The politics of being Paul
by Dino Scatena
The Daily Telegraph, May 9 2002

Don't expect a new Something For Kate album too soon, although they've already got one that's pretty much in the bag. Since the last time we heard from the Melbourne trio, centre stage at the Big Day Out in late-January, they've been locked up in their usual tiny studio space, five days a week.

"We get in there at 11 on the dot, every day," band leader Paul Dempsey says proudly. "And we usually last until four or five." 

Did the idea of a short holiday ever enter the leader's mind, perhaps to give his two loyal lieutenants -- bassist Stephanie Ashworth and drummer Clint Hyndman -- a rest after all the hard work they'd put into last year's triumphant Echolalia campaign? They tried taking a break, insists Dempsey, but it just didn't happen. "It's like, well, you're at home, there are no tours coming up, everyone's going 'take a break, take a break' and, you know, we tried.

"We were at home but we all live around the corner from each other so we were kind of like 'I've got this new song' and it's just snowballed."

So, only a year on from the release of SFK's epic Monsters, the first single to be lifted off Echolalia ("It feels like longer," says Dempsey, "like this album has been out for ages but it's only been eight or nine months,") it's plainly obvious that somewhere in Paul Dempsey's bag is a CD-burn of 12 new Something For Kate songs, completed demos, the unofficial, raw follow-up. The initial song which sparked this rush back into the studio, itself now nearly a year old, has the working title of Moving Right Along. Written as Echolalia was being put to bed, there was even talk of slamming the stop button down at the CD pressing plant and finding space for it. "I think that would have been the best song on Echolalia," Dempsey says temptingly. Don't get too excited, though, Dempsey hastens to add. He's still not sure whether he'll ever let us hear any of these new recordings.

"You know what we're like," he laughs. "We'll get 12 songs done and then we'll listen back to them and go 'this is all shite!' "

He can laugh now but that's exactly what happened to him in the year leading up to the last album, catapulting him into a world of artistic and personal self-doubt. "With Echolalia we wrote a whole bunch of songs but then I went 'no, they're all crap' and freaked out.

"I'm a bit worried I'm going to do that with this bunch of songs. At the moment, I'm really happy with all of them, still working on them.

"The other thing, too, is that you only need to write one song that we think eclipses the 12 songs we just wrote. Then we'll immediately go 'right, well, dump those 12 songs and write 12 more of these.' We set a mark and anything that falls below that mark just gets canned."

While we may never get to hear that 12-track demo, Dempsey promises that he'll air several of the new tracks on his upcoming solo national tour. Some, perhaps, for the first and final time. He stresses nothing is final. "There's a couple of baskets in the studio. There's the finished-song basket, another basket for skeletal arrangements and then there's a riff basket, which is all these different riffs that we like that we haven't found a home for. We're just messing around a lot.

"The [solo] tour is a great excuse for me to get out and keep playing in a slightly different context and to give some of these new songs a run-through and see how they feel because often, playing them live, you just go 'no, why did I ever think that was any good?"'

As Something For Kate's stature grows, so do the venue sizes for Dempsey's regular one-man shows. "I always like to do solo tours and I pretty much always plan to do them in between records."

One such gig late last year found Dempsey performing to a slightly more sedate crowd than usual. Dempsey says he gave much consideration to the decision to play at the Democrats' election campaign launch. Although he believes himself to be a very political person, using his celebrity as a soapbox is not his style. "I don't feel like I'm seeking to play a political role publicly, other than basically participating in a democracy as a citizen," he says.

"I really worry about the fact that I am in the public sometimes and what's appropriate for me. I'm just careful of what I say because if a lot of people are going to hear it or read it, I don't want to just rant and rave. There's enough of that.

"I thought it was okay and good to do that [the campaign launch].

"I wanted to lend them my support but look, the only bunch of people I may have appealed to were Something For Kate fans, obviously. I thought 'well, maybe if it makes a couple of them wonder why I'm supporting the Democrats, then I'll be happy for them to go and find out.'

"I'm careful about screaming things from the rooftop. There are, and always will be, things that I want to address or contribute to but I don't need to publicise all of that. As far as the public is concerned, I'm first and foremost a guy who makes music.

"What I say in my music I have every right to say and it's up to people how much they want to read into that. As far as whether I turn up to a march and hold a banner, that's being a little more raw about it and I play that game very carefully."

Paul Dempsey plays the Bar on the Hill, Newcastle Uni, on May 23, the ANU Bar in Canberra on May 24 and the Metro in Sydney on May 25 and 26.
Something For Kate plan to spend the second half of 2002 touring overseas.