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Country music singer from way down south

Friday, June 13, 2003

By Ed Masley, Post-Gazette Pop Music Critic

The top of the charts were clearly on her mind when Kasey Chambers was writing "Not Pretty Enough," a ballad that finds her responding to not getting played on the radio by asking if it's because she's not pretty enough, among other offenses (heart too broken, too outspoken, cry too much, etc.).

	Kasey Chambers is a familiar face in the Australian country music scene. Click photo for larger image. (Carlotta Moye)

But she certainly wasn't expecting the song to take her there.

It did, though -- back home in Australia, where the single has driven her second album, "Barricades & Brickwalls," to seven-times-platinum status. She recently took home three awards for the airplay "Not Pretty Enough" received, including one for most-played single of 2002.

As the singer reflects on what she jokingly refers to as "a breakdown in the system," "There was a nice piece of irony that night. We came home with three out of three awards and they were all for 'Not Pretty Enough,' all to do with getting played on the radio. I wrote it about why I don't get played on the radio. And that's the only song of mine they've ever played on the radio. Even since then, I don't know what happened there. I'll have to sit down and write some more about that."

It wasn't the first awards she'd won for "Barricades & Brickwalls," having taken home best female artist, best album and best country album at the Australian version of the Grammys, the ARIA awards.

It may not be what folks at country radio here in the States consider country, but from Chambers' Nashville-in-the-Out-back twang to the fiddle that kicks off the cover of "Still Feeling Blue" by Gram Parsons, it's clear that Chambers is a country girl at heart.

"It's such a hard thing to define country music at the moment," she says. "And it probably always will be. I mean, Johnny Cash isn't considered country anymore. It's really strange. And we don't really have a lot of country radio here in Australia like you have the commercial country radio stations. Which is kind of a good thing. It means that artists don't make albums geared toward radio quite so much as they do in America."

Chambers cut her teeth on country music, soaking up her father's old Amazing Rhythm Aces, Gram Parsons, Hank Williams and Emmylou Harris records as a prelude to joining the family business, the Dead Ringer Band.

"We traveled around for, like, 10 years," she says, "around Australia, playing country music. Everything I know about music and being on stage and playing gigs, I learned from that band."

When her parents' marriage ended, so too did the band, and Chambers went off on her own, eventually releasing her American debut, "The Captain."

She's back on the road with the family, though. Her dad is in the band. Her brother runs sound. And mom sells merchandise.

"They kind of like it better this way," Chambers says. "They're like 'We get to travel around doing the stuff we were doing before but we don't have to do all the interviews and that'."

She never found it odd to be a country girl so many time zones removed from the people who made her favorite country records.

"Growing up, I didn't know that wasn't normal," she says. "I've heard a few people ask if I'm from down South. And I'm like 'Yeah, really down south. As far down south as you can go.'"

The time-zone difference didn't stop Chambers from working with one of her all-time heroes. Lucinda Williams adds her vocals to the aching "On A Bad Day."

"My dad took me to see her when I was 12," Chambers says, "and it was then that I decided that I wanted to be a singer-songwriter. So she's been one of my biggest influences. And then, she came out again a few years later with her 'Sweet Old World' tour and I got to meet her. She probably wouldn't even remember. I walked up and asked her for an autograph."

When she started commuting to Nashville, Chambers met some friends of Williams and a hook-up was arranged.

"She actually booked me for a little in-the-round songwriter show with her and a couple of people at the Bluebird," Chambers says, "so that was a huge thrill. And from then on, we sort of catch up every time we go to Nashville. I got up the courage to ask her to sing on one of the songs and luckily she said 'Yes.'"

Although she feels the album is a little more "extreme" than "The Captain," the biggest change is clearly in the lyrical perspective. And that only stands to reason, considering she's in her 20s and the songs on "The Captain" were written at 14 and 15.

"That's quite a big difference between those two times in your life," she says, "when you're 15 and you think you know everything and when you're 25 and you just realize that you don't know anything but you're willing to admit it at least."

Expect more changes on the next one, her first since becoming a mother.

"I think my writing's definitely changed," she says. "I mean, I'm not writing about dirty diapers."

She laughs, then says, "It's not quite that specific. And I haven't actually written any songs about my son, but there's a lot of elements of that that's probably creeping in. There's probably a little more of a positive vibe in my songs. They're still sad songs. I always seem to write these sad songs and I'm not really a very sad person. I'm happy 95 percent of the time. It's just that when it's time to write a song, that's always when I'm feeling down. So there's still sad things coming out. But maybe I just have a different outlook on things and probably things don't get me down quite as much as they used to. When you have a baby, you start to realize that the little things don't matter quite as much. And you look at the big picture a lot more."

Ed Masley can be reached at emasley@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1865.