Kasey Chambers

The unwritten code of the singer-songwriter is you must follow three rules: 1) You must look off pensively into the distance on your album covers; 2) You must write sensitive songs about yourself; 3) You must play them on acoustic guitar.

Kasey Chambers has gleefully broken all three rules on her fourth album, Carnival. Not only does she look directly into the camera on the album’s cover, she admits that not every song is written about her own experience, and most shocking, there’s not an acoustic guitar to be heard. Yes this is the same critically acclaimed, award-winning singer-songwriter who built a stellar reputation as the Australian queen of alt-country on three bittersweetly personal albums: 1999’s The Captain, 2001’s Barricades and Brickwalls, and 2004’s Wayward Angel. Chambers, recently married and the mother of a young son, is just in a different state of mind, one that has allowed her to grow and evolve, and step outside the musical borders that she felt defined who she was as an artist.

“I just had to admit that I'm not that little girl looking lost on the cover of my albums anymore,” says Chambers, who turned 30 in June. “I’m incredibly content with my life, and becoming less and less like that girl all the time. So I thought maybe this record could be different. Maybe it doesn't have to be about following the rules. Musically, I’ve always tended to stay within certain boundaries, because that’s all I knew. This time I let myself step outside the lines. Hopefully, for the fans, it’s not about what instruments are played, but more about my voice connected with the songs that matters.”

Carnival (so named because Chambers felt like she was in the middle of a whirling, colorful Mardi Gras while it was being recorded) explores grungy, full-on rock and roll (“I Got You Now,” a duet with You Am I frontman Tim Rogers), upbeat pop (the deliriously happy love song “Sign on the Door”), blues-rock (the feline, groovy “Light Up a Candle”), and even club-friendly dance pop (the skittering, atmospheric “Surrender”).

The changes come partially at the urging of her brother and long-time producer Nash Chambers, who suggested two new players join the studio band alongside (longtime bassist Jeff McCormack and Guitarist Mark Punch): Midnight Oil’s Jim Moginie on electric guitar and keyboards, and The John Butler Trio’s Michael Barker on drums. Both musicians brought a fresh perspective to the recording process, with Moginie supplying alternate instrumentation where an acoustic guitar would have sufficed in the past, and Barker busting out the slinkiest rhythms ever heard on a Kasey Chambers record. For the singer — who grew up on a strict diet of Hank Williams and Johnny Cash as a child growing up in the Australian outback, roaming the continent’s vast Nullarbor Plain with her mother, brother, and guitar player father, Bill — breaking free from her comfort zone led to new inspiration.

“I would get up really early, before everyone else went to the studio, and write a couple of songs and bring them in and we’d record them that day,” Chambers says. “I’d never done anything like that before.” Those tracks include the album’s first single “Nothing At All,” a playful, nonsensical countdown about a break-up, but significantly, not one of her break-ups. In fact, several songs — including the regretful “Colour of a Carnival,” “Hard Road,” a resolute, weary duet with Powderfinger singer Bernard Fanning, and the brokenhearted ballad “Dangerous” — “are totally about putting myself in someone else’s position as a writer,” she says. “They’re inspired by what I know about how it feels to end a relationship, but I felt free to explore other voices and personalities than I have in the past.”

What’s uncanny about Carnival, is that despite its new path musically and emotionally, the album is still quintessentially Kasey. The warm crackle of her girlish voice and the unpretentious, homespun quality to her songwriting are still present, anchoring the singer’s past to her future. “You know when I used to listen to music, if I didn’t hear any influence of Hank Williams, I wasn’t interested,” she says. “I was so closed-minded. This time, I wanted to be really open about where my record could go. And as much as it sounds different from the other albums, I don’t think there’s one song that doesn’t sound like me. I wrote them. I’m not trying to be somewhere I don’t belong. It’s just a step, a progression in making records for me, but it still sounds like Kasey Chambers.”

In 2000, Kasey Chambers emerged as Australia's first successful country-to-rock crossover female singer. It was just the latest chapter in a unique 25-year life journey. In 1976, hoping to earn a living hunting foxes, Bill and Diane Chambers took their two-year-old son Nash and newborn daughter Kasey into the 100,000 square mile (260,000 square km) sparsely vegetated and generally flat plateau called the Nullarbor Plain. The family would spend seven or eight months of the year on the Nullarbor, resupplying themselves from the world's longest stretch of straight railroad track, 330 miles (530 km), running through the Nullarbor. The rest of the year, the hot months, the family spent at a small south Australian fishing village. Each night out on the Nullarbor, after a day's hunting, the family would camp in a different spot on that vast Australian landmark and, grabbing his guitar, Bill Chambers and his wife passed on their love of country music, by the glow of the campfire, under the stars. This is how Kasey spent the first nine years of her life.

In 1986, the family returned to "civilization" so that Bill and Diane could pick up interrupted music careers. First, Kasey joined them as lead singer, then brother Nash, and they became known as the Dead Ringer Band. By 1992, the family had become full-time musicians, playing to city audiences as well as heading back out into the countryside, pulling a small trailer behind their Toyota Land Cruiser. During the '90s, the Dead Ringer Band members, known as performers of quality country music, released seven CDs and collectively earned two ARIAs (Australian Grammys) and seven Gold Guitars at the annual Australian Country Music Awards in Tamworth. Kasey was the face of the new generation in Australian country. She appeared at Tamworth dressed as a spice girl, wearing a nose ring, and posed nude for a country music magazine (walking down the streets of a deserted country town with brother Nash).

In 1998, Chambers' world was turned upside down with the separation of her parents, with mother Diane choosing to go and live in distant Norfolk Island, two and a half hours by plane off the Australian coast. Chambers started putting her feelings into songs, and over a few weeks during July and August 1998, Kasey recorded her solo album The Captain on Norfolk Island. With brother Nash acting as producer, Kasey and her musicians set up in an old homestead on the island and practically recorded the album live. Father Bill was on hand to play guitar. Country legends Buddy and Julie Miller added their voices and guitar to four tracks afterward in Nashville.

Released in May 1999, the album The Captain initially won Kasey the 1999 ARIA award for Best Country Album and, at the 2000 awards, earned her Best Female Artist. With double-platinum sales at home in Australia, Kasey spent the latter part of 2000 following up enthusiastic reviews for her album internationally. She also spent time touring the U.S. with Lucinda Williams and playing gigs in her native land with Emmylou Harris. She was in the studio as well; with her brother Nash at the production board once again, Chambers delivered another sonic beauty with 2002's Barricades & Brickwalls. The album was a multi-platinum success in Australia and significantly raised her profile in the United States, earning her enthusiastic reviews and much better sales than The Captain.

After a two-year layoff, during which Chambers and her husband, Aussie singer/songwriter and former Pretty Violet Stain vocalist Shane Nicholson, had a baby, she released her third solo disc, Wayward Angel, in the fall of 2004. The 14-song set gave Chambers her first number one album in Australia. Two years later, Chambers' song "The Hard Way" was featured in an episode of the ABC adventure drama Lost. Carnival, released in September 2006, included collaborations with Tim Rogers of You Am I and Powderfinger's Bernard Fanning. In 2008 Chambers released the sparse and heavily acoustic Rattlin' Bones, a collaboration with Nicholson. ~ Ed Nimmervoll, All Music Guide