An Interview with Dan Kelly

As part of a series of interviews conducted at this year’s Peats Ridge Festival, Max Easton, Leigh Plover and Richard Wilson all sat down for a chat with Melbourne songsmith Dan Kelly to discuss writing, recording and Bindi Irwin.

As the wiry-haired pen behind such bizarre tunes as 'Drunk on Election Night,' 'Drowning in the Fountain of Youth' and 'Bindi Irwin Apocalypse Jam', Melbourne’s Dan Kelly has always been a prolific songwriter dabbling in odd territories. Recognised as one of the country’s finest songwriters with Best Male Artist ARIA nominations following almost every album he’s released, Kelly has been critically lauded but has never quite reached the greater music buying public.

“I don’t think I’ll ever make something really popular,” Kelly muses from underneath his sailor hat and above his beer, “but I think I’ve got a good following. I really haven’t written that one song that’s gonna make people go wow…but I dunno, I think it’d be hard to know how to crack that.”

The question of course, is does he really want to? With last year’s album Dan Kelly’s Dream featuring dense atmospheres of swirling noise and a whacky lyrical sensibility, it seems like it was never his intention to crack the charts, at least not this time.

“I’m just trying to write the songs that I write,” he continues, “but I think the ultimate goal for any songwriter is to write a song that is kind of simple, that everyone can relate to and still hasn’t sold out.  I’ve written songs [on Dan Kelly’s Dream] that are really technicolour and they’re almost like a little short film. I know it’s not to everyone’s taste and people think it’s too full on, but then other people really like it. When I listen to it I get a hard on because it’s more exciting to me to have this little journey…but again, really effective pop songs don’t have a lot in them, they have a really simple content.”

Kelly definitely seems conscious of commercial concerns, but while it dwells on the back of his mind and back pocket (“It would be good to have money. I just wonder how the fuck I’m gonna live like this”) he’s not going to let his art suffer for it. The lengthy recording sessions for Dan Kelly’s Dream are testament to that.  

“I was pretty stretched on this one and had to work really hard and use all my money to get the sound I wanted,” he explains. “A lot of the people at the record company told me to do something simpler, but I don’t really trust them…people will always want something from you, and it’s nice that they see something they like in you and they want to take that forward for you to be this thing…and it’s not like I’m trying to stick it to the man or anything, it’s just something I want to get from those songs.”

Kelly is an obvious admirer of the process of producing the music he’s written. Alongside producer and engineer Aaron Cupples, they strived to create a polished sound that pushed the bounds of their technology, and he’s all too conscious of the value of quality technical help.

“Everyone’s got all the tools at their disposal now. 95% of it is shit by people who don’t really understand what they’re doing with frequencies and the like, but a proper engineer is gold; who can take simple elements and make it sound incredible. For the 5% who do use that technology and really tune it home, you’re gonna get something that’s really interesting…cos they’re pushing the technology forward. You couldn’t have gone into a studio and done that, you really have to work on it at home…and the luxury of home studios is really good like that, you can hack away at stuff outside of paying in the studio.”

Which is exactly what he did; making good use of free home lap top use with the do-it-yourself outfitter Garage Band.

“I demo’ed the fuck out of it on Garage Band. There are more tracks there than there are on the record, which is almost unlistenable cos I was trying to make it so full on. I was really trying to make it sound like a mid-60’s Dylan record; really wiry with tight delays…kind of a rockabilly adventure that got a bit more robust than that.”

One of the most odd and talked about tracks from Dan Kelly’s Dream was the 60’s-inspired Armageddon scenario ‘Bindi Irwin Apocalypse Jam.’ Announcing during his set at the Peats Ridge festival that the Irwin camp had just heard the song, it was hard not to push him for more details of his apocalyptic inspiration.

“It was just a weird idea I had about the last two people on Earth, and if there were two people left on Earth, who would be the Mad Max kind of person? And I thought, well…it would be Bindi, cos she kind of knows all the animals and is intrepid…but there was something weird about that cos she’s a kid, so I had to write these verses like ‘it’s cool, we’re not gonna share our beds,’ but then people thought that was weird cos I wrote about it! But apparently [the Irwin’s] heard the song last week and Bindi said it was cool, but Terri sort of went, oh, it’s a bit weird. I’ve always used celebrities in my songs as a pop cultural thing…they just pop up, which is a good way to talk about society. Whether it’s about decay or glamour or whatever, everyone’s going to relate to it.”

Whether he’s taking aim or arms with personalities as varied as John Howard or Bindi Irwin, Kelly has an unmistakable knack for making pop culture and bizzarity completely functional within the confines of his songs, leading curiosity as to what he’ll pursue next. February will see him tour solo alongside the dark, acoustic musings of The Drones’ Gareth Liddiard, perhaps a sign to come of a stripped back follow up to the Dream. However, he’s still talking pop songs and is clearly satisfied and enjoying the quirk-pop adventures he’s taking with The Dream Band. Whichever direction he moves in though, there’s no doubt that his fiercely loyal following will be there trailing in his wake and, well, we won’t be too far behind either.