Today (February 24) Paul Kelly has shared ‘People’, the fourth instalment in the singer’s ongoing series of concept-based releases – read on for his exclusive track-by-track breakdown of the mixtape for NME.
The 18-song tracklist of Kelly’s latest mixtape offers brief vignettes of various historical figures, either pulled from his decades-spanning discography – including ‘Stolen Apples’, ‘Words & Music’ and ‘Under The Sun’ – or newly recorded and included on ‘People’. The album features two previously unreleased songs, as well as two new live renditions of previous Kelly tracks.
‘People’ opens with new recordings ‘Light On The Hill’ and ‘Laughing Boy’, which tell the stories of former Australian Prime Minister Paul Keating and Irish writer Brendan Behan, respectively. The former track, written by Casey Bennetto, first appeared in the musical Keating!, while the latter is based on Behan’s autobiography Borstal Boy.
‘People’ also recounts tales of famous athletes, artists and fellow musicians. ‘Shane Warne’ pays homage to the titular Australian cricketer while ‘Every Day My Mother’s Voice’ narrates the final stages of Adam Goodes’ AFL career. Painters Queenie McKenzie and Rover Thomas are the focus of ‘The Ballad Of Queenie And Rover’.
Among Kelly’s other historical muses are infamous bushranger Ned Kelly (‘Our Sunshine’), guitarist Charlie Owen (‘Charlie Owen’s Slide Guitar’), cricketer Sir Donald Bradman (‘Bradman’) and composer Stephen Foster (‘Stephen Foster’s Last Waltz’). ‘Rally Around The Drum’, co-written by Archie Roach, offers a portrait of life as a tent boxer – work once done by the late First Nations icon himself. More fictional accounts appear on the tracks ‘Desdemona’ and ‘Josephina’.
The result sees Kelly present vividly told snapshots of people whom he describes as “truly remarkable”. Elsewhere, ‘People’ features two new live renditions of ‘Our Sunshine’ and ‘From Little Things Big Things Grow’, each recorded at his 2022 performance at Melbourne/Naarm’s Sidney Myer Music Bowl.
‘People’ serves as the latest installment in Kelly’s ongoing mixtape series, following previous themed releases ‘Time’, ‘Rivers And Rain’ and ‘Drinking’. Kelly plans on continuing his mixtape releases, with additional curated collections due for release throughout the year.
Paul Kelly broke down ‘People’ track by track exclusively for NME, explaining each song, its place within his broader pantheon, and the remarkable person who inspired it.
‘Light On The Hill’
“A song from the musical Keating! written by Casey Bennetto, imagines Paul Keating’s thoughts the night of his 1996 election loss. “You only get a moment in the penthouse until you find you’re standing on the sill.” Lovely, modulating chords and brilliant lyrics.
“‘Light on the hill’ is a phrase used in a 1949 speech by then Prime Minister Ben Chifley in describing the philosophy of the Australian Labor Party. There is a live version from the show of the song on YouTube, performed by Mike McLeish, which I’ve studied closely. It’s the second Casey Bennetto song I’ve recorded in recent times, the other being ‘Swing Around The Sun’ for my Christmas album in 2021.”
‘Laughing Boy’
“A song I wrote around 1984 after reading Borstal Boy, the autobiography of Irish writer Brendan Behan. Weddings, Parties, Anything released a version in 1988. I recently discovered a kitchen table version on an old cassette featuring me, Steve Connolly and Michael Barclay. My current band based our version on that and then enticed Michael out of the Victorian west coast surf up to town to sing the harmony he first did 40 years ago. He knew the song better than I did, having sung it with the Weddos over many years.”
‘Stephen Foster’s Last Waltz’
“Stephen Foster can be considered the grandfather of American popular music. His songs, written in the mid nineteenth century, are still covered today. ‘Beautiful Dreamer’, ‘Oh Susannah’, ‘Jeannie With the Light Brown Hair’, ‘Hard Times Come No More’, ‘Camptown Races’, ‘Old Folks at Home (Swanee River)’ and many more. He fell out of fashion after the civil war and died in poverty in a New York hotel room at the age of 37 with 37 cents to his name.
“A note was found in his pocket which said ‘dear friends and gentle hearts’. Perhaps it was a line he was thinking of for a song. It’s a line I thought shouldn’t go to waste so I used it to open ‘Stephen Foster’s Last Waltz’ and put in as many of his other song lyrics as I could fit. Alice Keath helped me to sing it and you can hear us floating on a lovely horn arrangement by Ross Irwin. I wish Stephen could have heard Roy Orbison sing ‘Beautiful Dreamer’. Maybe he can, maybe Roy’s singing it to him now in a land beyond time.”
‘Every Step Of The Way’
“I was watching AFL footballer Eddie Betts talking on a footy show about the cumulative effect of being on the end of constant racial abuse over a long period of time. At times during the interview he was visibly distressed and he must have said ‘I’m sick and tired of it’ at least four or five times.
“‘Every Step Of The Way’ started right there. Cameron Bruce played organ and arranged the cello on the recording. Watching Eddie play football has been one of the great joys of life. And I’m not alone in thinking that. Even if you don’t like football go and look up some of his highlights on…ah, you know where.”
‘Charlie Owen’s Slide Guitar’
“I wrote ‘Charlie Owen’s Slide Guitar’ about 25 years ago after seeing him and Joel Silbersher perform at The Continental Club in Melbourne. I’ve seen Charlie play many times and made a record with him in 2016 called ‘Death’s Dateless Night’, based on songs we’ve sung at funerals. A lot of our friends have died over the years, most recently Reneé Geyer who we are still mourning.
“Charlie played with her a lot, including her last show just before last Christmas. He is always compelling on stage, hunched over his guitar as he goes digging for that feeling. That’s why Reneé liked performing with him and that’s why I do, too. He makes a song sound new every night.”
‘Bradman’
“I read a biography of Sir Donald Bradman by Irving Rosenwater in my late twenties and not long after finishing the book the song fell out. It’s always a bit like walking a tightrope singing this song live as I never know quite where the lyrics are going to land.”
‘The Ballad of Queenie and Rover’
“‘The Ballad of Queenie and Rover’ is a tribute to Queenie McKenzie and Rover Thomas, two of my favourite painters who made their paintings at Warmun in the East Kimberley. They first met working on a cattle station together. When Rover was a young man he got kicked in the head by a horse and badly injured, nearly scalped, with no doctor for miles around. Queenie sewed him up skilfully with camp cotton. Later on he showed her how to paint. The Pigram Brothers from Broome helped out with the backing vocals.”
‘Rally Round the Drum’
“‘Rally Round the Drum’ was written with Archie Roach in a Perth hotel room late last century. It’s based on his days as a tent boxer in Gippsland in the late seventies. Archie’s father fought under the name Snowball so when Archie started fighting they called him Kid Snowball. I performed the song solo for many years and sometimes still do but in 2005 I threw it to The Stormwater Boys on my bluegrass album ‘Foggy Highway’. They took it by the scruff of the neck and galloped away with it. I love the interplay of instruments throughout, especially Mick Albeck’s fiddle playing on the playout.
“Around 25 years after we wrote the song Archie and I finally got to record it together with Paul Grabowsky and his band for Archie’s album ‘Tell Me Why’. That’s a good memory.”
‘A Bastard Like Me’
“In 2012 Rachel Perkins asked me to contribute a song to a show she co-directed with Nigel Jamieson called Bungalow Song. The Bungalow at the Old Telegraph Station in Alice Springs was an institution that housed generations of Indigenous children separated from their families. Rachel’s father Charlie Perkins, an Arrende-Kalkadoon man, grew up there. He later became a scholar, activist and public servant, fighting for the rights of his people. One of his memorable achievements was instigating and leading the 1965 Freedom Ride around outback New South Wales highlighting prejudice and injustices against Aboriginal people.
“To help me in my research for the show Rachel sent me some information on the history of The Bungalow and also a copy of Charlie’s autobiography A Bastard Like Me. It was a title too good to resist.”
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‘Pigeon/Jandamarra’
“Jandamarra, a Bunuba man from The Kimberley, organised and fought a war of resistance against the white settlers and pastoralists of the late 19th century. As a young man, under the whitefella name Pigeon, he worked as a tracker for the Derby Police and was considered a model black, highly skilled as a tracker and horseman. One fateful night he switched sides, killed his mentor and commanding officer Constable Richardson, and, between 1894 and 1897, became the Kimberley’s public enemy number one – black terror and bogeyman.
“His surprise raids and clever guerrilla tactics, his ability to evade capture even when apparently trapped – he had intimate knowledge of secret caves and tunnels in the limestone ranges – and his apparently miraculous recovery from serious wounds made his reputation grow to mythical, supernatural status. His magic man status remains central to the Bunuba oral tradition today. The best book I’ve read on the subject is Howard Pedersen and Banjo Woorunmurra’s Jandamarra and The Bunuba Resistance. The song is written from the point of view of a fictional hapless police officer trying to catch him.”
‘Every Day My Mother’s Voice’
“‘Every Day My Mother’s Voice’ was commissioned by Ian Darling for his documentary The Final Quarter, based on the late career of AFL footballer Adam Goodes. He was honoured as Australian of the year in 2014 but that didn’t stop him from being hounded out of the game for speaking out against racial abuse.
“The band and I first recorded it as a duet with Dan Sultan but this version is live with the incomparable Jess Hitchcock at The Sidney Myer Music Bowl in 2019.”
‘Desdemona’
“Desdemona is the fictional heroine of Shakespeare’s play Othello but, such is Shakepeare’s power, she seems very real to me. She’s been living and dying for over 400 years. The song is written from Othello’s point of view after he kills her in a jealous rage. Desdemona is totally innocent but Othello has been manipulated and deceived by his treacherous lieutenant, Iago, into believing her to be unfaithful.”
‘From Little Things Big Things Grow’
“Kev Carmody and I wrote ‘From Little Things Big Things Grow’ around a campfire at Wivenhoe Dam in 1988. The song tells the story of the 1966 walk off by Vincent Lingiari and the Gurindji stockman and families from Lord Vestey’s cattle station, and their long struggle to get their ancestral lands back. Kev and I were both inspired by the iconic photo taken by Mervin Bishop of Gough Whitlam pouring dirt into Vincent’s hands to symbolize the returning of the Gurindji lands.
“It’s had quite a few incarnations and interpretations over the years, including a memorable re-telling and re-tooling by Ziggy Ramo in 2020. This version is from last year’s concert at the Sidney Myer Music Bowl and features Jess Hitchcock on vocals, Alice Keath on banjo and harmonies and Russel Smith on yidaki (didgeridoo).”
‘Our Sunshine’
“‘Our Sunshine’, written with Michael Thomas from Weddings, Parties, Anything, is based on the life and times of Ned Kelly and is also the title of an imaginary life of Ned in book form, written by Robert Drewe. ‘Our sunshine’ is what Ned’s dad used to call him when he was a young boy.
“Ned was in trouble with the police from an early age and felt that he and other poor Catholics were always unfairly persecuted. He was also deeply aggrieved that his mother had been imprisoned for helping him defend her daughter Kate, Ned’s sister, from the attentions of a policeman at the family home.
“When he killed three policeman who were hunting him at Stringybark Creek there was no turning back. He and his gang led the police a merry dance for two years throughout NSW and Victoria, becoming folk heroes to some, an ‘infestation’ to others. He was eventually captured in a shoot out at the Glenrowan Inn. The police brought him down despite the protection of his home-made armour, fashioned out of plough parts, by shooting him in the legs.
“He was hanged at Melbourne Gaol, November 11, 1880 just yards from the cell in which his mother was incarcerated. His words to Judge Redmond Barry, on being sentenced to death were ‘I will see you there when I go.’ Barry died two weeks later from complications arising from a carbuncle.
“Another source for the song was Ian Jones deeply researched book Ned Kelly: A Short Life. It was originally recorded with Uncle Bill for my first bluegrass album ‘Smoke’. This new version was recorded live last year at the Sidney Myer Music Bowl. Dan Kelly plays mandolin, Alice Keath banjo, Ash Naylor spaghetti western guitar and Peter Luscombe his famous giddyup tambourine!”
‘Arthur McBride’
“‘Arthur McBride’ is an Irish folk song from the 19th century that tells of two young men having to fight off a British recruiting sergeant and his offsider while taking a stroll on Christmas Day. Paul Brady made the song famous in 1977 with an intense virtuosic performance on the record ‘Paul Brady/Andy Irvine’. It has stood like a mountain as the definitive version ever since. The band and I recorded it for our Christmas album in 2021 and had fun scrabbling around in Paul’s foothills.”
