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Dan Kelly.
Dan Kelly, along with his musical companions The Alpha Males, are quite proud to bring you their first long player, 'Dan Kelly & The Alpha Males Sing The Tabloid Blues.' A perky mix of pop and rock 'n' roll, I will definitely suggest that it's be a great record for whiling away a Sunday afternoon. Kelly says the band has already achieved a handy amount of recognition for their work.
"It's actually going really well," he enthuses. "We've just been doing a tour to support the single, Step Forward, so we've been playing in all manner of places, rural towns and coastal beaches and some big cities, and it's been good! We played Adelaide a few weeks ago at the Grace, which was a good night, it was really, really hot. It was the first night of the Fringe, it was about forty degrees at night, it was mental!"
While being known as a solo artist is fine, it's being one of four now that excites him the most. "I mean, by all intents and purposes I'm in a band. I just started being called Dan Kelly before I had a band I just stuck with the name, because you know, so people come to your shows and know who you are and it's hard to change names, but it's pretty well four of us. Even though I write all the stuff and sing it, we play it all together. I'm actually enjoying that more than being a solo artist, you know what I mean? It's a bit narcissistic [being a solo artist], whereas with four guys..."
So does that mean he might even start handing over writing credits? "Well, if they wrote something! Now we've started playing more as a unit, we'll start writing more as a unit, I imagine, once we've finished touring this record we'll just go and make some stuff up. I'm pretty keen on that, especially once you understand each other, which takes a while. I think it took a while for them to understand where I was coming from, but now they do I think it would be really good to write music together."
So who are the Alpha Males? "All friends of mine who play in other bands. A couple of guys from The Drones and a guy who played in the Devastations, now he's overseas and I've got a new guy playing guitar for him: just people from Melbourne music, the bands that play around that I've met over the years. They're not session musicians; they're the antithesis of session musicians! It's better, because they've got personality, so I'm into it," he chuckles. "I mean, it's not the most complicated music anyway, it's more a question of just getting the sense of humour behind it, playing it with a bit of sense of humour. It's not a joke band, but you won't want to be super-serious in the band, either.
"I write the songs to make myself laugh, and my friends laugh, and hopefully other people get it too. I want to put emotion in there, and stories, and I mean all my favourite artists are really funny. Bob Dylan, Nick Cave, Morrissey - they're perceived as being morose, but they're all piss funny, when you actually read the lyrics, their approach to it, that inspires me."
He says the band has garnered a fair amount of attention recently - does this mean he can fathom having music as a serious career? Apparently, working with his uncle Paul has given him enough experience to give it a damn good shot. "I mean playing guitar in Paul Kelly's band has been good, and there were blocks of that which was like working in a job: not in terms of the boredom, but in terms of, you know, he's successful enough to do big shows and to play music, and travel around, so that was really great, so that combined with the bits I make out of my own career has meant that I've been off the dole for two years, which is a pleasure."
To finish, I give him some space to describe his album for newcomers. "I think it's good! I think it's interesting, there are a lot of interesting songs and characters in there. There's something for everyone, for the grandmas and the punk rock kiddies, for the university techheads and the council workers and the raving lunatic office worker types... there's a bit for everybody, you know. I don't know whether it's all for everybody, but we'll see.
"Oh: and some very high vocals. Lots of very high vocals."
Ben Revi
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'Dan Kelly And The Alpha Males Sing The Tabloid Blues' is out now through Shock.
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