Booze, Yakult & Not Writing Paul Kelly Songs: Dan Kelly On Making 'Sing The Tabloid Blues'

I wrote most of the songs for Sing The Tabloid Blues between 2001 and 2003, in a rambling Edwardian sharehouse on the banks of the Elwood Canal, then in a loft in St Kilda above the industry and drama of Vale Street, and finally in an interstate expatriate Richmond communal compound. A lot of the songs on Sing The Tabloid Blues started around my kitchen table in Elwood with a different title and different story, before eventually they got less jokey and less wordy. It was probably for the best, because they are still arguably too jokey and too wordy as it is.

Checkout Cutie

Checkout Cutie was an accidental co-write with the late, great Spencer P Jones. After seeing the launch of my first single Countermeal Kim, he remarked, “Hey Dank, I dug that one, 'Checkout Cutie.'” I went straight home to finish it and gave him ten percent of the APRA payments. It’s set in St Kilda Safeway and was originally recorded with Gareth [Liddiard] and Chris [Strybosch] from The Drones and Luxedo’s Tom Carlyon for a Spooky Records Compilation. These lads would hence become the band and we re-recorded the song at Atlantis Studios in Hawthorn with Dave McLuney.

Step Forward

Step Forward came from my occasional work at a market research firm, where I had to rate sports drinks in focus groups filled with tradies, computer goths and Elsternwick mums. Originally written as a Prince-style 4-track number called, ‘Market Research’, it got a lot better once I finally wrote the chorus three years later… We played it a lot live without the chorus and it must have sucked.

Bunk Lovin’ Man

Bunk Lovin’ Man was originally recorded in Paul Kelly’s kitchen while he was out on tour. It combines my love of songs about ‘doing a geographical’ with obscure Chisel references and Pavement-y guitars. There’s a lot of the wacky noises on there from Roland Groovebox presets too.

All On My Lonesome

After essentially kicking myself out of my long-term Elwood sharehouse by having an affair with my incredibly beautiful new flatmate – who was also incredibly pissed off when we broke up – I escaped to the loft at my uncle and aunt's house in St Kilda. I stayed up there for six months with a $50 guitar and a loop pedal, listening to Captain Beefheart, PJ Harvey and The Boredoms. This song came out of that lofty womb.

Summer Wino

Summer Wino is another Elwood jam that was originally known as ‘Postmodernist Postman’. Thank God I changed that name. I was drinking large amounts of Tyrell's Long Flat Red in the backyard at the time. It was hot and the Elwood Canal stunk. The track references Motley Crüe’s The Dirt, and one of my favourite bands of all time, The Coasters, as well as the obvious Lee Hazlewood rip for the title.

Human Sea 

Human Sea is a jam about being lost and lonely in the '90s, hanging out at the South Bank fake beach in Brisbane, named ‘Kodak Beach’ at the time. After finishing university I was smoking a lot of weed in Highgate Hill and was bloated and aimless except for the odd bit of 4-tracking and making various sharehouse curries. I worked as a bagel salesman at the markets by Kodak Beach. It was sweaty 100 percent of the time.

Lutheran Hall

Lutheran Hall was a fairly brazen attempt at crossing Tony Joe White’s High Sherrif Of Calhoun Parish with the canefield country where I grew up south of Brisbane. Gareth Liddiard was given full sonic reign on this one and he uses the MS2000 synth and various pieces of metal to great effect. There’s also some John Lee Hooker finger style at the start of this one, mainly to impress my dad.

Get High On Yr Own Supply 

This one was originally based on a John Lee Hooker tune Leave My Wife Alone. It was written and recorded in a lounge room in Collingwood, where the guitar hummed in just the right way. Gareth Liddiard once again brought a whole lot of guitar and synth weirdness to the track, and actually yelled at me when I suggest he ‘redo the guitar solo’. He’s good like that.

The Tabloid Blues

The Tabloid Blues was one of my first ‘celebrity romance at the end of the world’ songs. After the record came out I got a call from the Australian Scientologists, just to make sure I wasn’t saying anything bad about the religion or Tom Cruise. I assured them I absolutely, definitely wasn’t. Strangely enough my record sales peaked around this time and I started to lose my looks.

Pregnant Conversation 

Pregnant Conversation was recorded with one of my favourite musicians, Greg Walker from Machine Translations. Originally an Elwood-written 4-track about trying not to write Paul Kelly songs, it mutated into a fairly good imitation of a Paul Kelly song written by someone desperately trying not to write a Paul Kelly song. It combines my love of northern New South Wales with my love of booze and travel songs, and was based on a half-overheard conversation between two cold climate hippies in the legendary Doulton Bar in St Kilda.

A Town Called Sadness 

A Town Called Sadness is about bushfires, small town isolation and arson, taken from an article in The Age and set to a Curtis-Mayfield-meets-'80s-Australian-garage vibe. There’s a fantastic guitar solo from Gareth Liddiard on there, and the track also features a triangle, which was a first for me!

River Of Tears

I wrote River Of Tears when I thought I had some kind of terminal disease, but it turned out I’d just been drinking too many Yakult probiotics and was just experiencing some mild discomfort.