Paul KellyPaul Kelly plays the Arena on Friday, the Troccadero, Surfers Paradise on Saturday and the Nambour RSL on Sunday.
If it is all Nothing But A Dream as the title of Paul Kelly's latest album offers then it is a remarkably busy one. Or so it seems to the casual observer.
In the past couple of years there has been a steady parade of projects - dub with Professor Ratbaggy, bluegrass with Uncle Bill, the afore-mentioned solo album, three soundtracks - and a decent overseas tour that took in such legendary spaces at the Knitting Factory in New York.
"It's been short bursts of stuff," he says. "A lot came out last year - the soundtracks and album - but that was all stuff I'd been working on for some time. This year has been more about touring. We've been to America and Canada, then England and Ireland, and now here at home. The good thing was that the crowds were up in America - I think word-of-mouth is building up, but it's still hard to get consistent airplay. The audiences were mainly American, not too many expatriates. You get a lot of ex-pats in London though.”
"I like touring America. We tour differently to the way we do here. Life's good when it's varied, when you aren't doing the same thing over and over. In America we play small clubs, average 200-300 people a night. We're back in small rooms, little in-house PA's, you set up close on stage and it's really fun. This time we took the full band; the five of us."
Don't miss a beat with our FREE daily newsletter
"Touring in the States, it's pretty close quarters. We're sleeping on a bus together and spend a lot of time with each other. We've been doing it long enough to know how to handle each other."
Nothing But A Dream is getting second life now as it's reissued with a bonus disc, The Gift That Keeps On Giving. It features tracks - performed acoustically - written from the perspective of women, including the title track, Cradle of Love, You Broke a Beautiful Thing, Jump to Love and Throwing Good Love After Bad. Most of these songs appear on the recently released The Women At The Well: The Songs Of Paul Kelly tribute on which many of Australia's leading ladies of song - Chrissy Amphlett, Renee Geyer, Rebecca Barnard, Kate Ceberano, Angie Hart, Christine Anu, Magic Dirt, Kasey Chambers, Lash and others - offered their interpretations, some quiet radical, of appropriate Kelly songs.
"I think the beauty of The Women At The Well was it was so diverse. It was a record that was brewing for a year or two. Everybody chose their own songs although I did send The Gift That Keeps On Giving to Big Runga; she was looking to do a song and picked She's Rare but Rebecca had already claimed it. I thought, 'Oh, well, I'll write one for her’."
That is so typically Paul Kelly. Chrissy Amphlett's stalking electronic pop version of Before Too Long may not be but it adds such a new nuance to the song. "That's one of my favourites," Kelly enthuses. "She took it a long way from the original which is the thing to do. The lyrics to that song have always been very dark but our recording was cheerful and the melody was up and the overall feel was bright.”
It's a nice when one of these projects does work. There are, after all, a lot of tribute and compilation albums around these days. And many of them aren't worth the disc they are burned on.
"That's the nature of compilation albums," Kelly says. "A bit hit and miss; a bit patchy. I think this worked so well because it wasn't slung together. The idea grew from the fact that there had already been songs that had been done from a women's perspective. They were written for women to do in the first place; songs I haven't done myself; songs that were written to go out to other singers.”
"Writing from a women's perspective is just an extension of writing from a character - which is what a lot of songwriters do. They tell a story, imagine it from a particular character's point of view. Imagination isn't limited. For some reason standing outside like that helps me to write. I can hear a voice or imagine a voice; a lot of songs come from people just saying things and then you put words into their mouth and try and make them rhyme."
Strangely, after all the dynamics of the past few years Kelly has nothing special in mind after the touring is over. He's happy to "see what blows my way, just try and write some songs. It's a quieter time. I hope it stays that way."
In the end all you can ask Paul Kelly is - after this extraordinary career that has now touched so many different styles of music and creativity - whether there is anything left undone? What's the dream inside the man? There is a lengthy silence before he replies, "Write more happy songs." Now that would be something else - an album of happy Paul Kelly songs. "Yeah, that would tip the balance a bit. Happy songs are the hardest ones to write."
