Kasey Chambers book launch

Barbara Lemon: Okay, good to go. Good evening and welcome to the National Library of Australia here on Ngunnawal and Ngambri Land in Canberra. I pay my respects to Elders past and present. My name is Barbara Lemon, and I'm a Director of Curatorial and Collection Research here at the Library. It's my very great pleasure to be with you. Our guest tonight has been hailed for her significant role in bringing Australian country music into the mainstream.

In 2018, she became the youngest woman ever to be inducted into the ARIA Hall of Fame. She's won a staggering 14 ARIA Awards, 24 Golden Guitars, and 10 APRAs. Her first 12 albums sold more than 14 times platinum, and her 13th has just been released, and in its first week is number one Australian album and number one country album. Pretty extraordinary. We are very fortunate to have her here tonight to share some music with us and to talk a little bit about her new book with the inimitable title, 'Just Don't Be a D**khead: And Other Profound Things I've Learnt'. Please welcome Kasey Chambers.

Kasey Chambers: Do I just sit down?

Barbara Lemon: Yeah.

Kasey Chambers: Thank you. Thanks so much. What a lovely introduction.

Barbara Lemon: It's all true.

Kasey Chambers: Oh, man.

Barbara Lemon: Kasey-

Kasey Chambers: I don't care if it's not true. I'm just happy you said it.

Barbara Lemon: Sounded good, didn't it? I mean, it's kind of obscene, 24 Golden Guitars. So Kasey, your book kicks off in 1976 with a cracking yarn. I mean, no spoilers, but it involves your very pregnant mom, Diane, hanging out of a speeding Jeep, syphoning fuel through a hose. I mean, I'm pushing six months here, and I find it hard to stand up, frankly.

Kasey Chambers: We've gunshots.

Barbara Lemon: With gunshots.

Kasey Chambers: With bullets firing at them actually, at my mom and dad. So you'll have to get the book to read that one. It's a bit too long. It'll probably take up the whole session if we tell it now.

Barbara Lemon: The retelling. Did read the epilogue. That's important. Make sure you do that.

Kasey Chambers: Yeah.

Barbara Lemon: But it's part of your origin story. It's this childhood on the Nullarbor, lived largely on the Nullarbor with summers spent in a fishing town on the South Australian coast. Can you tell us a bit about how that childhood has found its way into your music over the years?

Kasey Chambers: Yeah. Well, I actually think it's got everything to do with my music and my career really. I think, I grew up in a fairly remote area in Australia, half of my childhood being in a little beach town called Southend, right down the south-east of South Australia and the other half of my childhood in the outback. My dad was actually a professional fox hunter. He took the whole family out to the Nullarbor when I was about three weeks old, and I don't know how you wake up one day and go, "Oh, I might be a professional fox hunter," but that's kind of what he did. This is back in the seventies when everything was a bit weird. People did some weird shit back then.

And yeah, we lived out there each year. For five or six months of each year, we would go out and live in our four-wheel drive and we had a little, kind of a little caravan I guess on the back. My dad handmade it, actually, this little caravan and we'd keep all our supplies in it. And yeah, we travelled around the whole of the Nullarbor, hunting foxes, rabbits, eating whatever food that my dad hunted. We would cook everything on the open campfire and I learnt to sing out there as well. That's really where music first began for me because we were living a really isolated lifestyle out there.

We didn't really have much touch with civilization. As a kid, I only had a few friends to play with. My cousins who actually, one of them happens to be here tonight. I've just spotted them. I knew they were coming, my cousin Tracy and her mum Val, and I'm, sorry, I'll get all teary-eyed. It's just, I haven't seen her for a while and I'm very excited to have them here because Tracy is one of the only people that actually truly understands what I'm talking about because she had just as weird a childhood as I did. So it's just really lovely to see you, Trace.

Barbara Lemon: That's fantastic that they're here. Yeah.

Kasey Chambers: Thanks for coming. But it was such a special time and I wonder if Tracy can relate to this sort of thing that we had such a free-spirited lifestyle, even though we were such a long way away from any kind of civilization, a lot of the time, our lifestyle just had no boundaries. It was just so free-spirited and my parents and Tracy's parents, they just let us be whoever we wanted to be. We were living this nomadic lifestyle and just these little free spirits inside us we're just able to fly all the time. And I'm so so incredibly grateful of my childhood and it's really where music began for me sitting around a campfire and my dad would bring out the guitar and we would all sit around and sing as a family. We would sing old gospel songs and old country songs, and that's still one of my most favourite things to do now. I still sit around a campfire with my kids now and they bring out the guitar and we all sing as a family.

Barbara Lemon: So Tracy was involved in the singing as well?

Kasey Chambers: Look at her. She's going, "No, I was not." But she's going to sing for you tonight, aren't you, Trace? No. Her first performance ever. Look at her, she's dying right now. Sorry, Trace.

Barbara Lemon: Surprise. Yeah.

Kasey Chambers: She's regretting coming to this gig right now. No, it was mostly my family, but as cousins, we would put on little plays for our parents. So sometimes what we would do is we'd practise these little plays, me and my cousins, and we'd charge our parents 20 cents to come and watch. We were already hustling even way back then. No stage-

Barbara Lemon: Got a small audience, but they're willing to pay. Yeah.

Kasey Chambers: Yeah. Already hustling our careers way back then.

Barbara Lemon: Where'd you get your costumes from? Did you get them from them as well?

Kasey Chambers: Yeah, from Mum and Dad's drawers.

Barbara Lemon: Right, yeah.

Kasey Chambers: We'd get out all their clothes, put all them on and put on our little plays, and I was already a performer. I think, honestly, when I think back on those days, I had no stage out there. There was no audience. It was not about what performing is like for me now, but I felt like there was this little performing spirit inside me that was set free every time I got out there and put on a play or sang a song or something... I think I was just always destined to be a performer.

Barbara Lemon: It was in there.

Kasey Chambers: Yeah, I love it.

Barbara Lemon: You'd be watching your parents as well, both performing musicians and especially-

Kasey Chambers: Yeah, from before I was born too, like Mum and Dad played in bands and travelled around playing music a lot, so I was really born into it. Yeah.

Barbara Lemon: Yeah. So tell us about the formation, I guess more formally of the Dead Ringer Band, your family band. And I mean, I loved reading about the fact that there was a moment in your life, okay, you might've been 12, but when you actually had stage fright and found it hard to talk on stage.

Kasey Chambers: Yeah.

Barbara Lemon: That's finished now, hasn't it?

Kasey Chambers: Yeah, I'm pretty shy. Can you tell?

Barbara Lemon: Yeah. Yeah. I was getting that vibe.

Kasey Chambers: A lot of people actually do find this hard to believe because now if you come to one of my gigs, there's always more talking than there is singing. My band are often saying to me, "If you just shut up a bit, we'd get in five or six more songs a night."

Barbara Lemon: Just wind up the intro.

Kasey Chambers: I love a chat, but when I first started I was actually really nervous to speak on stage and I would get full stage fright. There was one gig, was really early on, I reckon it was maybe our second or third gig we'd ever done as a band. I was only about maybe 9 or 10, and I'm on stage and I forget the lyrics to the song. I go to go into the second verse and I'm like. I forget the lyrics, and I just freaked out and I looked over at my dad and he's just like, "Oh, just sing the first verse again, whatever." And I'm just like, "This is the worst moment of my life." And I burst into tears and I ran off the stage and I swore at that moment I would never ever set foot on a stage again for the rest of my life. I just wanted to crawl into a hole and die.

Barbara Lemon: Disappear, yeah.

Kasey Chambers: Yeah. I was just so like, "I can't do this. I can't handle that pressure." And then my mum and dad went back out and finish the rest of the gig and I was meant to go out and sing and I'm like, "No, I can't go on stage." And they went on stage and then the audience started really getting into the gig and started dancing and singing along and loving it. And then I was like, "Oh, hang on, I'm missing out now." And so I just walked back on stage and finished the gig.

Barbara Lemon: A bit of FOMO, yeah.

Kasey Chambers: So I think my fear of missing out was bigger than my fear of being freaked out by stage fright.

Barbara Lemon: That's the perfect end. And you mentioned in the book as well that you've got, I guess the inspiration not only of your parents, but what you're listening to in the Jeep on your way around the Nullarbor, Hank Williams, Slim Dusty, Emmylou Harris.

Kasey Chambers: Yeah.

Barbara Lemon: Yeah. Some of your other influences there that are coming through early on through your parents' musical taste.

Kasey Chambers: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, a lot of that was to do with the fact that I had no other way of hearing any other music than what my dad liked. So I really didn't have much choice.

Barbara Lemon: It was the diet.

Kasey Chambers: My choice of music was between country and western, pretty much. There's nothing else really out there for me. But now I'm actually really appreciative of that because later on when I became a teenager and stuff, I started listening to music that was on the radio and I went through a stage where I listened to whatever music that my dad hated. So I went through this death metal stage where I decided, I don't know, I'm a thirteen-year-old girl or something who went, "Right, what does my dad hate more than any other music in the world? So I'm going to listen to Death Metal," but I would only listen to it when my dad was around and then he would leave the room and I'd turn it off because I hated it.

Barbara Lemon: Because you hated it.

Kasey Chambers: I was like, "What am I listening to this shit for?"

Barbara Lemon: Reminds me of the story of you having soft drink as a treat, right?

Kasey Chambers: Oh, yeah.

Barbara Lemon: When you choose the ginger ale.

Kasey Chambers: Well, I mean that was just me being a real bitch really. So this was when we were out on the Nullarbor and we would would get a little treat every few weeks where we would have one can of soft drink that we could share between the whole family. And it was always like a real special kind of night when we got to have this because we got our supplies out there only every few weeks from the tea and sugar train. So it's not like you could just pop into a shop and buy another can of soft drink. So anyway, we would get to choose and we'd always have a choice between Coke and Fanta, lemonade and you know that Stoney's non-alcoholic ginger beer?

Barbara Lemon: I sure do.

Kasey Chambers: I hated that. That was my least favourite one. And even when my brother picked it, I just wouldn't have any because it was so gross. And I remember this one night we were getting our can of soft drink that we all got to share, but Nash, my brother had been really naughty that day and my mum's punishment for him was Nash doesn't get any can of soft drink and I get twice as much. So I got to choose whatever flavour I wanted. And his favourite was ginger beer. So I went, "I want the ginger beer" and I forced myself to drink that drink, bringing it up as I'm going along, but whatever my brother couldn't have, that's what I wanted.

Barbara Lemon: Totally empathised with that. Yeah, the brother... If you've got a brother, you feel-

Kasey Chambers: Already a dickhead.

Barbara Lemon: Already a dickhead. Early ticket moment. And we'll revisit some dickhead moments in a minute, but I think we do have a very fitting track. The title track for your new album, Backbone, if we are on the Nullarbor, should we have a little song break?

Kasey Chambers: We're on the Nullarbor. We're on the Nullarbor. Yeah.

Barbara Lemon: All right. I'm going to disappear, stage right.

Kasey Chambers: Oh, yeah.

Barbara Lemon: Pretend to be part of the band.

Kasey Chambers: Yeah, absolutely. You can stay and do a third harmony if you'd like. This is Brandon, everybody. Brandon Dodd. Brandon, when he is got a guitar in his hand, he changes to Dingo. That's what everyone calls him when he is got a guitar, because he makes it howl. I just made that up. I don't know why they call you Dingo. I thought that actually makes sense, doesn't it? I don't know. All right, let me just get in tune here. So this is the title track. Oh, hang on. Title track of my new album, which the album and the book really go together, so they say. Oh, shit, I can't get this in tune. Sorry. Sorry, I keep forgetting we're recording this and it's going live out to something and I've got to stop swearing. Sorry. All right. Close enough. You're not going to ask me your money back, are you, if I'm out of tune?

Kasey Chambers (singing): Well they call me the desert child

I was born out in the wild

Ain't never been lost to the Southern Cross with

A heart that runs a mile

While the train it waits arrivalI'd learn to read the bible

I remembered every word just to sing like a bird

And to whistle on down the line

Oh my backbone take me back home

Wherever you are tell 'em my star will leave the

Light on

Oh my backbone harder than stone

Imma go east, imma go west imma come home

Well the only road to find her

From the tread underneath the tyre

If the fox didn't howl it'd save us now from the bid

From highest buyer

And our hair it grew like fire

Like Samson and Delilah

But the rust wouldn't hurt from the dust and dirt

That we used to barb the wire

Oh my backbone take me back home

Wherever you are tell 'em my star will leave the

Light on

Oh my backbone harder than stone

Imma go east imma go west imma come home

At night the words were spoken

Will the circle be unbroken

And the voice went higher from the family choir

And moon it played in time

And the boxcar disappeared with a wave from the

Engineer

And I always came back for the coin on the track cos it

Made me a millionaire

Oh my backbone take me back home

Wherever you are tell 'em my star will leave theLight on

Oh my backbone harder than stone

Imma go east imma go west imma come home

Well they call me the desert child

I was born out in the wild

Ain't never been lost to the Southern Cross with a heart

That runs a mile

Thank you. Oh, thanks so much. Thanks, Brandon. We'll bring you back in a minute.

I was going to say, you look a bit-

Don't go too far. Don't go too far.

Barbara Lemon:  Yeah. Don't get too comfy. Thanks, Kasey. It's beautiful. I can see that probably if you just kept going, everybody would be quite happy with that evening. But let's have a small chat break. You've mentioned in the book that in some ways your upbringing and that kind of lack of exposure to certain things, certain things in terms of pop culture, maybe expectations, status, things that passed you by, was sort of an advantage when you start to hit the music industry head on.

Kasey Chambers: Yeah.

Barbara Lemon: Yeah. I'm wondering if you talk a bit about in what ways that was the case and how long did that last?

Kasey Chambers: Yeah, it was definitely a blessing in disguise I think because I'd come from this fairly isolated upbringing I guess, but even through my teen years and when we started travelling with the Dead Ringer Band and that we would play gigs all over Australia and travelling just in our swags and that sort of thing, staying on the side of the road and that after gigs, but we didn't really have much to do with the music industry. So I didn't grow up hoping one day to win an ARIA Award. I didn't even know what an ARIA Award was. We didn't...

There were record labels and that that's how you got into the music industry. I just thought, "I don't know, I'll just play gigs until someone tells me I can't do that anymore." And I was pretty happy just doing that.

And then when I ended up getting a major label record deal with EMI Records for the Captain album, I sort of went into the industry with really no expectation at all. I was just this little free spirit who loved to play music. I didn't really mind what happened from then. The label would come to me and they would be like, "Oh, we got you this interview with this magazine" or whatever. I had never heard of them. I didn't really know that that kind of meant anything. I remember when I got my first ever review from this Street Press and it was for my first ever solo song. So it was the first single off The Captain album, which was called 'Cry Like A Baby'.

And we released this song and someone wrote in a street press review, "And you thought Shania Twain was bad...." This is how it went. "And you thought Shania Twain was bad." It said, "This song will leave you standing in the corner saying, 'Make it stop. Please, make it stop' as the men in white coats come to cart you away." That's what it said. So this was my first ever review for a solo song I'd ever gotten. Now the record label hid this from me, because they were like, "No artist wants to hear that about their song, obviously." And they're like, "We have to hide this from her."

I found the interview somewhere, I don't know... I found it and I read it and I was like, "Somebody wrote my name in the paper." I just thought it was so cool. I didn't really care what they said. I'm like, "That's my name." And I framed it and I put it on my wall. I'm serious. For years I had that review on my wall because it was the first time my name had ever been written in anything. So I just didn't care. I didn't know that those things mattered. And look, I mean, I guess on one hand they don't matter, but I think if I'd known more about the industry going into it, those sort of things would've bothered me and I just didn't really care. I was just like, "Cool, I'm just having a good time."

Barbara Lemon: This is a perfect comeback to a shit review is to frame it.

Kasey Chambers: I don't know, I've still got it somewhere. Yeah. But I guess it was sort of after I started getting a little bit more success from The Captain album and started having a lot more to do with the music industry. Don't get me wrong, I had a beautiful record label behind me who are people that I really clicked with and loved working with and I still work with a lot of them now actually, even though they were not even with the same label. But I was lucky enough to have just this beautiful team around me and that was just something that was a bit of luck and a bit of intuition I guess to follow my gut feeling, my inner voice. I like to call her my inner foghorn.

Barbara Lemon: Yeah, I was hoping you'd touch on your foghorn.

Kasey Chambers: She's my screamy little inner foghorn in me that tells me when I'm being a dickhead. I don't always listen to it though. But I started getting a little bit more into the music industry, I guess. It's funny because the music industry in one way is really a beautiful thing to be a part of. And I'm really grateful that I've been a part of it and I've had a really incredible time. I've met so many beautiful people and worked with so many beautiful people. But there's also obviously an element of it that's really superficial

And there's quite a lot of pressure and it's quite demanding and there's a lot of control going on and that sort of thing. So there's a negative side of it, of course, like any industry, I think. So the more that you kind of get involved in it and the more that you get caught up in it... And I think that was the problem. I went from just not caring and just doing my own thing to actually getting a bit caught up in it.

Barbara Lemon: Yeah, sure.

Kasey Chambers: And I started really, well, I guess I got to a point a little while after The Captain album where I think it was sort of. On the charts at the time were artists like Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera, the Spice Girls, all of these girls that I felt so different from.

Barbara Lemon: And compared to.

Kasey Chambers: Yeah. And I think it was the first time in my life that I honestly, sorry, I'll get, first time in my life where I honestly started comparing myself to other girls. I'd never really had a reason to do that before. I'd never felt... I didn't really take on judgement or I didn't really care if I was different than other people. I was just happy to be this different little girl that did her own thing. And then I think I just really started going, "Well, I don't look like these girls and I don't sound like these girls and I don't talk like these girls." And I just felt so out of place. I just started getting in my own head and just feeling really out of place, being a part of the industry.

Barbara Lemon: At that time.

Kasey Chambers: And I sat down one day and I wrote, 'Am I Not Pretty Enough'?

Barbara Lemon: Perfect response. I mean, you were only 23 when The Captain was released around then-

Kasey Chambers: Yeah, something like that.

Barbara Lemon: -1999 and then 2001, you got... Something like that.

Kasey Chambers: You know this better than I do because I don't remember.

Barbara Lemon: I was 18 at the time. It was big. It was big. And then 2001, Barricades & Brickwalls. And that is right on the era of, Oops!... I Did It Again, and what was Shakira's terrible lyric about having breasts that were humble so you didn't confuse them with mountains or something. It was a weird time. I don't know what was going on at the turn of the century there, but it's a good thing that you were different.

Kasey Chambers: I felt really different. Do you know what? I think this is what changed in me. I used to feel that I was different and I used to love that about myself. And then I got to a point where I felt really different and I didn't like that about myself. And I think that was a bit of a turning point. In saying that, because I sat down and I wrote that song from the most vulnerable place inside me, and I did not know if I would ever even play that song to another person.

So I just put all of this stuff into 'Not Pretty Enough'. And then I just thought, "I don't even know if I'll ever play it. It's so open and so vulnerable." And I felt like that I'd put so much of my weakness and what I thought was a weakness in a song because I felt so insecure. And then ironically, that's the song that goes to number one and then takes my album to number one, and then the album goes seven times platinum and my life has changed overnight. It was really weird, but I realised after a little while, it took a little while, but I realised what I thought was my weakness in music was actually my strength. And I feel that so much now. So grateful. So grateful.

Barbara Lemon: Hell yeah. And I think something you reflect on in the book about that, the vulnerability being an audience connection as well, so the more that you, throughout your career and remember you were reflecting on the album, Carnival, and that was one you felt you hadn't connected with and you feel you don't get requests from Carnival generally.

Kasey Chambers: I don't. I don't. And it's funny with that album because I just don't really feel a connection because I didn't go to a real vulnerable place when I wrote it. And on purpose too, because I'd made these three records before that that were really putting my heart on my sleeve. And I got to making Carnival album and I was like, "You know what? I'm a bit sick of having a therapy session with all my records and then having to put it out there." And so, I purposefully went, "Okay, I'm going to just write 9:00 to 5:00, this is not going to be a pouring my heart out album." And I just don't connect with that record. I never have. And I'm not embarrassed by it. And it's not like I don't like it, but no one ever asked me for songs off that record and I reckon that's why. If I'm not connecting to it.

And look, sometimes I get people say, "Oh, no, I like that record." And I'm like, "Yeah, I like it too," but I don't know that it, it doesn't set my soul on fire like when I play 'The Captain' now or I play 'Not Pretty Enough', I still get so lost in those songs and I get caught up in them and I feel so open and vulnerable when I play any of those songs. And I love that. That's why I play music. But I did have to go through that stage of making Carnival to know that that method doesn't work for me. Yeah. So I won't ever do that again.

Barbara Lemon: A kind of workhorse 9:00 to 5:00.

Kasey Chambers: Yes. Yeah, 9:00 to 5:00 doesn't work for me.

Barbara Lemon: That's a good lesson. Do you think you might like to play 'Not Pretty Enough' around about now-ish?

Kasey Chambers: Well, you know what? It'd be pretty shit of me to say no now, wouldn't it?

Barbara Lemon: Excellent, I'll take off.

Kasey Chambers: You say all that about it and then go, "Nah, I reckon-"

Barbara Lemon: Not going to.

Kasey Chambers: I absolutely can. It's been kind of interesting playing 'Not Pretty Enough' just lately because since the book, I've been talking about the song a lot more. And it's really funny, I know this is my biggest song and you would think that I would talk about this song all the time, but I don't. Usually when I play it on stage, I just get up there and I just play it. I go straight into it and the audience is there and it's beautiful. But it's been really, it's almost like the song has taken on a new little life for me because I'm getting to really talk about where it really came from just before playing it. So I am sorry if I am choked up. It's a good choked up, I promise.

Kasey Chambers (singing): Am I not pretty enough?

Is my heart too broken?

Do I cry too much?

Am I too outspoken?

Don't I make you laugh?

Should I try it harder?

Why do you see right through me?

I live, I breatheI let it rain on me

I sleep, I wake

I try hard not to break

I crave, I love

I've waited long enough

I try as hard as I can

Am I not pretty enough?

Is my heart too broken?

Do I cry too much?

Am I too outspoken?

Don't I make you laugh?

Should I try it harder?

Why do you see right through me?

I laugh, I feel

I make-believe it's real

I fall, I freeze

I pray down on my knees

I hold, I stand

I take it like a man

I try as hard as I can

Am I not pretty enough?

Is my heart too broken?

Do I cry too much?

Am I too outspoken?

Don't I make you laugh?

Should I try it harder?

Why do you see right through me?

Why do you see

Why do you see

Why do you see right through me?

Why do you see

Why do you see

Why do you see right through me?

Why do you see

Why do you see

Why do you see right through me?

Why do you see

Why do you see

Why do you see right through me?

Kasey Chambers: Thank you. Thanks so much. Thank you. Thanks so much. Thanks so much. Thanks. That song is, it's just so special to me. I'm so grateful for that song in so many ways because it really taught me to put my heart on my sleeve. And it's funny because it just came from the most lonely place. And then when I go out and I play that song and I might be playing at a festival or something and then everyone starts singing along and it takes me from where I started in that really lonely little place to the most supported feeling. It's just the most beautiful transition. I'm so so grateful.

And one of the best things about it for me is that the song isn't telling anyone how to fix that feeling of feeling alone, or it's not saying, "This is what you have to do to fix it or change it," or. It's really just saying, "This is how I feel." And then everyone else feels the same at times. And we all do. I mean, I still have those moments now where I do still sometimes look in the mirror and I say, "Am I not pretty enough?" My answer now is, "Nah, who gives a fuck?"

Barbara Lemon: That is the correct answer. I mean, well over 20 years later, the residents with just looking around, the audience is very clearly still there. As a young woman at the time, I'd say 20, when that was released, I remember it very, very clearly the impact of that one track.

Kasey Chambers: I think a lot of it too was that a lot of young girls at the time, me included, wanted to look like Britney Spears, but we felt not pretty enough. And then of course, that song came out and I think people just resonated with it. And the song just became much bigger than me or anything. It just became, it feels like it's everyone's song.

Barbara Lemon: Beyond the music music industry.

Kasey Chambers: I feel like I share it with everybody, so I'm very grateful.

Barbara Lemon: That's so wonderful. And I mean, I guess since that time, so much water under the bridge, so much has happened. So much change in you, so much change in your life. I mean, you've recorded 11 albums since then. You've had three children, there have been major relationships, ambassador of a school in Zambia, lots and lots of travel and touring and probably exhausting and hopefully exhilarating at the same time.

Kasey Chambers: Yeah, a bit of both.

Barbara Lemon: Living life, absolutely full tilt, which kind of brings me to thinking about this book and the timing of this book and the difference in you, the person who wrote this book versus that song, the changes in that person over that time. And just thinking about, I guess, that you had had a 2011 sort of co-written autobiography, 'A Little Bird Told Me'.

Kasey Chambers: Yeah. Yeah, wrote with my friend, Jeff Apter.

Barbara Lemon: Right.

Kasey Chambers: And that one feels a little bit different because I feel like that was more an interview that I went through that Jeff helped turn into a book for me. Whereas this new book, it feels like a very creative process for me because I wrote the whole thing on my own. And it actually didn't start out as a book. I never sat down and went, "I'm going to write a book," it was actually, I started writing notes in my phone. You know the little app you have in your phone, the Notes app? I started writing little lessons for myself, kind of like little reminders where I was. "Reminders in my phone of what I wanted to live by."

And the first one being just don't be a dickhead because that's what my dad had always said to me. Sometimes he would say it specifically to me because I was being a dickhead. And then sometimes it was more just this overall profound advice that he would give to people. And he was like, "Just don't be a dickhead, it's that simple." And it actually turned into really profound advice for me. I know it sort of sounds funny and tongue in cheek, but it actually has ended up being a bit of a bottom line for me over the years. I put all these other little notes in my phone like "be brave enough to be vulnerable" because that's what I knew where Not Pretty Enough had come from. And there's a chapter in there about finding your tribe, because I think it's been really important, the tribe that I've had around me at different times in my life and career that has just been so important in getting through things and all these little reminders.

And they were really just reminders for myself of what I wanted to live by. And as I was writing them down that each one would then turn into a little experience or a little story of something that I had been through where I'd learnt that lesson. And so I'd write that down and put it. And next thing, it started kind of evolving into this book. And it all stayed there in the notes on my phone. I wrote this entire book in the Notes app in my phone. It's still there. It's still there in the Notes app, because I can't use a laptop. I don't have a laptop. I don't use a computer at all. I hate technology so bad. I'm just the worst at it. So I didn't have any other way of writing it. So the whole book is written, it's sitting there still in the Notes app in my phone.

Barbara Lemon: It's one hell of a scroll.

Kasey Chambers: Yeah, it's a big scroll. It is. It is. But it just kind of evolved into a book. And then as the book started evolving, I was starting to feel like I wanted to share it with people. Kind of like what I did when I first made The Captain album. So I was making that album, I was writing all these songs, and then I was like, "I really want to share these with people. I want to get them out there. I want to go and play them live, and I want to share this with as many people as I can." And the book was really the same. It just started evolving into that. It started inspiring new songs, which turned into the Backbone album. And so the album and the book really go together for me, it feels very much like one creative project that has two halves.

Barbara Lemon: And that's why you've got QR codes through the book?

Kasey Chambers: Yeah. Yeah. Well, because when we were about to go to print with the book, the publisher had said, "You need to have your one last read. If you're on any changes, it's got to be now. We're about to go to print in four days." And I read through it. All right, I skimmed through it. I was a bit over it by then, but I would get to the end of these little stories and I was really bummed that people couldn't hear the song that related to the story that you just read. And that's when it popped into my head to go, "Oh, maybe we'll put these little QR codes so that when you've read..." It's about maybe eight or nine of them throughout the book, not the whole album. So you still have to buy the whole album. Okay. I was very careful of that.

Barbara Lemon: It's a 15 track album, right?

Kasey Chambers: Yeah, 15 tracks on the album, so you're not going to get all of it in the book, so buy both. Okay. But yeah, you'll just read a certain story and then there'll be a song that is really closely related to that story that you've just read. And then you can hear the, it's like a little soundtrack to it, so it's very connected.

Barbara Lemon: Companion piece.

Kasey Chambers: Yeah, companion piece. That's perfect. I'm going to use that now. That's better. That's better than what I said.

Barbara Lemon: When I picked it up, I wanted to know first who the advice was from? Your dad, Bill Chambers.

Kasey Chambers: Yeah. Dad, yeah.

Barbara Lemon: Thank you very much. And second, what was your definition of a dickhead, which you've handily provided in the back of the book really?

Kasey Chambers: I think one of the things that makes the world go round and maybe is a downfall as well is everybody's definition of a dickhead is a little different. So I've kind of included a bunch of things in the back of the book that are my definition of what it means for me to be a dickhead. And look, some of them are funny, but some of them are really deep things that I've learnt from really hard times in my life and I try to draw from them as much as I can. And I try to bring that seriously throughout my whole day. My dad's voice is in my head just going, "Just don't be a dickhead." And I said, "This is the main advice that I give to my children as well." I say to them whenever they walk out the door, I'm like, "Just don't be a dickhead."

Barbara Lemon: So when they say, "My mother always used to say..." that's what they'll have to come up with.

Kasey Chambers: Yeah.

Barbara Lemon: Fantastic. I mean, I love that your description of it as a feral memoir. I think you said that somewhere.

Kasey Chambers: No, I think, yeah, feral memoir, but I kind of stole that because I think Paul Kelly described his memoir as a mongrel memoir.

Barbara Lemon: Mongrel memoir, right.

Kasey Chambers: And then someone said, "Oh, well, yours has got to be feral because of your feral childhood." Yours too.

Barbara Lemon: It sort of peppered with little observations, little sort of. What would you call them? Almost mantras you could say.

Kasey Chambers: Little mantras.

Barbara Lemon: I mean, of my favourites was, "If you act like a dickhead, you'll attract dickheads."

Kasey Chambers: Yes. Yeah.

Barbara Lemon: I can testify to-

Kasey Chambers: I mean, I think we all know that.

Barbara Lemon: Yeah.

Kasey Chambers: We al know that one. That's happened many times.

Barbara Lemon: Absolutely. And of course, being released alongside your album Backbone and this book being so much about your whole life, it's almost like the recap. Would it be fair to say the Backbone album is also almost a kind of journey through from childhood, Backbone that we just heard before, all the way through to-

Kasey Chambers: Yeah. Yeah.

Barbara Lemon: Well, to 'Lose Yourself', Eminem cover, which do yourself a favour and listen to that, it's awesome, at the end of the album. Absolutely amazing. Yeah.

Kasey Chambers: Yeah. Yeah, there's a bit of everything. I do think that this album is really the soundtrack to my life, and I think the songs that would easily sit on The Captain album or Barricades and all that, but I also feel like it really sums up who I am and even why I am, why I have ended up the person that I am, good and bad. There's everything in there and there's heartache and there's humour and that's a lot of my life. So it really has summed. And obviously, the Eminem cover, it's actually, it's not just a song to me and it's not just a cover of a song to me. It's meant a lot to me. There's a chapter in the book about it, but it's been a huge part of my life and digging deep in the last sort of five years. And so that's why I really wanted to include that on the new album as well.

Barbara Lemon: I love that. That's also been my go-to over the years for certain moments where you just need that-

Kasey Chambers: So powerful, yeah. Yeah.

Barbara Lemon: -particular thing that it does to you.

Kasey Chambers: Yeah. And it finally made my kids like my music. They're like, "Oh, the only song I like that you do in your gig mum is the Eminem one." "Thanks."

Barbara Lemon: You don't even have to pretend, it's not like the death metal era. The first track on the album, 'A New Day Has Come', is that. Am I right in thinking it's kind of a coming out of the pandemic-y feeling?

Kasey Chambers: Very much. Yeah.

Barbara Lemon: So what were those bizarre years like for you, the COVID years?

Kasey Chambers: Yeah, that song I feel like is the glue song that holds the whole album together. Actually, I have a glue song on every record and that's it for me, and it opens the record and I did write it in the pandemic and it was such a weird time for everybody. It was a strange time to go through a lot of different things and get to know yourself again and all of that and all the good and bad, it's all out there. So there's a lot in the book about that as well or a bit in the book about that. But I think where that song comes from is a lot more to do with the fact that there was a lot of division in the pandemic that happened.

But I actually feel in my immediate family and within my tribe, I like to call them, my close friends and family and all of that, even though there was a lot of people on different sides of, and I know it was very much about sides during that time. It actually really brought us really together. And it was really beautiful to have everyone in our family be very, very supportive and respectful of everyone's different views and that during that time, which was dividing a lot of people and it was sad to see that as well. And it was a hard time. Everyone was just going through something really strange we'd never been through before. And there was a lot of fear involved. And obviously when everyone feels fear, crazy things happen, that's for sure.

Barbara Lemon: Absolutely, yeah.

Kasey Chambers: But it was really... In a lot of ways, it was a beautiful time for the strength of our family and our tribe, to see how respectful everyone was of everyone involved. And it actually brought all of us much closer together and it was a beautiful thing, which is what the song is about.

Barbara Lemon: That's a great take on it because I know you'd sort of gone from a 2019 just packed with live music to probably a 2020 very unpacked with live music.

Kasey Chambers: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, look, I was certainly one of the lucky ones to not have the financial struggles that a lot of people had going into that time. And I was certainly grateful of that. But it was a weird time too, because going through all of a sudden not having a job, even though I didn't have the financial stress that a lot of people did have during that time, it was still a weird time when you identify as your job way too much. And I think that that was something I learnt about myself where I actually had to sit back and go, "Well, hang on a minute, my job is not who I am." It's something that I do and I appreciate that I do it and I love it, but it can be taken away and I don't really ever want to identify with anything. I don't want to identify my self-worth with anything that can be taken away.

Barbara Lemon: Yeah, I suppose that links quite nicely back to the kind of definition of dickhead where you're talking about essentially being authentic. If you haven't lost your way, your moral compass, your inner foghorn has gone quiet, but that's where the problems start.

Kasey Chambers: Yeah. And I've done it so much in my life and this book made me realise that more than ever how much that matches up every time. When I went back and went through certain struggles and I talk in there about going through an eating disorder for a while where I really became very disconnected from myself and going through divorce and things like that, through these hard times that lots of people go through, I just can always relate it back to when I start tuning out of my inner foghorn and I start listening to all the noise that's going on out there and all the people that are telling me what I should be and what I should do and what I should think and should believe. And at the end of the day, we've all just got this path that is ours. It's a journey that is our own and we can make our own way. And there's not really a right or wrong way of walking through this life. We just-

Barbara Lemon: Put one foot in front of the other.

Kasey Chambers: -put one foot in the front of the other. Exactly.

Barbara Lemon: Is this the advice I guess that you would, or the book in some ways that you would give to yourself, say in 2001 or 2000 or earlier Kasey.

Kasey Chambers: Yeah, absolutely. I couldn't have written it back then. I don't even think I could have written this book.

Barbara Lemon: Several years ago.

Kasey Chambers: Five years ago. But it's funny because the person that I'm trying to be every day, who I'm trying to show up as every day for myself, not for my career, not for other people, but for myself, which is very much in this book, is the person that I naturally was being, I think when I was younger, because I hadn't really been told to be anything else. And I was just this free spirit that did it naturally. And I didn't get caught up in too much. I was just like, "Yeah, we just love it and we are having a good time and spreading as much love as we possibly can and putting our heart on our sleeve and being vulnerable and doing all that and choosing not to feel judged even if people are judging you." And that's a really hard thing to do when you get caught up in it.

Barbara Lemon: Awareness, yeah.

Kasey Chambers: But I really think that I naturally used to do this a lot better until I started going off track.

Barbara Lemon: Had to circle back too-

Kasey Chambers: Yeah. I'm in that little free-spirited kid that was just running around on the Nullarbor in the nude.

Barbara Lemon: Here she is.

Kasey Chambers: Not always in the nude, were we, Trace? We weren't always, it was too cold. It was in winter months.

Barbara Lemon: That's a perfect place to segue, I think, to our last tune. What do you think?

Kasey Chambers: Oh, absolutely.

Barbara Lemon: Something about... and perhaps something that if I were to guess, tell me if I'm wrong, was written during a difficult time, but when you're making a bit of a transition from a former self to a perhaps a new revelation or a new way of thinking through 'Ain't No Little Girl'?

Kasey Chambers: Yeah. This song for me, I actually feel like I didn't write this song. I feel like this song wrote me. It fell out at a really hard time. It was after my divorce, and it's not like it's about my divorce or anything like that, but it was later on after my divorce where I was trying to find myself again and I was just like, "I don't know who I am anymore." I don't know who I am trying to be a single parent and trying to deal with what I felt like at the time was a failure, although I don't feel like it now, I feel like.

Well, Shane, who's my ex-husband, we actually have a duet on my new album called 'The Divorce Song' that we wrote together. And really it is at the end of the chapter where I talk about co-parenting because we have such a beautiful family unit now. It's taken us a little while. We had our fair share of the shit divorce times, of course. We still have our moments every now and then. When we wrote the song together, we didn't sit in a room together and write it. We figured that might've been a little bit too hard.

We used to make music together when we were married, and I kind of thought those days were over because I was like, "I don't know if we'd be able to sit in a room together and write a song again." We wrote it over text message just to be safe. So we wrote this song called 'The Divorce Song' because we feel like we do divorce way better than we ever did marriage. No, we're really good at divorce. I really think this one's going to stick.

Barbara Lemon: Almost recommend it.

Kasey Chambers: I think this divorce is going to last, let me tell you.

Barbara Lemon: It's long term. It's long term.

Kasey Chambers: It's a good one. It's a good one.

Barbara Lemon: It's a keeper. Yeah.

Kasey Chambers: So I think one of the hardest times of my life was trying to find myself again after divorce. So it wasn't so much when I was going through the divorce, it was later on going, "Who am I now? And what have I given my identity away to?" Even just with parenting and trying to raise children in a split family and things like that. It was just such a weird time. And I was not even in songwriting mode. I wasn't musical at all at the time, actually. And I just sat down one night at this really, really dark time of my life and this song fell out and I didn't even play it to another person. I didn't even really think it was that special. It was just like this song existed the next day.

And I went for about another year before I ever played that song to another person. And then I started, this song just started popping up in my head. I'd be walking around my house and this song would just be singing itself in my head. And as I started singing it and performing it and sharing it, I started to own it and live it and become this song. And I honestly feel like it wasn't me that was writing the song, the song was writing me. So I'll play it for you now.

Barbara Lemon: Oh, yes. Thank you.

Kasey Chambers: Thank you so much for tonight. What a beautiful night. Thank you.

Barbara Lemon: You're so welcome.

Kasey Chambers: Please thank Barbara, thank you. And Brandon Dodd here. Adam, could I just have a little bit of the vocal in here? Thanks, mate. Cheers. Oh, man. Thank you so much for coming along. What a beautiful time. Just yeah, it warms my heart. I was actually pretty nervous about doing these book events because I'd never done anything like it before. And the publisher was just like, "No, you'll be fine. You just go up there and you just chat about your book and someone will prompt and ask you questions or whatever." And I'm like, "But can I bring my guitar?" I'm like, "I'm going to feel really weird if I sit up there without a guitar." So I appreciate that they said yes. And then they said that this one was in a library. And I'm like, "I don't have to be quiet though, do I?" It's a little hard to sing this song quietly. Hey, Adam, can I just have a little bit more vocal in here? Would be great. Thank you. All right.

Kasey Chambers (singing): Just like a child

You've made up your mind

You make it look easy

To leave me behind

You're crossing a bridge

And you're crossing a line

You hold out your heart

Your hand

And change the plan

And call yourself a man

But I ain't no little girl

No, I ain't no little girl

I won't cry, I won't beg

I won't plead, I won't pray

I won't ask you to stay

Just walk on by

And leave it alone

You won't take me down easy

But I ain't made of stone

Well, a lesson is learned

And a lesson is lost

Well, I ain't afraid to stand

And give a damn

And take it like a man

But I ain't no little girl

No, I ain't no little girl

I won't cry, I won't beg

I won't plead, I won't pray

I won't ask you to stay

No, I ain't no little girl

No, I ain't no little girl

I won't break, I won't bend

I won't wait, I won't end up

With nothing to say

No, I ain't no little girl

No, I ain't no little girl

I won't break, I won't bend

I won't wait, I won't end up

With nothing to say

I won't break, I won't bend

I won't wait, I won't end up

With nothing to say!

Kasey Chambers: Thank you. Thank you so much.

Barbara Lemon: Kasey Chambers, Brandon Dodd, what an absolute treat.

Kasey Chambers: Thank you so much.

Barbara Lemon: Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you-

Kasey Chambers: Thank you.

Barbara Lemon: -for coming to be with us during your whirlwind tour.

Kasey Chambers: Thank you so much.

Barbara Lemon: Amazing.

Kasey Chambers: Now, go buy the book.

Barbara Lemon: Yes. There'll be book signings upstairs for the next half an hour. If you need to grab one and go, there's some pre-signed copies. Thank you, Kasey. Bookplate's open for a drink. Thank you, everybody, and good night. That was awesome.