Kasey Chambers is Australia's leading exponent of country music. Brought up on the Nullarbor Plain in South Australia, the daughter of a country music teacher-cum-fox trapper, she absorbed the classic values of country. She says: "I feel that I get down to the roots of the music like Lucinda Williams and Emmylou Harris. It's not surprising, since I grew up listening to Gram Parsons and Hank Williams."
She paid her dues as a singer with The Dead Ringer Band where she performed alongside her father Bill, her mother Diane and her brother Nash, which proved the perfect learning environment. When Kasey decided to go solo with the oeuvre, The Captain, her dad supplied the electric guitar while Nash also collaborated, becoming a musician, producer and manager. Evoking her own experiences of rural Australia through deeply honest and personal lyrics, Kasey's music meanwhile ranges from honky-tonk weepies through country rock to melodic bluegrass.
Her debut solo album was released in Australia in 1999 and immediately became a commercial and critical success - the Sydney Morning Herald even proclaimed: "a star is born". At the CMAA Country Music Awards, Kasey scooped "Female Artist Of The Year" and "Album Of The Year" while news of her prowess also reached the UK. Music bible, Q, called her album "an astonishing debut... this is a new world pop star in the making."
Between Australian and American tours in late 2000 and early 2001, Kasey got to work on her second solo album, Barricades & Brickwalls. Employing the same musical cast as before with her brother Nash as producer - "I go in with the attitude that these guys know how to play these songs; we'll sense it if something's wrong," she says - it also features an all-star guest list of Lucinda Williams, The Living End, Paul Kelly, Matthew Ryan and Buddy Miller.
It was recorded at Mangrove Studios on New South Wales' Central Coast, Nashville, Melbourne and at Nash's basement studio in New South Wales' country music mecca, Avoca Beach. The album veers between the cool, crisp country swing of "A Little Bit Lonesome", the gutsy blues of the title track and a swag of emotionally potent ballads like "A Million Tears" and the first release "Not Pretty Enough".
Says Kasey: "The last album showed my life story. That was Introducing Kasey Chambers. This one's The Many Moods of Kasey Chambers." Already released in Australia, Kasey has now become the first Australian country artist to hold both the Number One album and Number One single, with "Not Pretty Enough" skyrocketing past platinum sales. Meanwhile Stateside, Rolling Stone and Vanity Fair have proclaimed her the Hot Artist of 2002. And if that weren't enough, Kasey is expecting her first child this spring.
Protection - we do a lot of it these days. Sun cream for our skin, sunglasses for our eyes, condoms for you know where - but do you remember to protect your hearing?
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Australian's Angel Kasey Chambers ...
