Dan Kelly is coy about the veracity of the stories that accompany his latest record,Leisure Panic.
Taking a leaf from the liner notes on ’50s jazz records, and Bob Dylan’s indulgence of poetic licence to describe his personal backstory, the albumcomes packaged with a series of tales, purportedly based on Kelly’s time travelling overseas and up and down the east coast of Australia: a ferry ride in the Greek islands, working as a gigolo at a Republican wives’ conference on an aircraft carrier, spinning discs in a Berlin club, a run-in with a bikie on the Gold Coast, and hanging out with a hippie couple in Nimbin.
“Some of it, I’ve written my stories into the songs and I’ve danced over the top of it, and some of it is pretty straight up,” Kelly says. “But I’m not going to say exactly what I did and didn’t do. But I definitely just didn’t sit in my house in North Fitzroy making it all up!”
What is true is that Kelly has spent a large part of the last five years travelling. Occasionally – whether it was in Greece, Byron Bay or even Northcote – inspiration would strike and a song would be born. By the time Kelly came to put together the album, he realised his travels provided the thread to the songs he’d written.
“The songs are kind of based on my travels, so there’s a thread, and I kind of extrapolated,” Kelly says. “Some of them are pretty verbatim, and some of them are what I wished I was doing. When I’m lying on the deck on a ferry in Greece smoking Greek cigarettes, the idea that I’m a gigolo on an aircraft carrier isn’t that hard a leap to make. And when I think back now, I think, ‘Was I?’” he laughs.
The geographical reference points on Leisure Panic are largely accurate – Kelly did spend a short time in Berlin, though it was in Byron Bay where he spun discs – the end result being a juxtaposition of events to form the album’s concluding track ‘Jet Lag’, in which Kelly assumes the persona of a DJ running a Berlin-themed nightclub.
“The time in Berlin ended up mutating with my time in Byron, so I ended up constructing part of the song around running a Eurodub club in Byron,” he says. “But that was a mixture of what I’d been doing in Berlin, where I’d been going to this club, and the next thing I know I’m on the beach in Byron, surrounded by this roots lifestyle.”
Kelly’s time living at the northern tip of New South Wales put him close to the southern Queensland region where he grew up. While the popular image of the Northern Rivers remains crystals, hemp clothing and the discourse of peace, love and understanding, the reality isn’t so simple.
“This time I was staying with a friend in a community, and what I realised is that now you have artists there who are trying to get their shit together, North Sydney real estate agents who’ve dropped out but still want to succeed, the children of the Age of Aquarius who are doing all kinds of things and your urban ice freak scene, skaters, tough local surfers, backpackers – it’s a really vibrant scene.”
On the song ‘Everything’s Amazing’, Kelly delves further into the complex sociology and psychology of the area. “They have a theory that that area is where the Aboriginal men would take the young men for initiation, around that Mount Warning area, and not a lot of them would live around there because it was super powerful, and you’d go a bit mental if you stayed there. Which is why I reckon it feels so amazing when you go there – which is why I wrote that song.”
Elsewhere on Leisure Panic, Kelly explores more immediate geographical and cultural issues, such as the rivalry between Sydney and Melbourne. While Kelly has been based in Melbourne for many years, he’s also lived in Sydney and plays regularly with Sydney musicians. In ‘Melbourne Vs Sydney’, Kelly makes light of the inter-city competition while recognising it’ll probably never truly fade away.
“It’s a conversation that I’ve had over many years,” Kelly says. “These days I still find there’s a difference in the sounds, but especially with the [Melbourne] garage community there’s a lot more cooperation. But I suppose it’s just a fun competition – and it’s not music, it’s everything, including architecture. I wanted to portray myself as a bit like Jesus, riding a donkey into Jerusalem, or Leonard Cohen, saying, ‘It’s all cool,’” he laughs.
Despite the gap between Leisure Panic and its predecessor, 2010’s Dan Kelly’s Dream, the songwriter hopes it won’t be another five years before his next record. “I’m writing now, and I’ve got a studio now with a friend. I’ve got three songs recorded already, and these days when you’re not going to make any money from recordings, I think it’s best to just keep getting stuff out.”
Dan Kelly’sLeisure Panicis out now through ABC/Universal. OnSaturday October 24 Dan Kelly appears atGoodgod Small Club, along withBen Ely.
