The Open Road

"I just posted something on my Twitter this morning,” Kate Ceberano enthuses over the phone, brimming with the trademark energy that's propelled her through three decades of successful public life as a singer, TV host, actress and corporate and charitable ambassador. “It was about an orchestra that lives in a landfill – poor, poor people – with no money, but they're so rich in culture. They make out of nothing the most beautiful music.” As Ceberano relates the landfill orchestra to her own tour for her newest album Kensal Road the link at first seems tenuous. But if the common denominator is passion it all begins to make sense. “Just being able to recreate how you think sounds should be presented live excites me so much,” Ceberano says of the upcoming shows that will see her act as not only the singer, but also drummer for the band. “It's more like percussion really, but it's on a complete kit so it's kind of fun.”

Kensal Road is Ceberano's first original album in a decade – although she corrects the idea she hasn't been writing along the way - “It's not actually true that I didn't do original records... I just didn't release any of it in ten years.” She laughs. Although in release dates there may be a gap, the album is a continuation of an unbroken career that began with Ceberano managing to work full-time as a musician since her teens.

“It seems unusual now, but back then that's kind of how you did it, you know? You worked your ring off. You got out in the mall or you did whatever you had to do to get a gig. I think I pretty much played in every venue in Melbourne and probably all across Australia; any venue that would have me. Just because you just gotta get 'gig fit' like that.”

Working her ring off has led to swags of ARIA chart successes, 25 albums (including releases from her forays into musical theatre) and some little extras – like singing for Tom Cruise on his birthday. Ceberano happily admits the feeling of performing original material, and having it recognised at the highest levels, is singular. “I can tell you that the self-satisfaction of having written a song and have it be a hit is like... It's better than anything in this life. It's right up there with having a kid that loves you. It's right up there with... I don't know, excelling at your favourite sport. It's just something so personal and so deep, and to accomplish it in a world where there's so many other people going for the same spot, it's out of control. It's a wonderful feeling.”

It's a feeling she wants to share. For the Kensal Road tour Ceberano is taking two young women on the road who demonstrated familiar chutzpah in getting a toe in the door. The two created harmonies to accompany the Kensal Road tracks and had them delivered to the singer via a family friend. Ceberano invited them to join her for the entire tour. “I had some really interesting adults around me when I was about fifteen and sixteen who were prepared to invest in me, but also I was doing gigs, I was making money as a full-time musician at the age of seventeen.

“I think it's important that if I have an opportunity to give two girls – singers in their own right – an experience that they might not have in the next five years, I'm going to do it.”

It seems parenthood was the only thing to temporarily shake Ceberano's obvious compulsion towards performing and writing. “I kind of had to grow up actually,” Ceberano says of the birth of daughter Gypsy, now nine. “I think when you have a child, a part of you that's been stuck in Peter Pan land has to at least come to the party, to take responsibility for the fact that real things have to be done in real life. You know, with a child you need to give them food and school and security – they need you, they need your comfort.

“There's a song called Garden State, which is about being on the road, and knowing when you're just about to do that last thousand k home, what's clicking over in your mind. I've invested so much energy in being a musician and being an artist, it's the all or nothing kind of proposition, so you just gotta make it work, you know? I think that in the album there's traces of all that: what one has to do to make it work.”

The “Peter Pan-ness” of Ceberano is evident sonically in her new album, in which she doesn't stick to the tested soul and jazz-infused '80s and '90 pop that brought her success in previous albums. Kensal Road is a decidedly contemporary take on the prevailing acoustic “singer-songwriter” sound, while her voice still reeks of experience: “I often wonder if people take for granted my passion for music. But you know it hasn't changed for me, it hasn't diminished since I was a teenager, this affair that I'm having with music. It only gets deeper and even more profound... It's not something one can just give up. I think that's one thing that people won't necessarily write. But I'm chasing a dream here, you know, and it doesn't quit for me.”