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What I've Learnt - Kate Ceberano · WHAT I'VE LEARNT

0:07
SPEAKER_01: Well Kate Soprano's thirtieth album, My Life as a Symphony, released this month, is a breathtaking celebration of her songwriting featuring her most iconic songs, Brave and Pash, and personal favourites from across her four-decade recording career.
0:23
SPEAKER_01: Reimagined with Kate at a new peak of command amid the grandeur of the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra.
0:30
SPEAKER_01: Unfolding on orchestral stages nationally, the epic musical setting is an apt reflection of an assured rise to the pinnacles of rock, pop, soul, and jazz.
0:40
SPEAKER_01: Her new album is a perfect title.
0:43
SPEAKER_01: Capturing her passion and her essence is the quintessential queen of Australian music.
0:47
SPEAKER_01: It aligns with her live tour with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra and other feature dates, many of which are already sold out.
0:53
SPEAKER_01: Well, Kate's quite simply one of the country's most celebrated voices and songwriters, a force of nature and a huge personality.
1:00
SPEAKER_01: I remember first meeting this beautiful, talented, hilarious woman back in the 80s when she was playing in the main room and I was performing the piano bar at the renowned Underground nightclub, then owned by Toddy Goldsmith's father Brian.
1:12
SPEAKER_01: It was a blast, and Kate was always a standout.
1:15
SPEAKER_01: We often joke, we've had parallel lives in some way.
1:18
SPEAKER_01: I went on to be a journalist for the Melbourne Age, with Kate being one of my first cover stories with a huge double-page spread I actually had framed.
1:25
SPEAKER_01: I was so thrilled.
1:26
SPEAKER_01: Meanwhile, Kate toured the country and sang her heart out.
1:29
SPEAKER_01: Forty years later, she is still doing what she does best.
1:33
SPEAKER_01: She's always been warm and creative, and we have fond memories of those wonderful years in Melbourne's King Street nightclub district, then a hub for so many young, inspiring, talented artists like Kate and John Stevens, both of whom went on to star in the stunning production of Jesus Christ Superstar with the legendary John Farnum.
1:52
SPEAKER_01: Her famous rendition of I Don't Know How to Love Him still makes me cry.
1:56
SPEAKER_01: So I'm very excited to have her join me on the What I've Learned podcast.
2:00
unknown: Exactly who you are.
2:05
SPEAKER_01: So I am thrilled and very excited to have the wonderful Kate Soprano join me on the What I've Learned podcast.
2:14
SPEAKER_02: What a journey we've travelled together, darling.
2:17
SPEAKER_02: How incredible.
2:18
SPEAKER_02: We really have.
2:19
SPEAKER_02: I was driving through town.
2:21
SPEAKER_02: It's funny you should mention um King Street just the other day.
2:24
SPEAKER_02: And I I drove past, and and all of the um the lights are dark in the places that used to shine so bright.
2:32
SPEAKER_01: It's very true, and we did have some amazing times, and you know, just really I have great and fond memories of you as a young girl just up there singing your heart out, and you're still doing it all these years later with the same passion.
2:48
SPEAKER_01: And I think it says something really that you have endured and that your fan base is still there, loving all your songs, and me included.
2:57
SPEAKER_01: But I think it'd be worthwhile maybe going back to where it all started.
3:01
SPEAKER_01: I'd love to talk to you about, tell me about growing up in suburban Melbourne, what it was like for someone also with a multicultural background, and I know your parents were pivotal to your journey.
3:12
SPEAKER_01: Tell me how they fueled your passion and supported your dreams.
3:15
SPEAKER_02: Well, I'd like to start by telling whomever's watching, hello, listening, yes, watching that I was raised by a superstar within his own right, and um and a very devoted and uh a very loyal samurai, my mother, who stood by his side and and helped create his dream, which was at the time martial arts, and it was a very pure form of Japanese martial arts, and he's the highest ranked of his style in the world.
3:47
SPEAKER_01: Your father.
3:48
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, and so to couch it in terms of the the decade, which was in the early 70s, you have to remember Bruce Lee um and a whole slew of Japanese films, uh Chinese collaborative films, Enter the Dragon, Evil Knieval was also like really um in vogue for young Australians.
4:08
SPEAKER_02: They they were only just embracing what it was like to have the um the ethnicity, especially where we were we were living at the time in Bourwen, Doncaster.
4:18
SPEAKER_02: We had Greeks and Albanians and Italians, and we had Lebanese, and we had the Asian community hadn't yet come into that space, but now it's completely uh propagated.
4:29
SPEAKER_02: Um, and we have the the largest thriving Chinese community in in Victoria in around that area, Bourwen Block.
4:37
SPEAKER_02: But at that time we were the only chinks on the block, and I say that because it's an Inverticomas, yeah.
4:44
SPEAKER_02: It's a horrible word, but that's what it was, you know.
4:47
SPEAKER_02: Like we had, and there were different types, and I and I'm gonna say it again, and just note that I'm using it purposefully for because it's out of place, that noun.
4:58
SPEAKER_02: It's in verticommas, yes.
5:00
SPEAKER_02: There were the wongs down the street, and then we were the nondescript chinks in the middle of Lime Avenue, and then across the road with the Conheaties, which were the Irish Catholics.
5:08
SPEAKER_02: I mean, the the whole street was like it had its own little degree of cultural sort of referencing, you know.
5:15
SPEAKER_02: You for instance, on a Sunday, we all knew that the Conheaties and the Mullins would be going up to St.
5:21
SPEAKER_02: Bridget's, while we, the sort of nondescript kind of half-chinks, would go down and and use the dirt bikes, and I'd be riding horses like a bunch of feral cats down in at the um the Yarra.
5:34
SPEAKER_02: So it it was a time where it everything was was all happening all at the same time.
5:41
SPEAKER_02: We all kind of understood that this was heading into the future and this would be the face of how the world would look in and you had faith.
5:47
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, because back in that, I mean, that would have been the 70s, it was very optimistic about that.
5:54
SPEAKER_01: Well, I'm glad you were, and you were right.
5:56
SPEAKER_01: Um, and I think it does actually it does give a really interesting backdrop to your story because you actually really come from that that essence of diversity and acceptance.
6:07
SPEAKER_02: Agree, and we were all embracing of one another.
6:10
SPEAKER_02: We we rated people by what they did rather than how they looked or how or what they yeah, it was mostly like action spoke more than words in that time.
6:19
SPEAKER_02: Um, of course, there was no digital communications, so the beautiful analogue phones would give you time and give you privacy as well.
6:28
SPEAKER_02: I mean, I remember traveling overseas just to cut a few years later, but at the at a time when phones, you know, you you'd get an operator to say, Will you accept this call?
6:37
SPEAKER_02: Can you imagine if we actually had a phone these days and said, Will you accept this call?
6:43
SPEAKER_01: And what I think of us, you know, working that late in the you know in the clubs at 4 a.m., there was no like text like, No, Mom, I'm on my way home.
6:51
SPEAKER_02: No, I mean there was a great deal of trust, wasn't there?
6:54
SPEAKER_02: And there was.
6:55
SPEAKER_02: I mean, you and I, again, back in that place.
6:58
SPEAKER_02: When I say now it's sort of dark, well, it is dark because 70s, early 80s, when grain store and inflation and the whole ride of Kingston.
7:05
SPEAKER_02: Underground, yeah.
7:07
SPEAKER_02: Underground, it it was it was also on the back end of disco, which was actually a very loving cultural experience.
7:15
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it wasn't very violent, it didn't feel like it was very violent or very kind of uh embargoed to only those who were wearing a hair a certain way or something.
7:24
SPEAKER_02: No, disco was for everyone.
7:26
SPEAKER_02: It was we loved to dance, yeah, and we did.
7:30
SPEAKER_02: It was welcome, you know.
7:32
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it was inclusive, and and that's an important point because, in a sense, when you describe growing up and the inclusivity and the diversity and the sense that she'll be right, mate.
7:42
SPEAKER_01: We're all we're all part of the same journey.
7:44
SPEAKER_01: You're right, that there's a purity and an innocence, isn't there?
7:48
SPEAKER_02: Well, and my father, um, getting just quickly back to what it was like, I was raised by the very best of a superstar you'd ever wish to.
7:58
SPEAKER_02: Like his fame was because of what he did to his community around him rather than based on his himself.
8:05
SPEAKER_02: So it was the actions he performed to recover people's self-respect and self-discipline that improved.
8:12
SPEAKER_02: Well, we were in, you know, we were in times where there were gang wars and there were all sorts of things going on.
8:17
SPEAKER_02: There were skinheads and and there were um bikers and all sorts of people who'd show up at the house.
8:22
SPEAKER_02: But this was how the world responded back then to someone like my father, a peacemaker ultimately, and the kind of bridge between factions in the community.
8:34
SPEAKER_02: He could bring them out into the back dojo and in this very elegant space, divide a line in the sand between being a civilized human and a cannibal.
8:45
SPEAKER_02: He was just like, and and many people today come up to me and say, I have your father to thank that I was headed to jail and instead I live an honorable life.
8:54
SPEAKER_01: And you're like very, very precious, and and also he so he was like a mediator of sorts, somebody who always tried to teach diplomacy, but clearly he he was a martial arts expert, as you mentioned.
9:09
SPEAKER_02: So there was also the capacity to defend oneself if if well that's where the the twist into superstardom became complete when he was put on television for the then Roy Hampton show.
9:20
SPEAKER_02: Do you remember that?
9:21
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, wow, that's a long time ago.
9:23
SPEAKER_00: Okay, I think we were like seven or something.
9:25
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
9:25
SPEAKER_02: We were.
9:26
SPEAKER_02: It was actually my first ever television appearance was when I accidentally walked in front of the the studio cameras um watching my dad teaching self-defense for women on the Roy Hampton show.
9:38
SPEAKER_02: So I had this very strong, I guess the first impact for me of what it was like to be um in a family that was more than simply just a family on your street, it was a family in your television, you know.
9:54
SPEAKER_02: And my dad was part of a um a new culture of of physical awareness and and a sense of sort of like like yoga and that there was, do you remember Swami Sap Swarasvati?
10:06
SPEAKER_02: Oh yeah, she was on every morning doing her yoga.
10:09
SPEAKER_02: Oh, exactly.
10:11
SPEAKER_02: So my dad shared that space with her, and they were the first, you know, the real first um physical, they were exercising self-discipline and sort of like um motivation for for mothers who were at home and at that stage hadn't yet come back out into the working field.
10:28
SPEAKER_02: So this was a very, very a very in in an interesting time.
10:33
SPEAKER_02: So anyway, and I and I quoted as well that my mum, who was also the first female, Australian female in champion in chip at championship level in martial arts as well.
10:45
SPEAKER_02: So she was breaking all of the rules in doing that.
10:48
SPEAKER_01: Oh, so and is that how they met?
10:50
SPEAKER_02: No, it that's another story, but and it's a big story.
10:54
SPEAKER_02: They met so young and and they were so invigorated by this this experience that they were doing.
11:01
SPEAKER_02: My dad sort of it was like a bushfire.
11:03
SPEAKER_02: It went into the stratosphere, and and we as children, we we often had 30 to 80 students in the backyard every weekend that would travel from near and far.
11:14
SPEAKER_02: So, and my and my mum would support and love uh love that culture as well.
11:18
SPEAKER_02: But I, just speaking of how I got into music, I didn't do karate, I didn't want to do karate.
11:25
SPEAKER_02: I uh I understood the the concept of it, I understood the hierarchy and how it was beautiful and everything.
11:29
SPEAKER_02: But the sound of my mother doing it, I it made me feel like she was in danger.
11:35
SPEAKER_02: And so I didn't actually like watching her do kata or training.
11:40
SPEAKER_02: And and I went into the more um feminine sports of like, you know, ballet and and flamenco and tap dancing.
11:47
SPEAKER_01: Well, thank God you did.
11:48
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, because it probably took you down that path.
11:50
SPEAKER_01: And I think that's a really interesting backdrop to where you came from and also the the strong sense of acceptance and inclusivity and using whatever tools you could carve.
12:01
SPEAKER_01: And for you, those tools in your toolbox were, as you said, dance.
12:06
SPEAKER_01: You went on that that pathway, and then it led to music.
12:09
SPEAKER_01: And I know both your parents have been hugely pivotal and supportive of your journey, but you can't do karate, is that right?
12:16
SPEAKER_01: So we should just put it.
12:18
SPEAKER_02: No, no, my I I just take a heavy object in a handbag if I want some self-defense.
12:23
SPEAKER_02: Um, I don't I think that's what you call a husband.
12:26
SPEAKER_02: No, sorry.
12:29
SPEAKER_02: Hilarious.
12:30
SPEAKER_02: Um, actually, yeah, I I my brothers um and I, just as another musical interest, my brothers are and still continues to do martial arts, but my brother Phil's, of course, is a musician as well.
12:43
SPEAKER_02: Yes, we were trained um to not no, we weren't trained, terrible word.
12:49
SPEAKER_02: We were released as as sort of like free-range chickens.
12:53
SPEAKER_02: We were we were all encouraged to to get into the arts and and try to find our voice in whichever medium that we would end up in.
13:02
SPEAKER_02: You know, that was the that was the divining rule.
13:04
SPEAKER_02: It was like, is what you're doing forwarding your purpose as a human?
13:08
SPEAKER_02: And if it is, then you have our 100% support.
13:12
SPEAKER_01: Now, in that sense, they were both very progressive because that wasn't, especially at that time, and that allowed you the platform that you've created and built over all these years, but but really they as you that's a beautiful image, somewhat like, but I'm thinking more of birds, but but you know, like going for letting you go free and go on your path.
13:30
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
13:31
SPEAKER_01: Um, in terms of for you, what was your earliest career highlight memory?
13:36
SPEAKER_01: Very early on, before we get to all the many, I'm sure you have, but and also the bravery, which I think is interesting because you were, you know, you were pretty courageous in terms of you had your own style, you weren't you weren't sort of your typical pop princess.
13:49
SPEAKER_01: You you were, you know, hard.
13:51
SPEAKER_01: Um, you definitely drew on the blues and soul and jazz and all of that.
13:56
SPEAKER_01: Was that that required a bit of courage at that time, back in the day?
14:01
SPEAKER_02: Well, I I actually saw a meme yesterday with uh a young, uh a baby just a year and a half playing piano on his mother's lap.
14:09
SPEAKER_02: And and the um comment above was is like, is that a a baby this age is so closer to who they've been and can remember, like if you have a concept of her circular life, this child was playing with this maturity, which was it was kind of it it freaked you out a bit because you're just wondering, you know, he's playing full chords and they're harmonizing.
14:30
SPEAKER_02: I think I saw that actually.
14:32
SPEAKER_02: I think that yeah, that's it's amazing.
14:34
SPEAKER_02: And and I do think that there are sort of, I don't know, there there are cracks in the matrix that sometimes like this is this is going towards a story that I had about myself, and to myself it was very real.
14:46
SPEAKER_02: I felt like at the time I probably knew you, and just before, I felt like a 40-year-old black woman, like singing, and I get it.
14:54
SPEAKER_02: I actually get what you're saying, yeah.
14:56
SPEAKER_02: Right?
14:56
SPEAKER_02: And I was going, and I don't know why, but I was compelled to go through every vintage store and op shop, which back then they were unbelievable because Devil Street.
15:06
SPEAKER_02: Oh my god, they've all been, you know, everything's been taken and worn and and and everything I bought I recycled and I wore to threadbare.
15:15
SPEAKER_02: Like nothing was wasted.
15:16
SPEAKER_02: But I would buy the most beautiful sharks, shark skin suits from the 60s, you know, and and I'd cut them up and make beautiful cocktail dresses.
15:27
SPEAKER_02: And and I had and the fabrics that they used from that time, the Gro Grain and the Shantons and the Yeah, and the velvets and the and the velvet and the embroidery.
15:37
SPEAKER_02: And so I would dress like a vintage jazz singer, and uh and and then I would go out and put myself to work, either Burke Street Mall busking, or I I went to a club, I remember at the age of about 16, and just turned 16, actually, and I met up with another chap who seemingly like me was in another era.
16:00
SPEAKER_02: He he was in a full vintage suit, and his name's Stephen Hope.
16:03
SPEAKER_02: He played this very unusual, very traditional way of 1930s music, 1920s, where you stride the bottom bass line.
16:13
SPEAKER_02: Songs like pay uh dance, you know, and say it's only a paper boom, golden cardboard, dun, dun, dun, oh yes, that bouncing.
16:24
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah, right.
16:25
SPEAKER_02: And so we became a band, Hoagie Cats, and we were like these people that hadn't yet left who they were to become who they are, and that's when I met you.
16:37
SPEAKER_01: I think I I I have great recollection because I think we had really similar vintage taste in terms of you know, we loved those op shops.
16:44
SPEAKER_01: I think what's interesting is you're like an old soul, which is what you're referring to, and you have always been an old soul, even at 18.
16:51
SPEAKER_01: So I resonate that.
16:52
SPEAKER_02: I I always saw that in you, and I I think that's where a lot of your power in your music comes out because you feel you feel like you're listening to somebody from another era, but it's true, and it I feel like I'm holding the line for a range of singers who have a certain frequency, like Dusty Springfield, yeah, Dion Warwick, Scylla Black, Roberta Flack.
17:18
SPEAKER_02: Um, these were the women of my, they were the ones, oh Aretha Franklin and Edda James.
17:24
SPEAKER_02: I felt that they were schooling me in what it was actually to be a woman through.
17:31
SPEAKER_02: Not to not to be a singer, but to be, as I said, an actor who can sing, you know, like a storyteller and someone who could embody the experiences that that a person who's listening to the music might have had, and then offer them a method of sort of release and catharsis, you know.
17:52
SPEAKER_02: That was my even at even at that age, I knew I had a service to do in that sense.
17:57
SPEAKER_01: So um And they resonated with you for a reason because obviously the universality of a lot of their messaging and their songs and the power.
18:05
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
18:05
SPEAKER_02: They were telling a different story.
18:07
SPEAKER_02: I mean, think, for instance, um you could you could put that into a sort of like a for particularly for women, and and back then there were no policies to protect violence in the homes.
18:21
SPEAKER_02: It was actually legitimate for a husband to have have full rights to hurt his wife, because she was his wife, and that you know, there was nothing protecting women from home violence.
18:32
SPEAKER_02: And it was very powerful lyrics and respect, respect, exactly, and you know, and even Edda James at last, and and from the stories that they were performing Billy Holiday, they were saying, My life is not easy, but from this song, I'm gonna show you how you will survive your life.
18:53
SPEAKER_01: And absolutely and Billy Holiday.
18:56
SPEAKER_01: I mean, I've heard you do some beautiful Billy Holiday.
18:58
SPEAKER_01: I've heard you really and and you do you think you are an old soul?
19:02
SPEAKER_01: Did you always and also you need to really, you know, you've got a raw, sensitive core that just, you know, in some ways that can be hard because it means you that you reverberate every nuance, but then it's also what fuels you.
19:17
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I mean, it's tough.
19:20
SPEAKER_02: I I I reckon an actor would have a terrible time in it when they're constantly playing a role where they're they're having to find that place, that performance place, which has a lot of tragedy in it, and day in, day out, find that place.
19:35
SPEAKER_02: Like that, you know, when you take on board a song, you sort of inhabit the skin of the singer or the composer.
19:41
SPEAKER_02: Um, Billy Strayhorn, for instance, like since we're in the jazz hood, he he was a very troubled young man.
19:47
SPEAKER_02: And back then, homosexuality and uh the taboos of being a black man, and even even within their own community, that wasn't even a thing.
19:58
SPEAKER_02: It was like you just couldn't talk about it.
20:00
SPEAKER_02: You just and so his music was laced with this sort of sadness and a case.
20:07
SPEAKER_02: Oh my god, well they and and justifiably so, because the world was so restrictive and so um marginalized as it is today.
20:16
SPEAKER_02: But back then it was it was with with you know it was it was done with police brutality and it was done with whole communities not allowing it being to be great.
20:26
SPEAKER_02: Like Ella Fitzgerald, right up until very late in her life, would explain that she would be the headlining artist at a concert with Frank Sinatra, yet she couldn't use public toilets, she couldn't use the um any of the facilities backstage, she'd have to be in the car and wait before she could come stage.
20:45
SPEAKER_01: Well, she's she certainly uh left her legacy, and it's you know, it's it's lasted longer than any of those, probably except for Frank Sinatra.
20:53
SPEAKER_01: But I think what you're saying is you imbue a lot of that, and you and to do that though, Kate, you have to be quite finely tuned, you have to be very astute.
21:02
SPEAKER_01: You can't, you know, that's not there's lots of people that do covers, there's lots of people that do, but you are you have an originality in the way that you perform these songs, and that means you must be diving pretty deep into yourself to tackle that.
21:15
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I think that you there is a price you pay for that, for sure.
21:18
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, my husband's or my stepdad as well, he he, you know, and and anyone who works or tours with me um will say that there are some days where it's like I've borrowed from the future, that's how they explain it, and and you're just a little threadbare and and emotional.
21:34
SPEAKER_02: And then you couch that like we jump now to 40 four 40 years later, and um with a with a whole new wave of um sensitivity, which is menopause.
21:46
SPEAKER_02: Let's let's as an artist.
21:49
SPEAKER_02: If I was to try to explain to a young artist what it feels like to be in contact with your emotions, but also your sentiment for other people around you, I'd say it's as raw.
22:00
SPEAKER_02: As being a menopausal woman, because it's like air bubbles, you read everything, all the comments, you take them all personally.
22:08
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, you take on everyone's happiness, you take on all of the sadness, and then if you have a teenage daughter to boot, which you do, and I know you're you're like, you know, just you've summed it up really well.
22:20
SPEAKER_02: You're just feeling everything all day, every day.
22:25
SPEAKER_01: That's how we get on so well, Kate, because we just have that same your barometer.
22:29
SPEAKER_01: I always say, you know, my volume on my barometer is always up so high that I actually, you know, it's it's so you're like a sonar radar, aren't you?
22:38
SPEAKER_02: Sort of picking up every well, the only way you're like a condenser, actually.
22:42
SPEAKER_02: You're the you're the thing that all of the all flows lead into, and then you have to recalibrate it and spit it out so that somehow it's like survivable, if that's a terrible word, but it's it's true.
22:54
SPEAKER_02: I know.
22:57
SPEAKER_01: And pick and choose and be selective about what we actually take on.
23:01
SPEAKER_01: And I think for you though, you then have to get up on stage, and let's even you've got this extraordinary tour about to start.
23:07
SPEAKER_01: So you actually have to put that somewhere.
23:11
SPEAKER_02: I I will tell you something, which it's hard to put in words because I, in fact, I almost hate trying to find words because these things are rare and precious.
23:19
SPEAKER_02: And have you ever had that feeling when something's so perfect that to release it into a world of imperfections, it's just going to make it just one other little piece of imperfection.
23:29
SPEAKER_02: But I'll I'll try, I'll try my best and not not make it vanish.
23:33
SPEAKER_02: The minute that you walk from the dark into the light on the stage, it's a it's a chance to do everything all over again.
23:42
SPEAKER_02: It's like taking yesterday and making it better, and you have a chance.
23:48
SPEAKER_02: So, in other words, the stage is in essence for an artist like Groundhog Day, it's an opportunity to make it that fit your narrative.
23:57
SPEAKER_02: What do you want it to be today?
23:59
SPEAKER_02: That's beautiful, and it's it's like a sunrise or a sunset, which I actually it's but it it again, we could reach for words which will just it'll get worse because it's only that it just is you're there, you're there out there in the dark, and the and it's literally like a light goes from on to off.
24:19
SPEAKER_02: It's it's there's nothing in between.
24:21
SPEAKER_02: It it just very powerful from where you were and then puts you in a brand new moment.
24:26
SPEAKER_02: Wow, it's such a gift, it's such a gift.
24:29
SPEAKER_01: So for you, it's liberating, it's it's a sense of that you have, and and I love the way that you describe that because I think that's it's very rare that that actual little journey between, as you say, coming out of the dark onto the stage is often not described because it's like, and you have to, as you say, you have to just put whatever's going on in a place somewhere while you perform to people who you have to who have expectations too.
24:57
SPEAKER_01: So that's something you've just got to, but as you say, the probably the best thing to do is to just own where you're at, and that will deliver anyway.
25:04
SPEAKER_02: You don't well, the closer you can get to being exactly in the space you're in when you enter the stage, uh the rest is just make-believe.
25:13
SPEAKER_02: And and I'm a big proponent for make-believe.
25:15
SPEAKER_02: I think that children have the answers to the universe in that if they if they don't if they don't like it, they just make it something different.
25:26
SPEAKER_01: I love that, and it's true, and we've watched our kids, yeah, I've watched the children, their capacity for creativity, and and you're endlessly creative, and we'll get to that because we've got some other things that you're working on, which is extraordinary.
25:38
SPEAKER_01: But I want to touch on you've worked with the creme de la creme of Australian music and the arts in general, from John Farnum to Jimmy Barnes, the late Renee Gehrer, Marcia Hines, I mean, there's so many John Stevens, many of whom I know adore you.
25:51
SPEAKER_01: How are those?
25:53
SPEAKER_01: Because they're very long-term relationships, many of those, that you've had for a long time.
25:58
SPEAKER_01: And you know, it can be a dog eat dog world, I hate that expression, but it can be.
26:02
SPEAKER_01: But these relationships have been really enduring for you.
26:06
SPEAKER_01: What do you put that down to?
26:07
SPEAKER_01: Because I often, I when I've interviewed other them, they're all, oh, Kate Sabrano, we love her, you know.
26:11
SPEAKER_01: Um they they do, and that's genuine.
26:13
SPEAKER_01: It's not a it's not flippant.
26:15
SPEAKER_01: It's a very so what do you put that down to, that enduring love with some of these extraordinary people who've been through their own very complex journeys?
26:24
SPEAKER_02: If I was going to make a common denominator of what I think is similar amongst us all, is that I'd like to say that we're all simple.
26:33
SPEAKER_02: You just we're not really complicated when it comes to rock and roll.
26:37
SPEAKER_02: You just get out and do it.
26:39
SPEAKER_02: Right.
26:40
SPEAKER_02: Like life is complicated and and one's own personal life will always be very complex, depending on you know how we relate to children or family or or you know, the world around us.
26:53
SPEAKER_02: But when it comes to just doing what we do, then the people you mentioned there, I can't think of any time that I've walked into some miasma of kind of trouble with them.
27:04
SPEAKER_02: Like there's never, you know, and and they can be they can be pretty wild.
27:08
SPEAKER_02: It could be Nick Cave or Michael Hutchins.
27:11
SPEAKER_02: Or you know, you know, like I remember, in fact, I was just with Kirk Penn Gilly.
27:16
SPEAKER_02: We were celebrating the life of a great agent, a friend of ours, Colleen, who had, you know, taken the Rolling Stones on stage.
27:23
SPEAKER_02: And she never once actually, she never changed herself or behaved towards the people she was with as though any of us were any different from each other.
27:32
SPEAKER_02: We were just a bunch of naughty children who needed, you know, like scattered cats that just needed to be herded on a or or not.
27:39
SPEAKER_02: Like she was actually so she was so cool.
27:42
SPEAKER_02: It was like, you know, these ones uh are allowed to misbehave because at the end of the day, they're all putting food on our table, you know.
27:52
SPEAKER_01: And you know what?
27:53
SPEAKER_01: She also loved it.
27:54
SPEAKER_01: I mean, let's be honest, we couldn't have a bit more set of scattered cats.
27:58
SPEAKER_01: But uh to your point, simplicity, enjoying the ride a bit, and and maybe that is actually important to know.
28:05
SPEAKER_01: Like some of the key to all of this is that you're a bunch of, as you say, naughty children just going for it and just living your dream.
28:12
SPEAKER_01: And sometimes it worked and sometimes it didn't, and then you had the next gig and you just got to get on a bit like I think you know, you're doing the big red bash, aren't you?
28:19
SPEAKER_01: What's it?
28:19
SPEAKER_02: Oh, yeah, Monday, mundy and the big red bash.
28:21
SPEAKER_01: Monday, mundy, and I'm thinking, and it's sold out as far as I can see.
28:24
SPEAKER_02: They're both sold out absolutely.
28:26
SPEAKER_02: Incredible in the middle of the they are the bucket list, and I and I can vouch for this.
28:32
SPEAKER_02: Um I hope I'm on the bill for as long as I uh I'm I'm physically able to make the gifts.
28:38
SPEAKER_02: I mean, they're in you know, they're in bum fuck nowhere.
28:41
SPEAKER_02: They're like silly, as far out as you could wish to be.
28:46
SPEAKER_02: But you know, um where are they?
28:48
SPEAKER_02: Tell our listeners where are they there?
28:50
SPEAKER_02: The Simpson Desert, which is up like in the central Australia, up north, and then uh Broken Hill, which is also again within the center of another desert down over um in the in the middle of Australia, above South Australia.
29:03
SPEAKER_02: So you've got this uh well, it if you were to take an aerial view, and they've often done this with drawings, it it just looks like another planet, and there are 5,000 RVs that collect everything is catered for in a way that's just so sustainable to itself.
29:20
SPEAKER_02: And then the days, the three days, it's a variety of many things that people can do.
29:24
SPEAKER_02: Like I think they broke the world record for the Nutbush City Limits, and they have these other great things that they do communally, yoga in the morning, and 5,000 people out and under these incredible lunar scape style deserts where 360s there's like nothing to view but just earth and sky.
29:42
SPEAKER_02: It's it's it's more than your eyes can handle, and the music, of course, is is free and and liberated and uh and crazy.
29:52
SPEAKER_02: It's not like a burning man or something that has no child, no, no, no, it's raw, yeah.
29:59
SPEAKER_02: It's raw, and people find each other in the space.
30:05
SPEAKER_02: Um, friends and and and and communities have forged these sort of re reaffirming sort of events together where they just go and they go every year and they make these quadrangles of RVs, and their families are very safe, it's incredible, it's an incredible journey.
30:25
SPEAKER_01: And you've done it a few times, and I know I mean that's in in great contrast that um to performing at the uh with the MSO here, yeah, which you've got coming up as part of your new album.
30:36
SPEAKER_01: So one of the things that I noticed with you is you're quite fearless, even though I know you have your anxiety about things, sure, you're quite fearless.
30:44
SPEAKER_01: Would you describe, is that correct?
30:46
SPEAKER_01: That you're I mean, am I wrong?
30:47
SPEAKER_02: I think that I'm I'm I've sort of been lately I've been kind of classifying myself as the last of the Mohicans.
30:52
SPEAKER_02: I've got like you know, yeah, I just have like a community I come from, and I think it's a thing from the 70s.
30:59
SPEAKER_02: I um I was raised by fierce women in music.
31:03
SPEAKER_02: Um to to open up for Chrissy Amflet and Renee Geyer and Colleen Hewitt.
31:09
SPEAKER_02: I mean, we weren't mucking around.
31:11
SPEAKER_02: There was like scalps to be taken that night.
31:13
SPEAKER_01: Oh, I I remember it well, that era.
31:16
SPEAKER_02: Yes.
31:17
SPEAKER_02: Uh and and also just the era of creating a department within an industry that was primarily men, that we could get um respect and and honor ourselves and feel that we had equality.
31:31
SPEAKER_02: It started with us and it started early.
31:33
SPEAKER_02: Deborah Conway and I we just talked about it last week at Renee's funeral service.
31:38
SPEAKER_02: We were just saying that both of us, and it and it's and it's true with no disrespect to anyone, but we've been operating vigilantly that there's no gender in music, actually.
31:50
SPEAKER_02: And it's it's a great space, actually, because it just means that you you're there within your sp within your time and within your merit and your power, but you're not doing it or saying for any other specific reason other than the music itself.
32:06
SPEAKER_02: So it's it's it's in a space all into itself.
32:09
SPEAKER_02: And and and to hold that space takes diligence and hard work, and and you just have to keep showing up and keep being there for yourself.
32:18
SPEAKER_02: And when people want to put you in a box or name it in a way that doesn't suit you, you have to be willing to say, well, actually, that's actually not me.
32:26
SPEAKER_02: No, no, that's you, no, I think you're talking about someone else there, mate.
32:31
SPEAKER_01: And that's you're pretty good at doing that.
32:33
SPEAKER_01: You're pretty good at calling a spade a spade when you need to.
32:35
SPEAKER_01: Do you think it's changed for women in the music industry?
32:38
SPEAKER_01: Do you feel like you know, in the 40 years that you've been on this journey, do you think it's changed?
32:46
SPEAKER_01: You're finding it.
32:47
SPEAKER_02: Well, I'll tell you just a great example of change.
32:49
SPEAKER_02: And it because I've I've actually sadly got the wind up with it's gone too fast.
32:54
SPEAKER_02: But I worked with Kathleen Halloran, um, a young guitarist who's just astonishing.
33:00
SPEAKER_02: And she yeah, I walked into a uh session once when she was playing with a whole chorus of women, and and I did this concert, and I just looked at her and I said, you know what?
33:10
SPEAKER_02: You're you you're you've just got something really.
33:14
SPEAKER_02: And we we forged a friendship there and then and we've been mates since now we work in business across many platforms together now.
33:20
SPEAKER_02: She's actually my business partner in the art that I produce and making guitars.
33:26
SPEAKER_00: Which I want to, yeah.
33:26
SPEAKER_00: So I want to even talk about that.
33:29
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, because I want to talk about that briefly.
33:31
SPEAKER_01: Just tell me quickly, so we can talk about the fact that you have created this whole other incredible which my daughter also has got one of your extraordinary guitars, just your capacity to morph.
33:45
SPEAKER_01: This is where you're going.
33:46
SPEAKER_01: And let's talk about hey, very quickly, you also hand paint these stunning guitars.
33:53
SPEAKER_02: Well, actually, there's a there's there's I've got to talk to you about your guitar.
33:57
SPEAKER_02: You know, it's interesting.
33:58
SPEAKER_02: The first one that I made, you yours was one of.
34:01
SPEAKER_02: Oh, that's so cute.
34:02
SPEAKER_02: No, but I love it.
34:04
SPEAKER_02: So because like I I just um it's it's a it's a folk project.
34:08
SPEAKER_02: If I say folk in that it's a it's a craft project that I do within the the scale of rock and roll that I love guitarists, I love guitar.
34:17
SPEAKER_02: I talked about my brother Phil and then just Kathleen as well.
34:20
SPEAKER_02: And I'd love the power of watching guitarists make music in this way.
34:26
SPEAKER_02: I find it it it's just I'd rather listen to guitarists actually, or or than than a lot of singers these days.
34:34
SPEAKER_02: I just quite I just love the feeling of it and I can inhabit the space.
34:38
SPEAKER_02: So performing and um and being around these great guitarists, I decided, of course, through lockdown to make guitar something that was something that even I could have in my house, even if I wasn't one.
34:50
SPEAKER_02: It's almost like if I have an excuse to say, I'll make you one, you can hang on your wall.
34:54
SPEAKER_02: And you do that.
34:56
SPEAKER_02: So Martia became like the name.
34:59
SPEAKER_02: She's she's a guitar of now, many guitars.
35:04
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, and and she's like she's uh actually going to be um well, I actually can't even discuss that yet.
35:11
SPEAKER_02: We're gonna have to have another.
35:12
SPEAKER_02: There's so much I can tell you.
35:14
SPEAKER_02: I can tell you this much though, that as a national tour, this is a symphony tour that's now gonna go across the country.
35:20
SPEAKER_02: So we start now.
35:21
SPEAKER_02: Um Hamer Hall Hammer Hall sold out in nanosecond seconds, which was like I know I saw all sold out.
35:27
SPEAKER_01: I think there's availability, maybe one uh most of your up-and-coming tours sold out that I can.
35:34
SPEAKER_02: No, I think the the second show now we've put on sale.
35:36
SPEAKER_02: So we're going to at the town hall, um, which I love the idea of town hall because I like I really identify as like a Nelly Melbourne.
35:45
SPEAKER_02: I'm like Melbourne's own, you know, but all across the country people are coming, and I will tell the story.
35:51
SPEAKER_02: We'll get together, I think, if you like, at the end of the tour, and we should do another little wrap-up, and I can tell you more about what it feels like about which is what I wanted to end up.
36:01
SPEAKER_02: We are women in business, Keith and I.
36:03
SPEAKER_02: Yes, thank you.
36:04
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
36:04
SPEAKER_02: And uh, and my husband and I work together now too.
36:07
SPEAKER_02: So there are like there's this sort of multiple prongs to the business in music, and being a woman in music today is very different to how it ever used to be.
36:17
SPEAKER_02: So there's so much I can tell you about that.
36:19
SPEAKER_01: Oh, well, Kate, I have loved having you on the podcast.
36:23
SPEAKER_01: Thank you.
36:23
SPEAKER_01: And yes, we will do another session after your amazing tour, which I'm sure I will be coming to and seeing because I've seen you so many times, but also well done, you and 40 years, and just for everybody, it's uh My Life's a Symphony is coming out May 12th, is that right?
36:40
SPEAKER_01: That's correct.
36:41
SPEAKER_01: And and so stay tuned for another uh exemplification of this beautiful woman's talent.
36:47
SPEAKER_01: Thank you for joining us.
36:49
SPEAKER_02: Oh well, Deb, I was gonna tell you too.
36:50
SPEAKER_02: If you pre-order, you could you could also win a concert at your house with me.
36:55
SPEAKER_02: Now that is worth putting your hand up for.
36:59
SPEAKER_02: So I know.
37:00
SPEAKER_02: So let me come over and I'll play, I'll play for you guys.
37:05
SPEAKER_01: That now lock it down.
37:07
SPEAKER_01: I'm in.
37:08
SPEAKER_01: Um, I couldn't think of anything better.
37:10
SPEAKER_01: Um, take care, you, and thank you for your time.
37:13
SPEAKER_01: Thanks, Deb.
37:20
SPEAKER_01: Thanks so much for listening.
37:22
SPEAKER_01: The What I've Learned podcast will now be coming to you weekly with new episodes released every Tuesday.
37:29
SPEAKER_01: I'm blessed to have so many wonderful guests coming on the show.
37:32
SPEAKER_01: So check out my What I've Learned Instagram for updates.
37:35
SPEAKER_01: Meanwhile, stay tuned, kind, and curious.
37:39
SPEAKER_01: Love Deb.