The Glitter, The Gold And The Ruin

It's a chilly Wednesday night and sixty or seventy of Melbourne's industry types are gathered in an infamous location named Rutherglen House, just off Flinders Lane in the CBD. The six-story building, reportedly Melbourne's largest private residence, is home to enigmatic playboy Peter Janson, a man renowned as much for his illusiveness as his bizarre habits (see: driving around the city in a hearse). With staggering levels of taxidermy adorning the walls and a maze of corridors seemingly built to confuse, this 167-year-old converted warehouse is as opulent a location as could be conceived for the launch of the latest album from Australia's country loving sweethearts Kasey Chambers and Shane Nicholson. As they hit the stage to the adoration of the entire room, though, all pretences are stripped away. Bantering and joking with each other just like a married couple should, the two showcase tunes taken from Wreck And Ruin – their second album together after the runaway success of 2008's Rattlin' Bones.

Not ones to mess around when inspiration strikes, Chambers and Nicholson only started putting Wreck And Ruin together in March of this year. Packing up their guitars, banjos and six-month-old daughter Poet, they decamped to the picturesque Hunter Valley for a period of rest, relaxation and songwriting. This easy going nature is one of the crucial elements that have made these two such a successful partnership over the years – creatively and personally.

“We never really talked about making another album together but it just felt right at the time,” Chambers explains from the much less extravagant but no less comfortable surroundings of Mushroom Music's Albert Park office. “We didn't go up to Hunter for a particular amount of time or anything. We'd go up there for a weekend here and there and I think that area inspired us to get into writing mode. We thought we might go up there once or twice to write a song and see what happened, but it was almost like going there once opened this floodgate of songs.”

“We'd spend a couple of days there and come home with three or four songs,” Nicholson continues, finishing one of Chambers' sentences as the two so often do. “We don't follow a process with the actual writing of a song though. It really is whatever it takes to get that song. Sometimes we'd start it together and finish it separately, start it separately and finish together or start and finish together. There was just no format or pattern. There never has been.”

“I think sometimes we wish there was,” Chambers adds. “It's funny because if we wanted to write a song next week, we might just sit down and nothing would come out. I wish we had more control over it but we don't.”

Chambers is echoing the sentiment of her one-time collaborator Paul Kelly here. The great man once said that if he knew how to write a song, he'd do it every day – and that same mysterious muse is at work here. Chambers and Nicholson's greatest asset seems to be a kind of mutual understanding that their best work is done in collaboration with each other, even if, just like their marriage, times can sometimes get tough.

“I suppose with the previous album, Rattlin' Bones, and even with this album we didn't enjoy every moment of making it,” Chambers admits. “I guess like any normal married couple there were times when we were like 'Alright, I don't want to work with you anymore!' out of frustration more than anything. We always knew that we would come back and revisit it though because we liked the creative side of the sound we came up with together, and what we brought out in each other musically.”

Once the lightning had been bottled and the differences put aside, it came time to put the songs of Wreck And Ruin on tape. For the recording process, Chambers and Nicholson went to great lengths to maintain the homespun quality of the songs they'd written. Long time collaborator and erstwhile brother Nash Chambers was brought in as producer as always; a crack team of musicians (including Steve Fearnley [drums], James Gillard [upright bass], Jeb Cardwell [banjo] and John Bedggood [fiddle]) were assembled and the troupe headed up to Foggy Mountain, east of Sydney, to lay it down. The recording process itself though, was by no means a formal affair.

“We wanted it to sound like a gig – as if we've invited you into our lounge room to hear our gig from start to finish,” Chambers says as Poet throws some chocolate biscuits around at her feet, possibly wrecking the carpet of the poor Mushroom employee's office we've taken over. “Yeah, and to make that happen we totally gave the band free reign,” adds Nicholson. “We picked people that we knew really well and that understood the type of music we were trying to make. Half of producing an album is what you do before you start making the record. The people you pick and the personalities that you put in a room together. Obviously the work you do in the studio is important, but I actually think that what you do before you start making it really shapes it. These musicians were so good too, so we couldn't really go wrong.”

Arguably the most distinctive element of Chambers and Nicholson's work together is the way that their distinctive voices work when used in harmony. When it came time to record the vocals on Wreck And Ruin, the duo went the John and June Carter Cash (or Springsteen and Van Zandt if you will) approach of singing into the same microphone. They would look directly at each other and concentrate on the deeper meanings within the lyrics they'd written.

“It's a great way to channel your focus; to not give yourself too many options or safety nets. Singing together makes it limited as to what you can fix and it's a great way to put you in the moment. In modern studios you have so many options, and sometimes I'm not sure if you gain as much as you lose,” Nicholson laments. “This record was really about going into a room and going for it. It's like you're all on a team together and if one guys stuffs up then everyone stuffs up.”

Back at Rutherglen House, as the end of their set draws near, Chambers and Nicholson, singing into the one microphone as always, pause to thank everyone that helped put Wreck And Ruin together. They may give the impression that the whole thing – the success, the number one albums, the kids, the devoted fans – is something of a happy accident, but as they move into the haunting lament Troubled Mind (introduced by as “another lovely song about death”), it becomes clear that these two were brought together by some musically divine twist of fate. “I am not lonely, not the worrying kind,” they sing in perfect unison. That very well may be their secret.

Kasey Chambers & Shane Nicholson will be playing the following shows:

Tuesday 30 October - Civic Theatre, Wagga Wagga NSW
Wendesday 31 October - Canberra Theatre, Canberra ACT
Thursday 1 November - Shoalhaven Entertainment Centre, Nowra NSW
Friday 2 November - Seymour Centre, Sydney NSW
Friday 16 November - Empire Theatre, Toowoomba QLD
Saturday 17 November - Moncrieff Entertainment Centre, Bundaberg QLD
Sunday 18 November - A Day On The Green, Mt Cotton QLD
Wednesday 5 December - Albany Entertainment Centre, Albany WA
Thursday 6 December - Civic Centre, Esperance WA
Saturday 8 December - Mundaring Weir Hotel Amphitheatre WA
Sunday 9 December - Drakesbrook Hotel, Waroona WA