STACK #196 Feb 2021

FEATURE MUSIC

just went ‘You know what? That’s going to be the truth of what we’re doing.’ And that’s how it remained.” The group bent their steps through 10 covers and two originals - the afore-mentioned title track written by Ceberano and Rick Price, and the affecting, acoustic-and-piano-led blues ballad Hold On , written by Ceberano, Rodrigo Bustos, and Jess Fairlie - making stops in all manner of seminal coves. “Paul McCartney, Carole King, Leonard Cohen, Dolly Parton, Paul Weller, my favorite band Elbow,” Ceberano lists. “I mean, it’s a f-cking mixed bag!” Finding the core of a cover is something Ceberano approaches with trademark earthiness, but the musician notes that originals can become just as problematically familiar. “I’ve been in the middle of singing a song I’ve been singing for 40 years, like Brave or Bedroom Eyes , and I’ve lost the power to remember the next verse,” she laughs. “And then I have to go, ‘Come on, Kate, f-cking pull yourself together!’ Like, don’t don’t forsake the audience’s experience on this!” Her version of Dolly Parton’s I Will

THE BOY FROM OZ & THE GIRL FROM MELBOURNE Ceberano’s album includes a stirring cover of I Honestly Love You , written by late Australian icon Peter Allen and American pop producer Jeff Barry (who co-wrote numerous classics including Do Wah Diddy Diddy , River Deep - Mountain High , and Chapel of Love ). She recounts meeting Allen in this wonderful story: “I had the greatest fortune of doing a New Year’s Eve event when I was 17. I had an album - it was a jazz album, and I was very much into the vizualisation and conceptual idea of being a jazz singer. It was doing really well and I was thrilled. So I got this gig: it was with Peter Allen, Whitney Houston and Frank Sinatra. I was at Sanctuary Cove up north, and it’s the biggest [event] I’ve ever had, pretty much still today. They couldn’t put me on the bill because Frank said, “I will not sing a note after the stroke of midnight. That’s the end of my contract. We’ll sing Auld Lang Syne , and then I’m f-cking gone!” So I had the great pleasure of just simply watching the show, and getting paid for it! Long story short, Peter Allen showed me everything I needed to know about what music should mean to me, and for me, for the rest of my life. I sat on the piano stool next to him, my brother [guitarist Phil Ceberano] was on the other side. And he played I Honestly Love You ; he wrote it for Olivia Newton John of course, but he is the author. Now, when you hear Peter sing it, and

Left (top to bottom) Paul McCartney, Carole King, Leonard Cohen and Dolly Parton

You really did get the

emotion, and the kind of combined consciousness of the band

Always Love You , the penultimate track on Sweet Inspiration , is stunningly present; everyone knows these words by heart, so how does she ensure she’s not singing by rote, but actually connecting with the song’s sentiment? “I find that part of me, that’s the very Hawaiian part of me, in that moment,” she offers. “And I try to imagine nature: how we look around and we think we’ve seen it all before. We’ve come across that particular plant, or that insect, or we’ve seen that coastline before, but it’s never the same . And it’s always perfect within its own universe of never being the same as anything else. To me, the perfect way to sing is to try to find what’s new about that moment when you’re singing, and just sing it in that moment, as true as

Cocker, Mad Dogs & Englishmen dynamic.” If it sounds unbridled, it’s because Ceberano and her band were truly experiencing a process of unchaining their hearts across the two days they recorded. “When things go a little bit mental, well, once they’re released it’s not like you can

you know Peter’s story, you suddenly go… this is an autobiographical, sort of self-help song, which he wrote to himself, to get himself through a dark time, perhaps. His generosity with us, as kids - who were just like, no one from nowhere - and the fact that he gave so

rein it in,” she says. “You really did get the emotion, and the kind of combined consciousness of the band. We were playing standard songs, and we’re meant to be all tidy - but by the end, we’d kind of unraveled, and we were spent! So in the end, we

much of his life force and time... Sh-t! That’s what you do it for!”

Sweet Inspiration by Kate Ceberano is out Feb 5 via Sony.

you can. And then, I suppose, that’s the closest you can be to nature.”

Peter Allen

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