why they don’t. I’m always working pretty hard at songwriting, but I actually don’t do a lot of it. I don’t. I’m not one of those songwriters who’s just churning out songs all the time or anything. I usually put some time aside and then try and see what happens.

Was it perfect timing or planets aligning writing a book at the at the same time as the album?Yeah it was because when I first started writing this book, I didn’t know it was a book. I was just writing this little reminder notes to myself about all these lessons that I’ve learned in my life and how I would like to bring them into my own life more. They were really just little reminders that I was putting in my phone. Then it evolved into a book. Then I started realising that it was matching up with some of the songs that I had been writing for my new album, and then some of the songs inspired more stories in the book. It was like a little journey together along the way, which is why I’ve ended up putting the two together really closely because it’s felt really connected for me along the way. Obviously, they both come out in very different avenues with a book going through a book publisher and an album is different going through all of the music platforms. But for me, it’s just one project that has two sides. So, what we’ve done in the book is at the end of certain stories and chapters, you can follow a little QR code and it’ll take you to the song that’s really closely related to that story. So if you want to listen at the same time when you’ve just read a story, you can put them together and have the journey kind of like how I had it. If not, you just ignore it. I’m sure there’s a bunch of people that don’t like the sound of my singing voice, so they probably don’t want to listen to me and that’s fine! You just ignore it and then just move on to the next chapter, but you can have the journey in the same way that I wrote it if you want.

Was there an oh wow moment when you started to see this unfold?
It’s funny that, because I often think the less that I overthink things and just let them happen naturally, the planets do align a lot better than when I’m trying to control it. I think if I’d sat down and gone right, I have to come up with some different original concept that I’ve never done before, I wouldn’t have been able to think this up at all. I know I wouldn’t have, but because it just naturally evolved as I was being creative and in a really creative mode, that’s usually when the beautiful things happen for me anyway, the beautiful creative things happen. I was happy to just let that go, but as far as having an actual aha moment, I feel like I’m actually having it now, I finished the book quite a while ago, I finished the album quite a while ago and I thought, oh yeah, that’s great we can bring them out together and all that, but it’s not until now talking about it with people and actually sharing the whole concept with people that I’m realising, ah, wow, this is a really beautiful thing that I’m getting to share with people and that really means a lot to me, so I feel like I’m having that moment now.

Have you thought much about how this will work live? It definitely sounds like this will be the tour to go to.
I’m heading around Australia first in the next couple of weeks to do a bunch of book events where I’m going to be talking about the book and I’ll play a few songs off that. I always feel like the actual tour is my favourite part anyway because I really want to be able to connect with people with all of these songs plus we’ll go back and play all of my old songs as well. I still love playing all the old ones like The Captain, Not Pretty Enough, We’re All Gonna Die Someday, Barricades and all of those songs. I love playing all of them and I love sharing stories about where they came from. There’s a lot of things like that in my book as well, so I get to be a little bit more open than I’ve ever been on this next tour about the new songs and the old ones, so I feel like that suits me. I love sharing all these stories and sharing the places where they came from as well as the songs. I feel like that’s just as much a part of me as the actual lyrics or the sound or the recording or anything, so I’m looking forward to it.

I absolutely love the title “Just Don’t Be A Dickhead”. When I heard that I thought that’s something I can picture my dad saying that. Is that a similar thing for you?
Yeah, definitely. I mean that line came from my dad, who often said that when we’re kids. He still says it now regularly. I think overall, as much as you know, it sounds like a funny thing to say it did end up being quite profound to me because I feel like it’s just one of those simple things that we live in a world now where there’s all of these perfectly worded inspirational quotes up on social media all the time. Sometimes I think we’re missing just the down home say it like it is. You know those things end up being more inspirational to me anyway. When people say it in the way that I can actually understand it and hear it and not have to go into this deep meaning behind what. I like those simple things. That’s how I’m trying to live my life. It’s just simple common sense. Try and be a decent human, and at the end of the day, just don’t be a dickhead.

Is the songwriting process therapeutic for you once you have left everything on the table?
Yeah, I feel that more during the creative process like right now, I feel fairly comfortable with sharing it with people. I’ve always shared a lot of myself with people. So, I feel like it’s fairly normal for me and I’ve gotten even more used to it over the years. But during the actual writing process, particularly the book part, there was some uncomfortable moments and some really heartfelt ones. I learned a lot about myself writing this book, good and bad. I think there’s some things that I’ve learned throughout the book that I still have to work on a lot and I have to remind myself to do things that I want to do and want to change about myself. I feel like there’s a few moments in there where I actually feel like, oh yeah, you’re doing really good now because you’re living that on a daily basis and. I have a few of those moments where I feel like, yeah, you need to be proud of yourself as well and let yourself have some of the wins and don’t be so hard on yourself. Even just the way that I’m I talk to myself these days, I try to be a little more kind. I used to get so down on myself about stuff as well, which we all do, but I want to acknowledge that I am trying to do my best and I’m doing some good things with my own growth, but then I also don’t want to just rest on that. I want to keep trying all the time and keep trying to be better.

Did you find that a lot of the music took care of itself just with the way that the songs were written?
I think with writing melodies do just sort of fall out a lot more than lyrics. I think I work a lot harder on lyrics than I do on the melodies, but it’s different all the time. There’s sometimes there’s exceptions to that rule as well, and sometimes lyrics will just fall out like word vomit and the next thing you’ve just got a song and you don’t even have to do anything to it to make it better. I kind of try and go with the flow. I always feel like and I talk about her in the book where I call her my higher old mate and that’s basically like this higher power that I feel is helping me along the way if I let her and she helps me a lot with songwriting I think where she just she brings these things along to me and then I have to do my part as well. I have to work hard and make sure that I’m putting in the effort, but she’s a really beautiful guide and she lets things happen around me and shows me signs sometimes if I’m willing to take them.

How was is it working with the likes of like Sam Teskey and Brady Blade?
It was the first time I’d ever worked with Sam Teskey and I love the Teskey Brothers and they are beautiful musicians obviously and songwriters, but beautiful humans as well. These days in the studio, I really just want to surround myself with people I want to be around as much as musicians I want to be around. I don’t just pick a great guitar player or whether they’re a great drummer and go, OK, I’m going to work with them, if they don’t match up energy wise with the sort of people I want to be around in the studio, then I’ll probably just look for somebody else. Knowing that Sam Teskey is such a beautiful human and I got to know him even more in the studio, Brady Blade is one of my favourite drummers for twenty-five years and I’ve been waiting to make a record with him for a really long time so. That was like ticking off a bucket list dream working with him, and then I also had some of my band come in as well. My Dad plays on it, of course, I can’t have an album without Dad on it, he’s cheap!

How much are you looking to clocking up the miles and getting back out on tour?
I can’t wait. It’s actually been a while for me since I’ve done a solo tour with my full band. We went out on the road a couple of years ago with Busby Marou and did a double headline tour and that was amazing. But before that, the last time that I did a proper tour on my own was probably back at The Captain twenty year anniversary tour. So yeah, I’m excited about getting back out there and playing some of the new songs and all the old ones. A bit of everything, sharing some of the stories from the book as well.

You mentioned also the book tour as well. Are you excited about that as well?
It’s a bit different. I’ve never done anything like that before, so I’m a bit nervous about it, but it’ll be fun. I’ll just talk a little bit about the book and then I play a few songs along the way mainly because I always play the songs anyway. It’s more about the book these little events, but they’re all around Australia, just exclusive little things, they’re not in massive venues or anything like that. It’s nothing like our tour but there’s still tickets available. So yeah, I’m nervous and keen.

Interview By Rob Lyon

NEW ALBUM BACKBONE OUT NOW

BOOK JUST DON’T BE A DICKHEAD AVAILABLE NOW

FIND DETAILS OF BOOK EVENTS HERE

On Tour, tickets HERE…