Paul Kelly - RodneyOlsen.net

This is one of a regular series of articles highlighting some of the music that has played a part in my life. You’ll find a range of songs from old to new. Whether it’s the lyrics, the music, a time in my life, or a combination of reasons, the songs in my soundtrack are part of who I am.

If you take a good look you’ll probably find music that has been part of the soundtrack of your life too. You can also check out some of the other songs that make up the soundtrack of my life.

How to Make Gravy – Paul Kelly

We’re less than a month from Christmas and so I’ve added a heap of Christmas music into my iPod playlist. I love all the Christmas classics but Paul Kelly’s How to Make Gravy is something special. It’s a heartfelt song that brings many to tears when they hear it each year.

It’s not your usually cheery Christmas song but I think it touches on the reality of the season for many. It’s not always a happy time. Sometimes it’s a reminder of bad choices and fractured relationships.

How to Make Gravy is a four-track EP by Australian singer-songwriter Paul Kelly and was originally released on 4 November 1996 on White Label Records in Australia. The title track was written by Kelly and earned him a ‘Song of the Year’ nomination at the 1998 Australasian Performing Rights Association (APRA) Music Awards.

It tells the story of a newly imprisoned man writing a letter to his brother, in which the prisoner laments that he will be missing the family’s Christmas celebrations. The same character appears in Kelly’s earlier songs, “To Her Door” (1987) and “Love Never Runs on Time” (1994).

The gravy recipe is genuine – Kelly learnt it from his first father-in-law. It was covered by James Reyne on the 2003 tribute album, Stories of Me: A Songwriter’s Tribute to Paul Kelly and on Reyne’s 2005 acoustic album …And the Horse You Rode in On. It has also been covered by David Miles, From Nowhere, Semicolon, Ghostwriters, Karl Broadie and Lawrence Agar. In September 2010, Kelly titled his memoirs, How to Make Gravy. On 29 September 2012 Kelly performed “How to Make Gravy” and “Leaps and Bounds” at the 2012 AFL Grand Final. – Wiki

I’d encourage you to get involved too. Let me know about some of the songs that are etched in your mind. What are the tunes that bring back a flood of memories every time their opening notes start cranking out on your stereo? Are there songs you love for their music and others that speak deeply through their lyrics? Maybe you can let me know about which Christmas songs bring back great memories for you.

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Melinda Schneider is a leading light of the new-breed of Australian Country music artists both in Australia and the US. She made her stage debut at the age of three and has developed into an accomplished singer, songwriter and performer.

Among the many awards she’s won, Melinda has picked up six Golden Guitars and her songs have been recorded by artists as diverse as John Farnham, Billy Thorpe, Jimmy Little, Olivia Newton-John and Paul Kelly.

Lately her career has seemed to take off in some surprising directions, firstly with her involvement in television’s Dancing With The Stars, and now a new album honouring Doris Day, Melinda Does Doris.

She has dazzled with her dexterity on television’s Dancing With The Stars and has put her country recording career on pause for a moment to indulge a passion that goes back decades. A passion that has resulted in a connection with Universal Music and the shimmering tribute album Melinda Does Doris.

It all began when, in childhood, she laid eyes on Calamity Jane, Doris Day’s 1953 film tour de force and was smitten by all she saw. “She was such a huge talent” she enthuses now, “a triple threat as they say – she could sing, dance and act. I thought then she was the best of everything a woman can be and when I grow up I want to be just like her! I’ve always loved musical theatre but I had to put a lot of that side of me away when I was making country albums.” But growing up with a yodeling mother and in a broad musical variety environment it was never going to all that far away.

She had been tossing the idea of a classy tribute albums around in the back (and more often than not, the front) of her mind for years and, after those five fine albums of deft, honest, effecting and widely acclaimed original country music, and the unstoppable rise of an instinctive almost visceral desire to revisit some of the sounds that had shaped her, this was an idea whose time had most definitely come. “It was meant to be,” she confirms. “The planets had aligned.”

She joined me on the Morning Café at 98.5 Sonshine FM today. You can hear our conversation by clicking the play button on the audio player at the bottom of this post.

Melinda will be bringing her show, Doris Day – So Much More Than The Girl Next Door, to the Regal Theatre in Subiaco from the 12th to the 16th of October.

[audio:http://mpegmedia.sonshinefm.ws/feeds/OTH150911_1224.mp3]

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