It’s mid-afternoon in Brisbane’s Queen Street Mall and Kasey Chambers is backstage strumming her acoustic guitar. In half an hour she’ll play a short set to the assembled masses and afterwards she’ll sign her new memoir and accompanying album for any fan that wants one.
As she’s jotting down what songs to play there’s an unexpected knock at the door and an office worker enquires if he can have a book signed for his wife “now”.
The man is on his lunch break and he won’t be around by the time Chambers finishes her set. He explains that his wife, who is currently working away, couldn’t be there and she’s one of her biggest fans. Chambers obliges, poses for a selfie and assures the man she’ll play The Captain two songs in so the gent in question can film his partner’s favourite tune and get back to work.
“He’s a good husband doing that for his wife,” Chambers assures me as the fan heads off into the crowd. “He’ll get lucky tonight.”
That’s what Kasey Chambers has been doing for a very long time – bringing joy into people’s lives through her songs.
Now, 25 years since her breakthrough album The Captain was released, Chambers has “listened to her inner foghorn” and written a book, Just Don’t Be a Dickhead and Other Profound Things I’ve Learnt. The book details Chambers’ loves – both won and lost. Highs. Lows. Children. Growing up in the Outback. And then there’s her career.
“I had a book out years ago that was written with Jeff Apter,” she explains of the new tome’s inception. “Jeff’s a great friend of mine and a great journalist, but I felt like that book was more him helping me to tell my story through interviews. This latest book feels a lot more like it’s mine. Writing it felt like it does when I write songs. It came from this real deep creative place inside me.”
Not owning a laptop or a computer, Chambers started compiling her ideas into the notes app on her phone. As time moved on, she ended up writing the entire volume on that same device. And she’s right – the book, like her music, captures her authentic voice.
“When I first started writing it, it actually wasn’t even a book,” Chambers says. “I didn’t set out to write one. I have all these things to say and share, and it was more like I was writing for myself. Again, like when I’m writing songs I don’t really think about what’s going to happen with them down the track. They’re written in the moment and they capture whatever I have to say or feel and they just come out. And that’s really how the book works for me.”
The title came from her dad, Bill Chambers, a former professional fox hunter and patriarch of the Dead Ringer Band.
“That phrase, ‘just don’t be a dickhead’, it’s become this thing that I try to live by,” Chambers explains. “My dad would just say that … ‘just don’t be a dickhead’. Sometimes he’d say it really specifically if we were doing something stupid. And then sometimes it would honestly be his advice to people, ‘just don’t be a dickhead’, you know, like, it’s pretty much that simple.
“At the end of the day, I look back on certain decisions I’ve made in my life where I feel, if I had honestly just said that to myself and listened to my own advice, I wouldn’t have made that dumb decision.
“I made a list of things saying, be brave enough to be vulnerable. Keep your tribe close. Little things like that evolved into a story of why I’d learnt that particular lesson or how I’d learnt that lesson. At times I’ve been through really hard things that feel like it’s the worst thing in the world, and then you learn something really poignant out of that.
“And part of it also is the general thing of ‘just try and be a decent human’. I think a lot of this book is a bit of tongue-in-cheek by me saying, ‘and other profound things I’ve learnt’, because these things in the book are not said in very profound ways but they have been profound to me. They’ve been profound moments in my life where I’ve learnt lessons.”
Throughout the book you’ll find QR codes that lead to songs Chambers has written for the companion album, Backbone. Recorded at her Rabbit Hole Studios in five days the songs were culled from seven years of writing. The album features Sam Tesky on backing vocals, Bill Chambers, her partner Brandon Dodd and American drummer Brady Blade, who has played with everyone from Emmylou Harris to the late Steve Earle.
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“I got to work with my favourite musicians,” Chambers says of the Backbone experience. “I wanted to capture the songs with us playing as live as we could in the studio. And the record, for good or bad, reflects who I am. Just like the book, I sang about every beautiful, joyous, embarrassing and tough thing I’ve been through.”
Kasey Chambers’ Backbone is out now on LP and CD. Her memoir, Just Don’t Be a Dickhead and Other Profound Things I’ve Learnt, is published by Hardie Grant and available in paperback $34.99, e-book $16.99 and audiobook $39.99. Kasey Chambers is touring until June 2025.
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