As Dan Kelly comes back with a new album, he stays grounded by the geography of his songmaking.
As birds chirp and the sound of fallen gumnuts hit tin roofs, Dan Kelly speaks to me through the screen of my phone. He’s calling me from Castlemaine, Dja Dja Wurrung country, the Central Victorian town renowned for its musically inclined inhabitants.
Dan Kelly has been situated here for the last few years and with the release of his latest album GOLDFEELS, Kelly is set to embark upon a nationwide tour. The run of shows commenced in his hometown of Castlemaine on Sunday 8 September at The Bridge Hotel.
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The LP was released Friday 6 September, and amidst jokes of the fort knox style of fencing Dan Kelly has had to employ in the name of protection of his garden, we dash through many topics that have informed his most recent release.
It’s the local flora and fauna, his garden and the change of pace that have brought about the melodies and lyrics for the most recent single releases ‘Golden Shoes = Country Blues’, and ‘Burn Up With The Trees’, alongside a newfound appreciation for getting up early in the morning to write.
“I’ve always tried to have a geographical vibe,” says Kelly. “But the changes in inspiration come at the hands of a combination of the pandemic and living out in the bush, seeing it move very slowly really changed my whole concept of time.
“There’s slowness and an almost cyclical nature to watching the bush move around me; it’s meant this album isn’t as frenetic as the others that have acted almost as travel logs or post cards with more of a sense of movement. Whereas this one is very different because there were two years where I was just sitting here looking at the same vista.”
This relationship with geography has always played a role in his songwriting from the days spent playing with the Alpha Males, to his solo albums that have filled out his discography.
“I’ve always written geographically,” he says. “My album Leisure Panic is very much about northern NSW and driving through that area. It was a place where I’d go as a kid. It was a magical experience as a teenager to go and buy pot in.”
The concurrent quietness that comes through the practice of gardening has also rubbed off on Kelly, in ways that have changed his relationship to music itself.
“It can be hard in this modern world, at least I find it hard living by myself, to find quiet. There’s always a podcast on, maybe the radio or some music playing, because it’s great company, but when you’re out in the garden, you don’t need music, you just have the sounds of the bush and garden and that’s enough.”
The seasonality of a life spent in constant conversation with the land shines through in the album too. But so do the seasons of life, specifically how he moved through the grief and loss of his father in his own unique way.
“Seasonality is a good way to describe it,” he says. “Though I haven’t mapped it out with the framework of summer, autumn, winter, spring, rather it charts a period where I got incredibly sad and anxious. A period when my father died really suddenly and I went into a nether world. I almost felt I was going down into the Greek myths, where the protagonist goes down to the river sticks.”
Despite the challenge of finding a means to move through the immense struggle of losing his father, it seems to have been the connection to land that has propped Kelly up into utilising songwriting as a tool for processing.
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“I really had to write my way out of that headspace and this is how I did it. My writing has very much been out of mind in the past, sort of written in lemon juice. There’s definitely still been mythological stories about my life, but they’ve always been a lot more joyous, with a dose of cynicism of course.
“It seems this album is very much influenced by nature and the seasons, as well as extreme weather events. That is a big Australian thing I think.”
There are lessons in Dan Kelly’s experiences to provoke a more entwined connection to geography, a life-long endeavour that has shone through in his extraordinary musical style, and GOLDFEELS is sure to be no exception.
GOLDFEELS will be available to listen to from Friday 6 September, with an album tour taking place through November/December. Purchase tickets here
