By Casey Neill
Kav Temperley is “stepping out of the shadow of this thing that is Eskimo Joe” and touring his debut solo album.
The singer-songwriter and front-man will release All Your Devotion on 28 September will bring it to Belgrave on Friday 12 October.
“I’m used to having a band behind me and then having my bandmates,” he said.
“We have a chemistry on-stage and it’s less nerve-wracking.”
He said a full band wasn’t really the right vibe for the new tracks.
“With an acoustic guitar it just feels right,” he said.
“It’s quite a raw thing to do.
“It allows me to tell the stories behind the songs.”
Kav has always written songs autobiographically, then work-shopped them with the band.
“It becomes a little bit less personal, even though it starts at a very personal place,” he said.
This time around, he’d stepped away from the Eskis for a breather and his marriage had broken down.
“I kind of stepped out into the world and all these defining parts of myself didn’t exist anymore,” he said.
“I ended up meeting the love of my life and she became my creative partner in all of this.”
He started writing “straight-forward songs about love and seduction”.
“That was part of the process of putting myself back together,” he said.
“This was the real place I needed to write from.
“I didn’t think about the fact I had to present this to the rest of the world.”
He’s been playing Parlour shows in the lead-up to the tour and album release.
“They’re like really well-organised house concerts,” he said.
When he hits the road, he’ll be asking audiences what they want to hear.
“I will play brand new songs that people may have only just heard,” he said.
“But the other thing is: I’m there for everyone’s listening pleasure.
“I’ll probably do way stripped back really mellow versions of Eskimo Joe songs.”
He played his solo songs to Eskimo Joe band mates Stuart MacLeod and Joel Quartermain before anyone else.
“They were really great and really supportive,” he said.
“I think they felt invested because they were the first guys to hear it.”
During the writing and recording process he was listening to music with “really gentle, mellow sounds” like Neil Young’s Harvest and Lou Reed’s Transformer.
He aimed for an early-70s singer song-writer sound, “but it feels like it was put out yesterday”.
“The most amazing thing about music is there’s songs that came out yesterday that you can be inspired by and discover for the first time, and there’s song from 40 years ago you can discover for the first time,” he said.
Kav recorded most of the album himself in his “little jam room in Fremantle” with additions from a few friends who stopped by for a glass of wine.
“Sometimes I had really particular visions for sounds and melodies,” he said.
“Sometimes I just played around with it to see what happened.”
He worked with two producers to bed down the final sound, John Castle and Pip Norman.
“When you go to make a solo record for the first time it’s like being a kid in a candy store – you just want to hit all the flavours,” he said.
“I found my favourite flavours and stuck with them.
“Pip was quite particular. John would chuck things down really fast.
“That created these different dimensions.
“When we sewed it altogether it sounded like one cohesive record, which was lucky.”
Kav will play Sooki Lounge in Belgrave on Friday 12 October.
Tickets are available from www.kavtemperley.com.au, www.oztix.com.au or 1300 762 545.
