Keith Urban tells why he is High on the circle of life
His latest album is called High, although nowadays Keith Urban is clean and sober and he’s about to tour Australia in August.
Keith Urban first hit the streets of Tamworth as a nine-year-old busking in Peel Street. He’d been building up to this ever since his Dad noticed the kid had rhythm, so bought him a toy ukulele when he was four. Later, in 1979 in Tamworth, Keith saw Slim Dusty honoured on the Australian Country Music Hall of Fame’s Roll of Renown.
A million road miles and thousands of gigs later, Keith returned to Tamworth recently to receive the same award. The full circle moment wasn’t wasted on him.
“It’s amazing,” Urban tells me a few days later in Sydney. “I mean, it’s surreal to be on that rock (that serves as the honour board). I think Slim was only the third or fourth guy to get a plaque on the rock, and there are over 50 people on that thing now.
“I remember when I was 10, or 11, and I stood in this long line of people waiting to get Slim’s autograph. I’d just bought the sheet music to Lights on the Hill and worked my way up the line. I said, Hello, I’m Keith, and he signed it for me. Twelve years later, I got to record that song with him as a duet, and go on tour with him.”
While Tamworth is crucial to Urban’s story, so is Brisbane. It’s one of the cities on his Australian tour in August. He’ll kick that off in Newcastle on August 13 before playing Brisbane, Wollongong, Sydney and Melbourne before winding up with a show in Adelaide on August 28.
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Brisbane is the city where Urban learnt his craft and paid his bills playing in cover bands while trying to build a fan base for his original music. A lucky few hundred fans were given a taste of that apprenticeship when Urban recently played a club show at Lefty’s Music Hall in Brisbane to promote his widely acclaimed new album, High.
More akin to playing arenas these days, a club show that size was a time warp. So much so that by the time the concert had hit the two-and-half-hour mark, the audience had reverted to ’80s pub mode and were calling out for covers by The Angels and Cold Chisel. Urban obliged.
You’re always asking yourself, why does this song work?
“Aussie crowds are no BS,” Urban says. “If you sucked back then, they’d let you know. But equally, if they liked you, you’d know that too. In hindsight, it was a great way to grow up, because it was a brutally honest environment. There was no filter.
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“I remember back then thinking, Oh God, if I just had one song that they knew the words to, it would be the most amazing feeling. But it was like, Oh well, let’s do April Sun in Cuba again.
“But I’ll tell you the good part about that – you learn a lot playing those covers in pubs. You’re always asking yourself, why does this song work? Why does this one really work? Which part of that song just kills it? And you start to sense these patterns in writing, melodic structure and other various things.
“I think The Beatles had that with all the years playing in Hamburg. It’s the same thing. It really gives you good bones as a musician.”
Urban worked on his craft and became so popular after moving to Nashville that his name started popping up on records made by everyone from the Dixie Chicks to Garth Brooks.
After a metaphorical long march, the great leap forward finally happened. An international star now, Urban hit the big time when he cracked the American charts. The rest of the world complied. Urban’s own albums started to soar and a string of number one and Top 5 records followed the release of the Golden Road album in 2002.
With more hit singles than you can poke a stick at, Urban has collaborated with everyone from Amy Shark to Taylor Swift. As for his guitar playing, scroll through YouTube and you’ll find him jamming alongside everyone from Peter Frampton to The Rolling Stones.
Right now, he’s rehearsing a new band and is gearing up to tour High on a series of dates through Australia in August, dubbed High and Alive.
“I like the dark humour of the title in relation to my past,” he says of High. “I know it’s jarring for some people to even think of the word humour when it comes to addiction, but I like people doing whatever they want to do at my concerts. I’ve been sober for a long time. Just get in the zone and let’s have a great time.”