Going Bush

Emerging from a meeting that was “dry, but at least quicker than usual”, local alt.country singer-songwriter Sal Kimber has not been discussing strategies with her management, or talking to anyone else in the music industry for that matter. Kimber is referring to her day job as a youth worker, something she's “really passionate about”. “I don't know if I could be a full-time musician,” she says. “I tried it for a little while… but I love leaving the house and not thinking about my music career.”

Right now, however, Kimber is in the midst of Music Victoria's Off The Beaten Track tour, alongside Mick Thomas and his band The Roving Commission. The circuit touches down in less conventional venues – halls, RSLs, wineries, footy grounds, and even a renovated substation – in response to local musicians and regional fans who desired to share their quintessential Australian stories and songs in more intimate settings. The tour is also being run in conjunction with anti-binge drinking campaign Live Solution, an element of the tour where Kimber's passion for young people is being well employed, particularly given her experience with FReeZA, a government-funded youth development program aimed at making music and cultural events more accessible to young people.

In addition to a bucket-load of rootsy rock'n'roll, free practical professional development workshops are being offered at a number of the shows. Kimber's biggest nugget of advice for musicians is, “that you can tour outside of Melbourne and Sydney and Adelaide and Brisbane. There are so many great places to play in regional Australia. Our band, The Rollin' Wheel, we did 32 shows last year for our album release, and only seven of them would have been capitals, all the rest were just small towns and little house concerts. We find that it's at those shows that people actually buy albums… So I highly encourage bands, and I know Mick's the same, to get out of Melbourne and go and find little niches, little pockets; they'll love ya.”

It was thanks almost exclusively to Kimber's father that she was propelled into the Australian music scene to begin with. Taking her to local festivals and the shows of Australian musical icons such as Shane Howard and Paul Kelly, he taught her the importance of “Australian-ifying” her songs (because you “don't necessarily have to come from Nashville or say the word 'Nashville'…” in country music, says Kimber), He was also the bloke that sent her work to the organisers of the Port Fairy Folk Festival, got her a spot on the bill, and won her a “little emerging artist program”.

“My dad was really instrumental in my career. He's a songwriter – a really daggy songwriter – but he used to just write about the people he'd met, or where he grew up, and they were usually quite fun songs… We had a lot of fun sing-alongs growing up. Occasionally I still go home and write songs with him. There's a song on the album called Southbound, which is about my nan travelling down from Mildura to Melbourne to pick up her husband from the hospital after he'd come back from the Second World War. He was almost blind; writing that sort of song is really beautiful with dad.”

When Kimber reaches the proverbial end of the beaten track, and the tour concludes in late October, she'll begin preparations for playing, “a few little festivals over the summer”. Beyond that, Sal Kimber & The Rollin' Wheel have, well, the wheels in motion for their next release.

“Our last album we did with Shane O'Mara [Tim Rogers, The Audreys] so it was really nicely produced with lots of layers, but we're thinking of doing a bit of an acoustic thing this summer, cutting it back a bit.”

Sal Kimber & The Rollin' Wheel will be playing the following shows:

Friday 20 November - Mars Hill Cafe, Parramatta NSW
Sunday 22 November - Bellingen Memorial Hall, Sydney NSW
Wednesday 25 November - Black Bear Lodge, Brisbane QLD
Friday 4 December - Sandbar Wine Bar, Melbourne VIC