:: Paul Kelly and the Boon Companions - Corner Hotel, Richmond - January 2005

By: Adrian Ringin

Late on a stinking hot Australia Day, the sold-out Corner Hotel was packed for the latest of Paul Kelly’s countless pub gigs. The set began with ‘Gunnamatta’, the first track of his latest album, ‘Ways and Means’. Although the sounds were far from identical, it reminded this reviewer of the ‘Turquoise Bay’ instrumental opening of Those Bloody McKennas gig at the same venue last December, both being instrumental openers dealing with Australian coastal areas. The second track off ‘Ways and Means’, ‘The Oldest Story in the Book’ followed, and the gig rolled on.

Kelly and his current band (including nephew and heir Dan Kelly) played a decent amount of the new album, as well as some old favourites. With a body of work as extensive, well-known and well-loved as Kelly’s, the playlist was never going to satisfy all the shouted requests, but classics ‘To Her Door’, ‘Love Never Runs on Time’, ‘Deeper Water’ and ‘How to Make Gravy’ went down extremely well. ‘Gravy’, which has to be one of the best Christmas songs of all time, got a particularly good response.

Kelly may be getting on in years, and these days seems to perform in vineyards, opera houses, and similarly plush surroundings more often than at pubs like the Corner, but unlike some older artists, he isn’t stuck in the nostalgia circuit performing the same ancient hits to the same middle-aged fans trying to relive their youth. Kelly (and his collaborators) are still performing living music, playing new material to varied audiences in varied venues, still paying his dues to the pub scene where it all started. There was a little reminder of those days in the sight of Dan Kelly, by far the youngest of the band, pouting off to the side, presumably pretending not to hear the female audience members discussing the pros and cons of ‘doing Dan’.

Uncle Paul may be past that stage, and Dan may be the future of Kelly music, but for the meantime the elder Kelly is definitely the star of the show. Despite the heat he threw himself into the music more than any of his Boon Companions, and performed a satisfying show, including a lengthy encore.

Said encore concluded with a largely instrumental slow Hawaiian dance number. Although it did not cause the crowd to break out into spontaneous dancing or girls to appear and place leis around the necks of the audience, it did at least partly explain the mystery why Kelly was wearing such a dodgy Hawaiian shirt.