Lucky Numbers

Some might say that calling your album Fortune Favoured Me is tempting fate, pure and simple. In fact, interviewing renowned Australian blues singer Kerri Simpson, I feel I should be following her around with a lucky rabbit's foot, or if she's a vegetarian, perhaps a fist full of shamrocks. Maybe, Simpson is just telling it how it is – after all, she is a talented successful blues and country singer who has lived the dream in Chicago and New Orleans, releasing a new album with a guest list bigger than a music festival (it includes Matt Walker, Jeff Lang, Charles Jenkins and Kylie Auldist). That sounds like pretty decent luck, on reflection. However, alas, the explanation turns out to be far less complex than that.

“I just love the song,” Simpson says of the title. “Fortune Favoured Me is a song Charles Jenkins wrote – I'm a big fan of his – and it seemed to be a nice happy title, so, I guess that's it.” As straightforward as that sounds, it certainly doesn't mean Simpson doesn't recognise luck has had a part to play in her continued career – particularly when it comes to the recording of that new album. “I'm pretty lucky I managed to get the album finished,” she says wryly. “I got a recording grant from Thirty Mill Studios – that's pretty lucky. Also, a lot of musicians are featured on the album, and people were happy to come in and help out.”

Simpson points out that luck isn't just about everything that succeeds, but also everything that doesn't fail. “Sometimes recordings can go wrong – sometimes working in a studio, great disasters occur for one reason or another. Electricity gets cut off, some piece of equipment stops working… we were very fortunate that none of that happened on this album.“

With the grant given by Thirty Mill Studios, Simpson has spent two years completing an astonishingly large library of songs, which she is producing in sections, and releasing as a series of albums called Knockin' On The Back Door.

“When I got the recording grant, I couldn't decide what album to write – I love all sorts of music. So I decided to take my band The Prodigal Sons and record lots of songs in different genres, and make that into a series. The first was Maybe By Midnight, which was me taking my hat off to country music. The songs on this one are indie rock, roots and stuff – the next will be a jazz album, and that one is nearly finished now.”

Two down, five to go…

“I decided that there will be seven records in the series. We recorded 50 or 60 songs over a couple of years, and will release them slowly as the Knockin' On The Back Door series.

“Because I had a lot of guests in the studio laying down tracks, there's something in those tracks that represents the essence of those people,” Simpson explains. Citing the example of Geoff Achison, she says: “Geoff came in and recorded for the album when he was here visiting, and the lyrics I wrote to the song we made have a link to a song he recorded at an earlier time – I wanted to link back to his lyrics and his songs. All of the songs with guest performers have a little of the essence of the person connected with that song.”

Kerri Simpson will be playing the following shows:

Sunday 14 October - The Substation, Newport VIC