Interview – Kate Ceberano, August 2013

By Shane Pinnegar

This story first published in X-Press Magazine’s 14 August 2013 issue

Kate Ceberano tells SHANE PINNEGAR that the time was right to make her first original album in a decade, Kensal Road – but don’t expect to hear Bedroom Eyes when she starts her national tour with shows in Albany, Bunbury, Mandurah and The Regal Theatre, October 2nd through 5th.

“Oh no, no, no – it’s all the new album.” Ceberano explains. “The whole reason for doing a new album of original work was to give myself new material [to perform]. I love to be able to do hits, but that sort of ages you, because it gives you a time and an era and some nostalgic reference to the audience – and you want to keep reminding them that you’re present and belonging to now, not just to some other section of their life a hundred years ago.”

Ceberano says that when daughter Gypsy was born ten years ago, she “felt a little self indulgent to sneak away into a corner and get into that subjective universe you’ve got to get into to write. And I already had the guilts up enough that I was a working mum and a touring Mum! It almost seems too… decadent actually.

“But you never stop, as an artist,” she continues, “creating poetry or melody, and I have a piano that’s in the traffic area of the house, and when everyone else has gone out, then I am forever writing. It’s just that the process is much changed, since Gypsy’s come out.”

Kensal Road was recorded in Kensal Town in London, under the watchful eye of songwriter/producer James Bryan, who helped Ceberano in a more organic direction, throwing off the expectations of her fan base to make sure she was true to herself on the record.

“I think limitations – well, these shadows that haunt us – are mostly imposed by ourselves. You spend a lifetime asking permission to do stuff, then you find out at the end of your life that you didn’t get anything done”, laughs Ceberano. “I just feel like I’m of an age where I can respect my own decisions and live by them. I wanted to make sure it was going to be really comfortable on stage and there wouldn’t be any of that sort of gulf of ‘Oh I wish I hadn’t done this next song in quite this way’ or ‘I wish I’d done the vocal on this album [differently]’. You listen back and there’s these sort of regrets and you go, ‘no, fuck it – I’m not gonna regret anything now’. It’s really immature to sit there in regret, so I thought, ‘I don’t want to do that any more’, and the album ended up probably more organic than even I thought it would!”

Spending a month away from home and family to make Kensal Road wasn’t easy for the loving wife and mother, and that’s reflected in the lyrics of tracks like My Heavy Heart, The Little Things and So Far From Home.

“The songs are smothered with that ‘Oh they’re so far away’ [sentiment]” Ceberano laughs, “But it’s my life experience. That’s true of me anyway, I’m a very nostalgic person – I only have to leave the house to want to go back inside and be with all my mates!”

She may have missed her family, but Ceberano is equally adamant that it was the right decision, and one that helped her focus on the work.

“When you’re away, it’s like submerging yourself on one gulp of air.” She says. “You do it and you get it done because you’ve got to come up and breathe again. And being away helped with that process – it helped make it, like ‘BAM – do it Ceberano, let’s get this done’.”

Equally key to the process was finding the right studio vibe, so much so that the album was named after it.

“I knew the place was right,” she says excitedly, “we discovered this great collective, and in the studio it looks like an old schoolyard like in To Sir With Love, there are DJ’s and hip hop acts and musicians, and all of these small enclaves around this quadrangle. And everyone has access to each other, so if you needed a drummer, or you needed someone to play theramin, or someone to just come in and listen, there was just this hum of production going on.

“I just thought the place had a real sense of freedom – there was no ageism going on, there was no discrimination of musical styles – it was just like a bunch of hippies making music, it was AWESOME! We had a month planned and we just had to get it done. So every day – regardless of the sound of the buses hurtling by – ‘cos the place is completely organic, it doesn’t have soundproofing or that sort of stuff – we just kind of did it. We recorded in real time, all the band playing at the same time.”

What started off as a place to work quickly lent itself to a while new way to work for Ceberano.

“Because it feels like you’re jamming instead of trying to get stuff done [with] the money and the time you’ve got, you don’t feel that pressure – you feel like you’re actually making music! How cool is that!”

 

And here’s the full interview, exclusive to 100% ROCK MAGAZINE :

 

100% ROCK MAG: Hey Kate, thanks for your time – how’re you doing today?

Kate Ceberano: Groovy! [laughs] That was a really dumb answer actually – “groovy”? I’ve been hanging out with my daughter for too long!! [laughs]

100% ROCK MAG: I have to tell you – I really enjoyed your album. I wasn’t expecting it to be as organic as it was – I was expecting something a bit poppier

Kate Ceberano: Yeah [slightly hesitantly] I guess… well, I have a pretty polarised fanbase actually, it’s really funny. It’s not that they like it any less, but there were a few hoping that I might go into some serious dance music, but… as yet David Guetta hasn’t asked me to come over to have a sing!! [laughs] So I can only do what I can do with my own tools, which is piano – so… it ended up probably more organic than even I thought it would!

100% ROCK MAG: A song like How High, for instance, is almost getting into Imelda May rockabilly territory…

Kate Ceberano: Oh great – I LOVE Imelda May, she’s SO gorgeous! Even a song like Pash, when I think back to when I wrote that, obviously it’s in me, that kind of sound. Cos when I write songs they end up having a kind of reference to each other. And Pash is definitely, in that sort of sense, that early 60’s sort of sound, I guess.

100% ROCK MAG: So Kensal Road is your first all original album in ten years – do you write constantly, or do you need to set time aside to sit down and write for a specific project?

Kate Ceberano: Well when Gypsy [Ceberano’s daughter] was born, which was pretty much by coincidence when I stopped doing originals – there’s certainly less time – I felt a little self indulgent to sneak away into a corner and get into that subjective universe you’ve got to get into to write. And I already had the guilts up enough that I was already a working mum [laughs] and a touring Mum! It almost seems too… decadent actually. But what I’ll do – you never stop, as an artist, creating poetry or melody, and I have a piano that’s in the kind of traffic area of the house, and what I’ll do when everyone else has gone out, then I am forever writing. So to answer your question, I’m always writing, it’s just that the process is much changed since she’s come out…

100% ROCK MAG: So you don’t have a huge stockpile of songs ready to go, more snippets and ideas?

Kate Ceberano: Yeah, well people have different ways of going about it – their whole system of writing is very different from one person to another. Me, I might work on a small piece – and it might be a small piece of a poem or a title or a chorus – and keep singing it until it’s as if it’s something I’ve been singing my entire life, to the point where it’s got to be as familiar as a cover. And then you just keep coming back and rewriting it and I’ll change a few adjectives and I’ll put them back in, and… you know, until one day it just fits and it really does feel like I’ve known this song for a very long time. And Louie’s Song is one of those songs – which is why, when I was approached by Ross [Sony’s chief executive] – and I was really quite chuffed when he asked if I’d do an originals record, ‘cos they don’t really HAVE to do them, major labels, [laughs] But, ironically enough, when they work they really really work! Anyway, when he asked me to do it, I was kinda nervous to show him what I was writing, cos I didn’t want him to say actually, I don’t like it, or it’s not quite the originals record [I was after]. Or it’s not really Kate Ceberano – which I always find really funny when people say that. ‘Can you make an album that’s more like You?’ Sooo, I showed him Louie’s Song, and he said ‘actually I’m really into this direction, I think we just continue down this path and we’ll be in really good stead.

100% ROCK MAG: Excellent – it’s interesting that you just said ‘can you make an album that sounds more like yourself’ [Kate laughs] One of the quotes in your press release that I found really interesting was – and I’ll read this out – “its like the stars have aligned now and I’ve let go of expectations of what other people think I should be.” In regards to being free enough to do your own originals right now and have your own freedom – was that freedom hard fought? Did you have management or record company people saying no THIS is the direction you have to go in?

Kate Ceberano: Oh look I think limitations – well, these shadows that haunt us – are mostly imposed by ourselves. You spend a lifetime asking permission to do stuff, then you find out at the end of your life that you didn’t get anything done. [laughs] I just feel like, I’m of an age where I can respect my own decisions and live by them. You know – be quite comfortable to perform the work. And you know, I’ve tried enough times… you can do so many things, so many times without deciding ‘shit maybe they’ll just change that if you don’t like it’, you know? And after 22 years of trying so many things… I just wanted to make sure it was going to be really comfortable on stage and there wouldn’t be any of that sort of gulf of ‘Oh I wish I hadn’t done this next song in quite this way’ or ‘I wish I’d taken further consideration of the vocal on this album’ – you know, you listen back and there’s these sort of regrets and you go, ‘no, fuck it – I’m not gonna regret anything now, because that’s being very honest to who you are. It’s really immature to sit there in regret, so I thought, ‘I don’t want to do that any more’. I just want to sit on stage and be lost and sort of indulge myself at the same time. So all of those things I was sort of thinking during the recording, and when I met [producer/co-writer] James Bryan, I said to him, ‘you really have to understand what I’ve become over 22 years – you can’t just superimpose something over Kate Ceberano’ ‘cos I’ve just got so many things, I’ve got so much stuff that’s happened.

100% ROCK MAG: Do the weight of your fans’ expectations weigh heavily on you in the studio?

Kate Ceberano: No, half of my public are gay – of course I love dance music and they all want me to be on a David Guetta album – and so do I! [laughs] I mean – has a cat got a bum?!? Of course I wanna do that! When I say the fan’s expectations, they don’t give a shit – they just love the fact that I’m still performing and they get a chance to have this dialogue with me, and I love giving them my own special brand of conversation. And it’s often strained and leads into many directions out of all my bands, but they seem to love it!

100% ROCK MAG: The press release for the album name-drops all these amazing, different musical influences – there’s Hawaiian folk music, Fleetwood Mac, Linda Rondstadt, Lan Del Ray, nu-country. It’s pretty crazy, you read that and totally go into the album not knowing what to expect…

Kate Ceberano: Well if you listen closely, it’s funny – that is actually who I listen to. I listen to a huge eclectic range of music. In fact I had to just do three playlists for Sony and – Oh my God! I’ve got Laura Marling, I’ve got Goldfrapp, right through to James Blake, Vampire Weekend – this is modern music I love – Cee-Lo, all these acts. Then they said to do an archival playlist, so it’s all David Bowie and Roxy Music and… I’m an ancient – I’m one of the last of the mohicans!! Your love of music doesn’t change and there isn’t a limit to how much you can absorb. But I do hear sort of influences – I can hear Rondstadt definitely in the way I sing, because I used to sing to her records incessantly as a kid. And I’ve been listening to Fiest, for instance, and I loved a certain honesty in that recording. So when I was helping to mix the vocal sound, I was challenging myself and the producers, saying ‘don’t give me too much love – let it sound kind of awful, ‘cos that’s lovely’ And let’s take all that compression off it and move a few EQ’s and make some damage, and do your worst. ‘Cos THAT’s what’s gonna be what I can deliver when I have to go and put it on stage. So I do love it, because the sense of the recording of it is a lot truer, and it reminds me of the early records I used to listen to, the Carole Kings and Rondstadt and that sort of stuff. So yeah, I’m all over it, all over the different avenues of music – and like a sponge, I can’t quite ever get enough.

100% ROCK MAG: Was it hard to stay focussed? You were away in England for a month, your family was back home?

Kate Ceberano: I think being away, when you’re away, it’s like submerging yourself on one gulp of air. You do it and you get it done because you’ve got to come up and breathe again, you know. And being away helped with that process – it helped make it… like ‘BAM – do it Ceberano, BAM – let’s get this done.’ I knew the place was right – Ross [Frazer, Sony] and I kept laughingly calling the album The Whispering Kack [laughs] ‘cos he did [John Farnham’s] Whispering Jack album, and I kept saying ‘is this going to be my Whispering Kack, Ross?’ Anyway – we discovered this great collective, which is why it’s called Kensal Road. It’s in Kensal Town [in London] the studios, and in the studio it looks like an old schoolyard like in To Sir With Love, and there are DJ’s and hip hop acts and musicians, and all of these small enclaves around this quadrangle. And everyone has access to each other, so you know, if you needed a drummer, or you needed someone to come in and play theramin, or someone to just come in and listen, there was just this hum of production going on. And I just thought the place had a real sense of freedom going on – there was no ageism going on, there was no discrimination of musical styles – it was just like a bunch of hippies making music, it was AWESOME! I loved it! And what happened when we got there – we had a month planned and we just had to get it done. So every day – regardless of the sound of the buses hurtling by – ‘cos the place is completely organic, it doesn’t have soundproofing, you know, or that sort of stuff. So we just kind of did it – we recorded in real time, all the band playing at the same time, I did all my backing vocals in one of the smaller rooms downstairs underneath the big studio – it’s just a beautiful styled setup there, [and] they had some of the huge names in modern pop, and London culture, and massive European hip hop acts and DJ’s coming in and spending hundreds of thousands of dollars – but you never got the feeling that you were less important or less on the grid – and that’s really modern, that’s not how it used to be! It used to be if you were paying $2000 a day and Mariah Carey came in then forget about it – you’d be on the graveyard shift no matter how much you were spending ‘cos she’s clearly a bigger star than you! Different culture – a much more unified, collective concept.

100% ROCK MAG: It sounds like a really good, creative vibe too.

Kate Ceberano: Yeah it does! ‘Cos it feels like you’re jamming instead of trying to get stuff done in the money and economy you’ve got. You don’t feel that pressure – you feel like you’re actually making music! How cool is that – that’s nice!

100% ROCK MAG: With you being away from the family for a month, how much did that influence you lyrically?

Kate Ceberano: [laughs] The songs are smothered with that – ‘Oh they’re so far away’! But that’s true of me anyway, I’m a very nostalgic person – I only have to leave the house to want to go back inside and be with all my mates! I have a real… well, in effect, I’d say it’s an illness. ‘Cos I can get a bit melancholy. There’s often been times where people have said, do you think you’d have made it, do you think you could have been bigger if you left Australia? All these subjective things – they’re just questions, I don’t even wanna know! I never wanted to leave Australia though, I feel very connected to that sort of culture and as long as it can continue to sustain me, I have no reason to leave.

100% ROCK MAG: You strike me as a very happy person – you’re almost resolutely upbeat, always smiling. If you get that sort of image, is it hard to live up to that every time you’re having a shitty day?

Kate Ceberano: Oh, I’m extremely volatile! I don’t know why people pin ‘the happy Hawaiian’ on me – which it probably is true, I mean obviously I love a chat, and I’m interested in people so it’s not hard to find something to like about the people who’re talking with you and thus you come across seeming good humoured – but if something’s not going my way, I’m like a fucking maniac! [laughs] I myself, philosophically, think that being volatile and responding appropriately – I don’t think it would be appropriate if your child was running across the street to just go ‘hey honey’ – you know… well, that’s not a very good example, let me give you a more honest example. I do take my work seriously, so if people are fucking around, there will definitely be a boss in me and someone who is very certain about what I want, and I’m quite a control freak when it comes to the delivery and setups – but I feel that I’m like that, and that’s not in view of public. And when I get to work I want it to look effortless and I don’t want it to look troubled – because that’s the last thing people want to see, I reckon, when they go to a gig, is someone being interested in themselves. I reckon the greatest joy I’ve ever seen is being in the presence of artists whose only intention was to move me and take me to another place – let me explain, let me think of someone who did that. Neil Finn, when I see him sing, right, it’s quite a simple exercise – he just stands on stage and he takes you up ‘til you’re somewhere around the heavens for about an hour and forty minutes. And I haven’t noticed him, not once, on stage. I didn’t stop or make any thoughts about his haircut, or if his jeans were looking a little bit tight, or where his hands were placed on the fretboard of the guitar – I didn’t even notice him, and I kinda think that’s quite honourable. That’s just me – I don’t like props, and I don’t like people putting up props instead of being who they are. But anyway, I think we’re getting a little too analytical! [laughs]

100% ROCK MAG: It’s Monday morning – we’re allowed to over think a little!

Kate Ceberano: Oh yeah – I probably am over-analysing because I don’t agree with the statement that I’m always happy. Maybe that’s the truth of it. I think that what you would see is only a public persona – and that can’t be honest, no-one can be like that. It’s just not true – nuh! In fact Louie’s Song on the album, there’s a trace of the things that get to me. Like, I think people’s impressions and people’s trials are not to be trivialised. Like, in Louie’s Song – I grew up the youngest of three boys, and I see that young men have a lot of trouble when they’re teenagers, more than women. Women are really… we can pretend to be something other than we are, with clothing or makeup, we can be look more confident. But boys aren’t like that, boys wear their heart on their sleeve all the time. So I can feel like that, I can write like that – and I’m just crapping on now, so… next!

100% ROCK MAG: [laughs] Having been in the public eye for 25 years or so, do you feel you’re respected as some sort of elder stateswoman of the music business, having seen it go through all it’s crazy ups n’ downs in the past couple of decades?

Kate Ceberano: Well, yeah – you know, I do. Just in my own universe alone we’ve revolutionised the administration of modern music management and every single person that we’ve had as staff members or working within my industry of music – the music I’ve been making for 25 years – several of them have gone off to manage artists as big as Tina Arena and The Sugarcubes. My cousin’s just stopped managing Linkin Park, and now manages a whole lot of new TV writers, like How I Met Your Mother, and Alannis Morisette she just tour managed. And my sister in law handles all my publicity. So we should be called The Ceb-pranos! We’re like new music management actually – we’re self sufficient. My step father is my tour manager. And it’s always been thus, like, we’ve always worked within our own industry. My brother and I still work together and write together. I think something about the self-surviving nature of the Ceberanos is not an accident, let’s just put it that way.

100% ROCK MAG: Cool. Having dabbled over the years in pop, jazz, worked with orchestras, done some soul music – is there anything in your repertoire that embarrasses you, looking back on it?

Kate Ceberano: [laughs] Oh, there’s an awful lot of things that embarrass me! I think growing up is embarrassing – especially when you’re doing it in the public eye. There’ll be many things I look back on, things I’ve said in the press, times I was experimenting with being a bit, you know, self-loving – and I’ll go ‘Oh shut up, you teenager!’ Sometimes I wish I’d understood the quality of the experience I was having with I’m Talking more. Kim West was our manager at the time, and Vivienne Lees, and they’ve gone on to manage the Big Day Out – not manage, but create it. And Kim continues to have that as his feather in his cap, and they were quite revolutionary at the time, bringing out Violent Femmes and other quite avant garde bands from all over the world, and I just was too young to understand what value we were in holding our own small measure of avant garde disco music. We were actually the first of its kind in the country, and we were quite avant garde, and I spent many, many years trying to cancel out anything – trying to fit in and trying to swim in the stream, ‘cos the 80’s turned very fast from being something off-white with that post punk era in ’81-82, with Elvis Costello and The Cure and all these guys, that’s what we were listening to and suddenly it turned into Madonna and Michael Jackson. It seemed like someone had flicked a switch. And I was swimming in this crowd over here which was very interesting – and I just rejected it and discarded it and went in to seeking someone commercially desirable and I just think there was so much more to be had from that experience. I’m not ashamed of what I did, I just wish I’d had more commitment to that group.

100% ROCK MAG: So you’re touring in October, are you going to be focusing mainly on the new album or will it be a Greatest Hits set?

Kate Ceberano: Oh no, no, no – it’s all the new album. The whole reason for doing a new album of original work was to give myself new material. I love to be able to do hits, but that sort of ages you, because it gives you a time and an era, and some nostalgic reference to the audience – and you want to keep reminding them that you’re relevant – I hate that word – present, you know, and belonging to now, not just belonging to some other section of their life a hundred years ago. You want to keep moving, you want to keep it alive.

100% ROCK MAG: Having dabbled in so many different styles of music over the last 3 decades – is there anything that you’d like to explore? I mean, I can’t imagine ‘Kate Ceberano goes metal’ or anything like that…

Kate Ceberano: HA!

100% ROCK MAG:…but is there any avenues you would like to explore?

Kate Ceberano: I’d like to join a band again. I’d like to be in a band. I might like that one day, I think that would be pretty cool. I’d love someone to inherit me like Robert Plant took up Alison Krauss, and just absorb into a band culture and have that experience and grow up and retire on that – I think that would be fun.

100% ROCK MAG: Okay, I have a theoretical one for you to finish up…

Kate Ceberano: Oh shit! [laughs]

100% ROCK MAG: If you could magically go back in time and be a part of the recording of any one record in history, which would you choose?

Kate Ceberano: [laughs] Any one record in history? Wow. Ahhhh… Exile On Main Street?

100% ROCK MAG: Nice choice!

Kate Ceberano: [laughs] I just would have loved to have been a young, nubile someone on the hips of Mick Jagger when he was strutting that… Jesus!

100% ROCK MAG: He would’ve eaten you up and spat you out Kate!

Kate Ceberano: And I wouldn’t have minded, not a bit! [laughs]

100% ROCK MAG: Beautiful – thanks and congrats

Kate Ceberano: Thankyou, I’ll see you out on the road.

 

Category: Interviews