Paul Kelly has spent 40 days in isolation recording a batch of new songs he has put together for a surprise new album ’40 Days’.
Paul has enjoyed some things is lockdown. “The lack of traffic, being able to go down Hoddle Street in record time was nice. Not being socially obliged to go out”.
And he has a lot more to say here:
Paul spent lockdown regularly uploading videos of songs and poems, all filmed by himself from home on his phone.
About the album Paul says, “I noticed that the recordings spanned a period of roughly forty days and was aware that ‘forty days’ in Italian is ‘quaranta giorni’, the origin of our word ‘quarantine’. (During the Black Death in Europe from the 14th century onwards ships were required to be isolated for forty days before passengers and crew could go ashore.) So I had the videos converted and edited to audio files to make a kind of document. The recordings are rough and ready but, to paraphrase George Jones, ‘Ragged but right is ok with me.’ I was never much of a hi-fi guy anyway. I’m sending this little ship out into the world with the hope that it finds many happy harbours.”
The track listing for ‘Forty Days’ is as follows:
1. Pub With No Beer – Gordon Noel Parsons
2. September 1, 1939 (extract) – W H Auden
3. Hey Good Lookin’ – Hank Williams
4. You and Sarajevo – Bruce Dawe
5. Grandma’s Hands – Bill Withers
6. Paradise – John Prine
7. Hope Is The Thing With Feathers – Emily Dickinson
8. Everything is Plundered – Anna Akhmatova
9. Passed Over – Paul Kelly
10. Thoughts In The Middle Of The Night – Paul Kelly
11. Four A.M. – Wislawa Szymborska
12. Sonnet 73 – Paul Kelly / William Shakespeare
13. Quarantine – Eavan Boland
14. My Island Home – Neil Murray
15. Stumbling Block – Paul Kelly
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