Paul Kelly

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I've known Paul Kelly for quite a long time. We first worked together when I was doing the Tonight Show. He appeared on the program and did a song with the band.

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Paul came to the concert that I did with Archie and Ruby,  the Kuratunga concert, which became the subject of the documentary, Wash My Soul in the Rivers Flow. I got a phone call from Paul after the concert saying that he really liked it and would like to collaborate with me on a large-scale project. He wanted to do songs that he’d written based on ideas from the Bible. He invited Vika and Linda and a gospel choir to join us. It became a show called Meet Me in the Middle of the Air, commissioned by Julia Holt, Director of the Adelaide Cabaret Festival. It went on to tour nationally.

 

Many years later I found myself curating a series of shows at Ukaria in South Australia. Paul was one of the artists I approached to join me.  I honestly didn't know if he would be interested in coming across but he did. Firstly, Paul came over to my place with a bunch of songs that he thought would work. And we took it from there. Stripped back piano and vocal format means that things can really happen in real time. You can take risks. It's not going to fall apart. What's the worst that can happen? Even if one of us misses a cue, it's fixed in the blink of an eye.

 

There's many aspects to what he does that are in a way quite similar to me. We converge at a number of different levels. Paul is a reader. He loves poetry. We connect on that level of literature. He's curious about music. He's worked across a wide variety of genres too, from collaborating with classical composers to bluegrass and Irish inflected music, soul music, folk, rock, he's done it all. He's done it all because he understands it all. He's very musically curious. He's interested in jazz too. He was really easy to work with. He thought carefully about the songs he wanted to do. That's the other thing about Paul, he's very thoughtful. He's very considered in what he does. He's not impulsive. If he decides to do something, it's because he's really given it some due consideration.

 

Hearing him play all of these different songs and getting a sense of the range of them was amazing. So when he came to my house and we started to play.. almost immediately he said, you know, we really should record this. He just really loved it right from the get go. So did I.