Music Paul Kelly & Gerry Hale

Original Music Composed by Paul Kelly & Gerry Hale

Vocals Paul Kelly Additional Vocals Gerry Hale & Adam Gare Music Mixer Simon Polinski Assistants Adam Rhodes Chris Scallon Music Mixing Facility Adelphia

"Be Careful What You Pray For" Written by Paul Kelly (Mushroom Music Publishing) Performed by Paul Kelly/Gerry Hale Licensed courtesy of EMI Music Australia

"Down Among the Dead Men" (Vanda/Young) © J. Albert & Son Pty Ltd (Flash and the Pan) © Master courtesy of Albert Productions

"Teach Me Tonight" Written by Paul Kelly (Mushroom Music Publishing) Performed by Paul Kelly/Uncle Bill Licensed courtesy of EMI Music Australia

"Little Boy Don't Lose Your Balls" Written by Paul Kelly (Mushroom Music Publishing) Performed by Paul Kelly/Gerry Hale Licensed courtesy of EMI Music Australia

"Would You Be My Friend" Written by Paul Kelly (Mushroom Music Publishing) Performed by Paul Kelly/Gerry Hale Licensed courtesy of EMI Music Australia CD:

A CD of the soundtrack was released:

CD (ST) EMI 7243 5 35569 2 1 2003

01: Be Careful What You Pray For 02: Silver's Theme 03: Is it a He or a She? 04: You Can't Take it With You (Instrumental) 05: Silent Partner 06: Teach Me Tonight 07: Now's Not the Time for a Hot Sea Bath 08: Silver's on the Line 09: Ain't Got the Constitution 10: Better Prospects 11: The Gatekeeper 12: Forest Funeral/Silver Turns to Lead 13: Little Boy Don't Lose Your Balls 14: Silent Partner (Reprise) 15: Royal Road 16: Ain't Got the Constitution (Reprise) 17: Would You Be My Friend?

Review:

Urban Cinefile published a review of the CD, available here, saved to WM here: Just what every music critic needs; a form guide on the back of the booklet. I don’t think Robbie Waterhouse framed the market though; they’ve got the favourite at seven-to-four and one of my favourite tracks, The Gatekeeper, at eight-to-one. Juicy odds for a delightful fiddle adventure that I’ll wager will charm all who make the wise decision to gamble on this CD. Admittedly it comes in at a mere 57 seconds, but that sounds like a winning time to me.

It’s far from the only winner here, however. Paul Kelly is such a suitable choice for this soundtrack. I can easily imagine Paul and his musical (and not at all silent) partner, Gerry Hale, busking these pleasant tunes down at the dog track.

Let’s face it, greyhound racing isn’t all that glamorous; not quite the Sport of Kings. And Kelly isn’t all that glamorous either; not quite the archetypal pop star. Yet he writes some royal melodies. Similar to his personality, they’re down to earth, unpretentious and immensely likeable. It’s true that he occasionally flirts with an overly folksy banality, but when in form, there’s the length of the straight between the musicality of his work and mere bush poetry-in–song. Here Kelly manages to dig deep into musical roots and top dress it with a pop sensibility. The gentle ironies, the caveats and contemplation of Be Careful What Your Pray For and Would You Be My Friend, are closer to Bob Dylan than John Williamson.

Hale’s contribution should not be underestimated either. And not just because this soundtrack was recorded in his “shed”. The majority of the tracks credit him as co-writer and he’s responsible for nearly all the instrumentation. He has a ball with strings on this , contributing guitar, banjo, mandolin, fiddle and double bass. All recorded wonderfully raw and honest, providing tangy twang of the most endearing kind. Much of the record is in fact instrumental, with Kelly’s laid-back vocal sharing the melodic spotlight with Hale’s plucks and frets and bows. Kelly hasn’t got the greatest vocal technique on the planet, with neither great range nor mellifluous timbre to recommend it. There’s plenty of character though, and his voice is perfect for his likeable refrains, the mark of the quintessential singer-songwriter. The jangling instrumentation from Hale, and the tuneful compositions give the album a neat conformity, whilst the sheer strength of the writing never allows for tedium. Some tracks come out of the barriers running; grabbing our attention like a lure to a greyhound; whilst others methodically, and metaphorically, find their feet before gathering momentum with fantastic fiddling or jaunty guitars and banjos.

Although there is an ironic edge to the soundtrack, at its core it is tremendously amiable and charming. Anyone who emerges the other side of a listen without a fillip of exuberance should check they haven’t been doped. Brad Green, published September 20, 2001 Lyrics:

As well as doing the underscore, Paul Kelly songs run over the head and tail credits.

Head credits song:

Paul Kelly’s Be Careful What You Pray For runs over the head credits.

Lyrics as heard in the film:

Be careful what you pray for, you just might get it Be careful what you pray for, you might regret it You get your hands on that glittering prize Now everybody’s coming at you from every side

Be careful what you pray for, you just might get it Be careful what you want now, you might be sorry …

(After the red head titles over black finish, the first image is of the two men at the dogs track)

Be careful what you want now, you might be so sorry You finally make it to your place in the sun You stop and look around you ... you’re friends with no-one Be careful what you want now, you might be sorry

Go ahead, like a moth to a flame, go ahead now …

(Unlike the recorded song, the film song turns instrumental and fades out under dialogue as David Field’s John mourns that his fucking dog fucking lost. After the dialogue, the song gradually swells back up under the dialogue and the sounds of the dog track) …

Be careful what you dream on, dreams come true Be careful what you dream on, they can turn on you Revenge is a dish they say best tasted cold But revenge digs two graves, makes a young person old Be careful what you dream of, dreams come true ...

Go ahead …

(Chorus Go ahead)

…like a moth to a flame ... go ahead now …

(Again the song fades down under the dialogue) …

Be careful what you pray for … Be careful what you pray for ..

(The line repeats about five times, and fades completely out with chorus voices helping the line)

Tail Song:

After all that’s gone down between them, John and Bill sit down for an egg, baked beans and steak. As they crack cans of VB, Paul Kelly’s introduction to Would You Be My Friend begins. Lyrics as heard in the film:

If I fell into confusion (the pair eating, seen from outside the window) Got scared, but couldn't say If I lost my rhyme and reason Threw away the gift of grace Would you be my friend?

If they said I don't deserve you That my credit was no good (David Field’s John lights a cigarette) If they told you I'm not worthy of your love (the image through the window begins to go soft focus) You should cut me, like you cut dead wood Would you be my friend? Would you be my friend? (the soft image begins a slow fade to black)

(Short instrumental)

If you heard that I was on the town Pissing loudly on your name (end credits begin to pop up) Would you find me, would you face me down? Though your ears burned with shame Would you be my friend? Would you be my friend? My only friend ..

(Short instrumental)

And if I said I wished I'd never been born And my mouth could only curse And if I'd passed the point of no return Like a poor, puking child in church Would you be my friend? Would you be my friend? Would you be my friend? My only friend …

(Instrumental)

(with other voices) My only friend … My only friend … My only friend … My only friend …

Co-composers Paul Kelly and Gerry Hale:

Paul Kelly:

Paul Kelly is too well known to describe at length here. He has a detailed wiki listing here, and at time of writing, had an eponymous website here. His website had this bio:

Paul Kelly is not just Australia’s greatest and most enduring songwriter. There is something that goes even deeper than that. His songs have a way of digging into the country in a way that few artists can do, how it looks, feels, tastes, sounds. The joys and sorrows, achievements and follies. If you want to know something about Australia, how it feels to be Australian, you can find it in his songs. He is one of those rare artists to spin a long career out of a hunger to explore new directions, from the tender songcraft of Post to the hard-edged rock’n’roll of Gossip, to country and folk, bluegrass (see Smoke, ), a soul revue album with guest singers including his long-time backing singers Bull (Paul Kelly presents ). In 2014 Seven Sonnets & a Song set Shakespeare sonnets to music, released on the 400th anniversary of the Bard’s death. It was followed by an album with Charlie Owen of songs they had performed at funerals, Death’s Dateless Night. Kelly’s latest album, Thirteen Ways to Look at Birds, released on August 30, brings musicians from broad-ranging backgrounds to interpret bird-inspired poems. The album is a unique marriage of electronics, acoustic instruments and the human voice and features collaborations with the Seraphim Trio, composer James Ledger and singer-songwriter Alice Keath. Kelly gave his first live performance in 1974, released his first album in 1981, when he was 26, and last year delivered Nature, his 23rd studio set. His body of work also includes live (see the CD/DVD recording of an Australian tour with Neil Finn, Goin’ Your Way, and the 8-CD box set A-Z Recordings, revisiting his songs with acoustic guitar, harmonica and voice). To this add the film soundtracks, co- writes (he contributed to land rights anthem Treaty with Yothu Yindi), production work, the constant touring at home and abroad. Some of those shows were on stages where his maternal grandparents, founders of a touring opera company, performed in the ’20s. And he wrote perhaps the finest and most unflinching autobiography ever written by an Australian musician, . Throughout Kelly’s career, the craft, the passion for getting up each day and working on the next thing, have been mostly under the surface. But there always is a next thing, creating a legacy which chronicles the full range of human experience. For that reason his work will live on, like the stories of Henry Lawson, the collected works of Slim Dusty, the poetry of Judith Wright. His 2017 set found Kelly at a new creative high. It became his first No 1 album, the kind of affirmation rarely given to artists so far into their career. That year Kelly won two ARIA Awards, for best male artist and best adult contemporary album. Kelly showed the timeless quality of his work, the way it spans generations, with a powerful performance of his ’80s song accompanied by and hip-hop duo AB Original. He returned to the awards in 2018, dedicating a poem to Kasey Chambers as he inducted her into the ARIA Hall of Fame, an honour Kelly received in 1997. Last year Kelly completed one of his most successful tours playing to large audiences in outdoor venues and the Making Gravy tour returns in December with guests including Courtney Barnett, Marlon Williams and Kate-Miller Heidke. Kelly’s Order of Australia in 2017 acknowledged distinguished service to the performing arts and the promotion of the national identity through his contributions as singer, songwriter and musician. At the foundation is the songs. Sometimes we recognise ourselves in them, that bus ride through the cane of ; the child lifted up and over the waves in , walking in the crisp chill in Leaps and Bounds. Loss, failure, renewal. Spring and Fall, as he described it in his song cycle about the seasons of love. Kelly writes with acute insight about the concerns of indigenous Australians in songs such as From Little Things Big Things Grow, about the 1966 strike by stockmen on Wave Hill Station in the Northern Territory and subsequent land rights battle, co-written with . There are songs about the most famous of Australians, like Bradman, and songs about simple pleasures, like Firewood and Candles, from Life is Fine. In 1997, Kelly released his greatest hits set . In November, Songs from the South 1985-2019 brings the story to the present, a brilliant career summary available in double album vinyl format or an expanded CD and digital version of 43 tracks. It includes later classics such as the exhilarating rock song With the One I Love, from Nature. And Every Day My Mother’s Voice, his 2019 collaboration with Dan Sultan, which shows his writing is just as strong and sure now as it was in 1985. Vivid details in Kelly’s songs keep drawing us back to these people we feel like we know. A song about a child pretending to be asleep in the back of the car and hearing the quiet sobs from the front. Dan and Joe and Stella and Rita and the rest, the characters in How to Make Gravy, the finest Christmas song ever written about not being home for Christmas. Where does greatness come from? There is no recipe for that. But you could do worse than start as Kelly did by listening to the great songwriters, then singing their songs. The first two songs Kelly sang at that 1974 debut were Dylan’s Girl from the North Country and Streets of Forbes, the folk tale about bushranger Ben Hall, as sound a place to begin as any. Then getting out into the country to see things worth writing about, as Kelly did even before he set pen to paper. As Joe says in How to Make Gravy, you need that dollop from the sauce to get the extra tang.

(Below: Paul Kelly)

Gerry Hale:

Gerry Hale has a detailed wiki listing here.

Hale ended up owning and running the Guitar Gallery here.

Hale can be found at various sites on the web, as here in March 2015 when he performed with Cripple Creek:

The boys from Cripple Creek have announced that their special guest, Gerry Hale will be performing with then at the Whitmore Hotel on Sunday April 12; from 4 – 7pm. Gerry, frontman for the well-known Victorian band Uncle Bill is a master on mandolin and fiddle and has had musical associations with Paul Kelly (CD Smoke), Colin Hay (), Dan Hicks and Deborah Conway. As a teenager Gerry performed on stage with the father of Bluegrass, Bill Monroe.

The band Uncle Bill had a website here, with this biography in pdf form, saved to WM here:

In 1996 Gerry Hale finally formed his own band; Uncle Bill. Hale had moved to Melbourne from England in 1988, and enjoyed a variety of work that included Musical Director for numerous commercial theatrical productions. He composed for and often performed in those shows, as well as performing in several bands: The Colin Hay Band, Zydeco Jump, Broderick Smith Guild, and guesting with many others. He had started The Esplanade Acoustic Club in St Kilda, and was well-known for his acoustic inclinations, as a fine player of many stringed instruments. Some actor friends bought a hotel (The Terminus, in Abbotsford), and asked Gerry to provide some entertainment – thus Gerry Hale’s Uncle Bill was formed with a gig already waiting. Gerry grew up in Suffolk, with strong American country and bluegrass influence from the U.S. Airbases dotted around rural England. As a teenager he played in bands with visiting US players, met and shared a stage with Bill Monroe (thus the reference), the “Father of Bluegrass” music. Gerry’s love of acoustic music and his eclectic taste combined in the guise of Uncle Bill to provide an outlet for what we have dubbed ‘Popular Bluegrass’. Music played with the Bluegrass instrumental line-up of: fiddle, mandolin, guitar, banjo, double bass, and strong vocal harmonies -- but not just the fast-pickin’ hillbilly stuff. Uncle Bill quickly re-introduced Australians to music they were already familiar with, as well as old-style traditional tunes, with instruments many had not seen played live in pubs before. Hale chose songs he had enjoyed playing with well-known local writers: Colin Hay, Paul Kelly, Broderick Smith, Paul Norton, Steve Boyd…and the songs came up a treat. Paul Kelly and Renee Geyer saw play at a small hotel, and both used Uncle Bill as their backing band in 1997 on the fine country compilation CD from W. Minc, Where Joy Kills Sorrow. Soon the band were being offered songs for their own CD, and in August 1998, Special Treatment was independently released. The album was made up of songs by local Australian writers, and although still selling well, the supporter’s demands for a CD with their favourite ‘other songs’ proved too much to withstand. Two months later Uncle Bill went back to the studio and produced One Day In Adelphia – a CD of 17 songs recorded live in the studio in one day, no overdubs, no nonsense. Early in 1999, Paul Kelly collaborated with the band to work on a CD of his songs entitled SMOKE, some old gems, and some new ones – all given the special treatment of Uncle Bill’s Bluegrass instrumentation and harmonies. Kelly and the band enjoyed playing to a huge assortment of audiences around the country, as they played an eastcoast tour late 1999. January 2000 saw Paul Kelly & Uncle Bill in Tamworth, then finishing their national tour with WA, an outback Queensland mining town and a big night at Port Fairy Folk Festival. Kelly and Uncle Bill were happy to accept three awards from the Victorian Country Music Association for their work on SMOKE: Best Group (open), Best Group (Victorian), and Album Of The Year. Gerry Hale’s Uncle Bill have been a festival favourite for several years, at East Coast Blues and Roots Music Festival (Byron Bay), Port Fairy Folk Festival, Apollo Bay Music Festival, Queenscliff Music Festival… They have successfully introduced their own brand of acoustic music to folk, country, and blues audiences alike. Gerry’s dynamic performance and the band’s strong musicianship and enormous repertoire ensured that the audience would have favourite tunes to request at their next show. The band covered songs from sources as diverse as The Kinks, Bill Monroe, Paul Kelly, Dan Hicks, , Del McCoury, Bob Dylan, Steve Earle, Colin Hay, The Beatles, Guy Clarke, Broderick Smith… all with the same professional style, wit and skill. The band disbanded in 2001, but an itch within Gerry caused him to reform it in late 2009, but with an entirely new line-up, a surprise to many on both counts. “I am really excited by the new line-up, the chemistry of the band is exhilarating. There have been several versions of UB, but my new band is most definitely the best combination so far. I wouldn’t have done it again any other way,” quoted by Gerry Hale. A new album is now underway, tentatively called “When I Was a Cowboy” due in October. Correction – The new album took a little longer than expected. It is called Blue Mule and was completed a couple of weeks ago. We are very excited! CURRENT LINEUP includes Gerry Hale, Kim Wheeler, John Gray, Kat Mear & Pepita Emmerichs.

(Below: Gerry Hale)