Kate Ceberano has some sage advice for young musicians trying to get a break without entering one of the myriad TV talent quests: hit the streets.
“I learnt a great deal from putting a hat out in the middle of Bourke Street Mall [in Melbourne] and just singing – I learnt how to face a lot of people,” she says.
“You get instantaneous reviews … but my passion was strong and nothing could dampen my enthusiasm.
“You get a good idea of whether you’ll make it. No one can stop you doing that.”
Not that the singer is against reality-television talent shows, but she does think that contestants singing a swag of songs by well-known international artists does little to further respect for this country’s own music, telling InDaily: “I want to see Australia’s heartbeat.”
After another successful season as artistic director of the Adelaide Cabaret Festival, Ceberano is currently touring on the back of her first original album in 10 years, Kensal Road.
Joining her on the road are two young singers whom she is mentoring. Ceberano says that being involved in all facets of a tour offers a realistic view of life in the music industry at a time when many emerging artists’ expectations are unrealistically amplified and accelerated.
Kensal Road is the 25th recorded album for Ceberano, who has been involved in the music industry for more than 30 years, winning a Logie, three ARIA awards, two People’s Choice Awards and many more nominations.
Back when she started out, she says, “it was a lot more feral”.
“There was less industry, less business behind it. It wasn’t ruled by money but by a person’s desire to get out of their neighbourhood or scene and make their mark.
“Now we’ve got such a culture of imitation, and the holding up of single icons and duplicating them in triplicate.”
No one could accuse Ceberano of not being true to herself and her own style of music, with Kensal Road merging her Hawaiian folk roots with alt-country influences in songs she says are close to her heart.
After a lengthy break from recording original material – which followed the birth nine years ago of her daughter, Gypsy, and also coincided with her Cabaret Festival role – she says she spent three or four months in Melbourne penning more than 80 songs to get back into songwriting mode.
“They’re like little poems – I don’t find writing that difficult once I get into it. It just pours out of me.”
Several of those songs made it onto the final track-list, with others written in the UK where she recorded the album with songwriter/producer James Bryan in London’s Kensaltown Studios.
Many of the tracks are intensely personal, such as “Louis’ Song”, which was inspired by Ceberano’s 20-year-old musician nephew and the advice she wanted to pass on to him. “Garden State” is about returning home to Victoria after being thousands of miles away, “How High” has all backbeats of the ’60s girl bands she loved, and “The Little Things” is about “that dilemma of looking at oneself in the mirror and realising that all the additives one’s collected along the way have obscured who you really are”.
Ceberano says she eliminated a lot of technology from the recording, so there is a rawness to the vocals which can be reinterpreted in live performances.
“It’s a very organic, earthy-sounding album, partly because it was recorded all in real time.
“I love pop music, don’t get me wrong … but that’s a different technique and style and there’s a certain inauthenticity when I bring it to the live stage.”
Kate Ceberano’s Kensal Road Tour comes to Her Majesty’s Theatre in Adelaide on October 11. She will be performing at the Northern Festival Centre in Port Pirie on October 10.
