How Putting Poems To Music “Unlocked Another Way Of Writing”

Paul Kelly

Paul Kelly recently shared a stage with AB Original at Splendour In The Grass to perform their reimagined version of his own Dumb Things about which the Australian icon enthuses, "They've given me a little part to play in it… It's great fun". "And I've performed with Dan Sultan as well on different occasions," he extols, "and he's always really good to be onstage with, you know, he's got that - you never quite know what he's gonna do, but that's what makes him compelling as a performer."

As well as being a sought after collaborator, Kelly has released "various different types of cover records" over the last couple of years including two last year: Death's Dateless Night (with Charlie Owen) and Seven Sonnets And A Song (Shakespearean sonnets put to music). "The last two in particular were more philosophical and meditative," he details.

Kelly and Owen toured their anthology of funeral songs extensively and Kelly recalls, "I loved doing those shows for lots of reasons: one I was singing with my daughters [Madeleine and Memphis] and we did a whole tour around Australia, and then early this year in the States - a lot of the venues were in churches so had good sound for the songs." This scribe was fortunate enough to be in attendance when the duo's funereal selection dignified Riverboats Music Festival in Echuca, which was particularly eerie since soft rain descended from the heavens just as Kelly, Owen and co hit the stage. Kelly remembers this Echuca set well: "We had those birds flying across, swooping down and coming through the trees, and the sunlight sort of coming and going, and the tiny little sprinkle of rain so, yeah! We really enjoyed that festival." From an audience member's perspective, the characteristically rowdy crowd watched reverently, many remembering those dear to them who have sadly passed. As flocks of birds circles in formation it actually felt as if we were communicating with the spirit world through song. "It had a bit of that, yeah," Kelly allows. "It was a little bit spooky. It was beautiful."

With his latest Life Is Fine release, Kelly returns with a 'normal' record, which he admits was exactly what he wanted to do. "I really wanted to return with something completely different: an upbeat band record with lots of harmonies and lots of noise."

An "old photo" of Kelly graces this album's cover and he tells, "Coincidentally, Steve [Young], who took that photo, is the photographer who took the photo for [the cover of] Death's Dateless Night, my previous record… that was a set-up, considered portrait that we did specifically for that record." In contrast, the photograph used for Kelly's Life Is Fine cover is an action shot of the legendary singer-songwriter swimming while waving - not in a panicky 'Help, I'm drowning' way, more like a greeting - and he explains this shot "wasn't intended for that cover". "A friend of mine - Steve Young, who's a professional photographer - asked me if he could take my portrait and he knew I loved swimming… and he said, 'Can I take it in Port Philip Bay, in St Kilda?' It must've been in summer… the weather was warm, so it wasn't hard. And he's a quick photographer - he doesn't take forever. So I just swam around and played around in the water for about 20 minutes, and he took a few shots. And he entered it for a portrait photography competition, which didn't win anything, but I just had the photo sitting on my computer… Once I decided to call the album Life Is Fine, I was just trawling through images and I came across that and decided that's the one we'd use."

The album's title track is a poem put to music, somewhat like Kelly's Seven Sonnets And A Song album, and we're curious to hear how he found the experience of creating a song around someone else's pre-existing words. "I didn't think I could do it," Kelly confesses. "I always wrote my own words, or always wrote the music first, or generally my songwriting would be more sort of mumbling or moaning a melody - it'd have a sound, so I never had just pure melody; it had sound and sort of vowels, and sort of snatches of words, but the musical part of it was always generally the first part and I was trying to get the words to match those sounds and the music. And I always thought that writing the words first would be too restrictive or would somehow inhibit the music, but I was wrong about that. And I only discovered [this] about five years ago when I was invited to collaborate with an orchestra and the Australian National Academy Of Music, and a modern classical composer James Ledger - putting poems to music - and we did that for a show, and recorded it live, and it ended up becoming Conversations With Ghosts; but that was all different poems put to music and that unlocked another way of writing for me, it gave me a key to another room, or it gave me another arrow in the quiver.

"So since then I've, you know, from time to time, thought, 'I'll have a go at putting a poem to music'. I might read a poem and like it and think, 'I might put a tune to this,' and that's what led to the Shakespeare sonnets record that came out last year and, yeah! The title track of Life Is Fine is a poem by an American poet Langston Hughes. I just put music to it, a friend of mine sent me the poem and said, 'I think you could put a tune to this,' and that particular poem does read like a song lyric; quite a few of his poems sound like they could have songs to them. So, yeah! It's been a discovery for me."

The first single to be lifted from Kelly's 23rd studio album is Firewood And Candles. The music video sees Kelly in cooking-segment mode and he certainly looks like he knows his way around a kitchen. "I'm a basic cook," he discloses. "Quite a lot of people in my family are good cooks: my nephew Dan is a really good cook, and my brother Martin, and so most of the men in our family cook more than the women… I cook a fair bit and I quite enjoy it - I also love being cooked for, who doesn't?… At home we often cook really collaboratively. I live with my brother at the moment and my nephew Dan… So, you know, one person can take the lead cooking and the others help out as the sous-chefs, and we put some music on and have a gin and tonic in the summertime…"

A Life Is Fine electronic press kit is available for your viewing pleasure on YouTube and this contains some footage of the incomparable Vika Bull recording lead vocals on album track My Man's Got A Cold while Kelly's long-time drummer Peter Luscombe drops a bucket of percussion instruments on the floor to create a rhythmic cacophony. "We wanted to get a really sort of big clanking sound right on the first beat of the bar," Kelly illuminates, adding that this racket was "kind of inspired by - way back - the Chain song Black & Blue; they've got a similar sound going on."

All musicians who play on Life Is Fine are long-time Kelly collaborators: Luscombe, Bill McDonald on bass, Ash Naylor on guitar, Cameron Bruce on keys, and Vika and Linda Bull on BVs. Before going into the recording studio, Kelly confirms he certainly has "the words and the tune and the chords" worked out. "But everyone brings their own things to the table," he points out, "and songs can change dramatically from how I imagine they might be when the band gets hold of them. So it varies: sometimes I imagine how [a song] will sound and then it sort of ends up close to that, other ones sort of take off in a completely different direction." Kelly acknowledges he writes songs and makes music "to be surprised". "So if you get surprised in a good way when you're working then it makes life enjoyable," he concludes.