Still Rockin' It - Cheryl Lee
Still Rockin' It - Cheryl Lee
What has Deborah Conway been up to lately? OR Do, Re, Mi, Fa, So, La, Ti, Do !!
Join Cheryl Lee - That Radio Chick on STILL ROCKIN' IT for news, reviews, music and interviews with some of our favourite Australian musicians.
When Deborah Conway rebelled against her father's wishes and joined a band, it was the start of a life long career. From the creation of the undeniably catchy "Man Overboard" with Do Re Mi, to her fearless explorations beyond the realm of music into modeling and acting, her story is as much a ballad of personal triumph as it is a chronicle of her artistic journey. In our candid conversation, Deborah peels back the curtain on her life, revealing the mettle and spirit required to navigate the complexities of creative expression and personal evolution.
The stage lights dim, the crowd hushes, and Deborah Conway steps into the shoes of Patsy Cline, discovering layers of her own identity in the process. As a mother of three, she's composed a symphony of life that harmonizes the demanding crescendos of parenting with the soulful melodies of her performing career, leading to the innovative Broad Festival Program. Revel in the stories of her accolades, including her induction into the Victoria Music Hall of Fame, and get a sneak peek at her latest venture—a tribute to the timeless Carole King and James Taylor. This episode is a lyrical journey through the life of a woman whose voice has both defined and defied an era.
What has Deborah Conway been up to lately? Let's find out!!
Get out when you can, support local music and I'll see you down the front!!
Visit: ThatRadioChick.com.au
That Radio Cheek Cheryl Lee here. Welcome to the Still Rockin' It Podcast, where we'll have music news, reviews and interviews with some of our favourite Australian musicians and artists. Deborah Ann Conway has been a stalwart of the Australian music industry since she picked up a guitar at the age of 18 and joined the Benders as a vocalist while still at uni. She has not stopped performing and is about to embark on her next collaboration. Join us now as we chat to Do Re Mi lead vocalist, Deborah Conway. To catch up on podcasts from other favourite artists, simply go to thatradiochick. com. au.
Cheryl Lee:You're with Cheryl Lee that Radio Chick and I'd like to welcome into the Zoom room with us today. Deborah Ann Conway. Thank you for spending some time with us today. Deborah Pleasure, Cheryl, nice to be here. We've got an exciting new collaboration to talk about, but I'm just wondering if we can go back a little bit before we go forward. Of course, you picked up a guitar at age 18, which is sort of actually a little bit later than usual and your dad didn't like you being involved in music. What made you pick up that guitar?
Deborah Conway:My father was upset when I joined a band. I don't think he particularly cared one way or the other. If I picked up a guitar, I'd had piano lessons when I was a kid too. It wasn't music per se. He loved music. He had a lot of amazing. He had a huge record collection, a vast array of music theatre albums which I used to love listening to when I was a kid, and lots of soundtracks of things, and there was always music in our house.
Deborah Conway:It wasn't music per se, but I think the idea of the cultural wave of rock and roll and everything that that implied the rebellion of youth and the potential of getting involved with the wrong kind of people, drugs and sex and all of those things the lifestyle that rock and roll is renowned for he didn't understand it and he found it too challenging and I guess he had different kinds of ideas about how I might grow up in the world and he would have loved for me to be a lawyer. You know he thought well, you know, maybe she should see a psychiatrist just to make sure that everything's working properly. So I saw the psychiatrist and we decided that it was my father's problem.
Cheryl Lee:Very good, what made you pick up a guitar at age 18? Because quite often musicians bang on the mum's saucepans. You know as a toddler.
Deborah Conway:I have a photo of when I was I think I was about four or five years old with a baton in my hand conducting the kindergarten orchestra or whatever it was. So it was always coming. I guess at 18, I was listening to a lot of Bob Dylan and Joni Mitchell and not Joni particularly, but but Bob always seemed pretty conquerable, if you like. I mean, they were just farmer's chords and you know you could kind of get around them pretty easily. I had friends who loved that stuff too and were happy to show me how you know the chords worked, and I picked up a lot from them. I don't know why I didn't pick it up earlier.
Deborah Conway:At 18, I was earning money and so I could buy myself a guitar. I guess that was you know that was what I wanted to do, so I did. I didn't have guitar lessons until a lot later than that either. So you know it was kind of I was self-taught and I wasn't particularly. I didn't progress particularly quickly and yeah, I wasn't. I never thought of myself as a particularly good guitarist, but a guitar is a very useful thing to be able to compose on, so you don't have to be able to compose on, so you don't have to be particularly good guitarist in order to be able to construct something that you can sing something over.
Cheryl Lee:I'm only jealous because I've never picked up a guitar and I'd love to. I'm 60 next year. Is it too late for me? Never too late, Cheryl. Never too late. You joined a band and then you formed Do Re Me, which you had your biggest hit on the Kent Music Report #5 Man Overboard. Did you write that song?
Deborah Conway:Well, we all wrote. Dorland and I were primarily responsible for the lyrics, Helen and Stephen primarily responsible for the music. The thing was the track came out in 1981 or 82, maybe. Initially it was a punk thrash piece. It was only when we heard it so many times we put out this EP. It was a 12-inch piece of vinyl, but it was recorded. It was supposed to be played at 45 RPM, which is traditionally what you would play a seven-inch single at, but the DJs kept getting confused. It was the early days of EPs, so they'd continually play it at 33 and a third RPM. We would hear it slowed down all the time, which gave us the idea to try slowing down this track, and that was the version that we recorded for Domestic Harmony, which came out in 1985. And that was very successful and it was a very unusual track. I think it's definitely endured the test of times very successfully. It's still a big favorite at live shows.
Speaker 1:For me, the lyric still sounds fresh and relevant you are listening to Still Rockin' It the podcast with Cheryl Lee let's hear that hit now.
Cheryl Lee:it's the first australian hit to include lyrics referring to anal humour, penis envy and pubic hair, and it also has no chorus. 1985 Countdown Music Awards Best Debut Single Man Overboard. A lot of people may not know this. I'll admit that I didn't. Apart from being a rock singer, songwriter and guitarist, you were also a model and an actress. You've done a lot of stuff, Deborah.
Deborah Conway:I've done a lot of stuff. I'm restless, I'm a restless soul and I like to keep challenging myself. The modelling was really was never a career as such. It was just a way of earning money and being able to move out of home, and I was being paid incredibly well to just walk up and down a catwalk or pose in nice woolly knits for Patton's books, and I did lots of TV stuff. It was a very, very lucrative, well-paid bar work.
Cheryl Lee:Yeah, as an alternative to pulling beers.
Deborah Conway:Yeah, exactly, it was a very successful alternative to pulling beers. And then, when I was cast in this film called Running on Empty, I said to myself, if I get the film I think I was about 23, 22, 23 at that point and I said to myself that if I got the film, I would give up modelling because the film paid incredibly well. And so I did. I gave up modelling, I did the film and then, after that I got the film, I would give up modelling because the film paid incredibly well. And so I did. I gave up modelling, I did the film and then after that, I could devote myself to music, which is what I wanted to do. I also recorded the soundtrack of Sweet and Sour, that's right, which nobody really knew about because I didn't put my name on it, but that was also a lucrative thing to do. So all of those the years of penury playing in a band with Do remi, you know were able to be supported by the other side gigs that I was doing. Yeah, the peripheral stuff.
Cheryl Lee:Yeah, you had, as you mentioned, the role of Julie in Running On Empty and the Sweet and Sour. You also played a little role in the Coca-Cola Kid as well.
Deborah Conway:Very little very little, I get a big close-up. Dusan McAvea what a crazy guy. It's an interesting tale. The Coca-Cola Kid it's an Australian story, by Frank Morehouse actually, and for some reason Dusan Makavejev, who's an exotic European director, kind of took a shine to it and Frank wrote the screenplay and then Greta Scacchi, who I was good friends with at that time, was cast as the love interest, and I don't know.
Deborah Conway:I guess I was just hanging around, you know, and I got a role too. I'm not exactly sure why that happened. I think it was just sort of right time, right place, but it wasn't really a role. A lot of the things that I did at that time were just kind of standing around, you know, looking like a clothes horse and whatever. Yeah, interesting time. . Barely remember it. I wouldn't mind seeing it again. Actually, I wonder if we could find something on youtube, maybe. Maybe it still exists on some european foreign movie channel, although it is an Australian film.
Cheryl Lee:Well, I did happen to find a little bit about the movie, the trailer. Actually here's a little snippet and the jingle was written by Tim Finn, so you can track the 1985 movie down if you're keen. Tim Finn also composed and wrote a couple of the songs on the soundtrack. I couldn't track them down, so let's just have his Fraction Too Much Friction and we'll be back again to speak to Deborah straight after
Cheryl Lee:And one thing that I found really interesting over the years lots of people have had the pleasure of collaborating with you and one thing that I found really interesting was the 1986 the Rock Party I don't know that one, oh a charity project by the National Campaign Against Drug Abuse, 1986 is an awfully long time ago.
Deborah Conway:I can't remember. Maybe I was. I can't remember it, but what caught your eye about it?
Cheryl Lee:That it was a great cause to get behind. Apparently well, the guys from Crowded House were involved, the guys from Gangga Jang and some Mental Is Anything guys, and Paul Kelly and Jenny Morris and you released a 12-inch single Everything to Live For and it was a campaign initiated by the Campaign Against Drug Abuse.
Deborah Conway:Maybe it was just one song sung in a studio. I'm struggling to remember it, but I wasn't around for long in 1986. I was spending a lot of time in Europe, so it must have been, you know, a very quick stint.
Cheryl Lee:Well, great cause to be involved with. Anyway, good for me On you, Deborah
Cheryl Lee:There you go do you remember this one, because this was interesting as well, but again, it's a little while ago involved with Pete Townshend's Iron Man project.
Deborah Conway:Yeah, that's very memorable he invited me to participate in this album that he was making, which is based on a Ted Hughes short story. Ted Hughes was the poet laureate at the, and this was a kind of a mythical tale of a young boy who rescued an iron monster who needed to eat iron in order to live, and the townspeople were getting very fed up with him because he kept on eating their fences and their tractors and they trapped him in a ditch and tried to bury him, and then at some point, a space dragon came down to shoot lasers at Earth and it was the Iron Man who was able to rescue Earth and fight the monumental battle that needed to be fought with the space dragon. So it was all very odd and I was playing the part of the vixen, which, in my memory, doesn't even figure in the actual storyline, in the storyline at all.
Deborah Conway:Other people on the album included Nina Simone and John Lee Hooker, and I didn't ever, was never in the same studio at the same time with any of them, but at least you know I'm on the same album cover, which is nice, and I was in the same studio as Pete Townshend when we were recording it and it was really fun to record it. Sadly, the album was initially intended as a double album and it became a single album, probably because of budgetary constraints, and therefore it really never made any sense. And so it was, I guess, a boutique, shall we say, a project for Pete yeah.
Speaker 1:You are listening to Still Rockin' It. The podcast with Cheryl Lee.
Cheryl Lee:So, without any further ado, I think we'll play the first track of that album from 1989. The Iron Man, the musical by Pete Townsend. It's called I Won't Run Anymore. Vocals by Pete Townshend and Deborah Conway. Back to speak more with Deb shortly. . Just like to congratulate you on a couple of strings in your bow. 1988, Rolling Stone Australia named you the Best Australian Female Singer. 1992, Best Female Artist at the Arias. I'm walking my way forward to 2000 because you played Patsy Cline. Yeah, I did.
Deborah Conway:That was a fabulous role to play. Those songs are amazing. She is one of the classic, all-time great vocalists that the world has witnessed, and I got to play her. It was fairly daunting. It was a very daunting task. At some point I just told myself it's okay, I'm never going to be Patsy Cline. All I can ever do is try and honor her legacy. So I relaxed after that and realized that you know, whatever it was going to be, it was going to be me. I wasn't going to be able to conceal me entirely and I thoroughly, thoroughly enjoyed it. We did it. Oh, it was about five or six months around the country, long stints in every major centre and a few regional centres as well, and it was a brilliant cast and it was just a pleasure. A pleasure to be able to sing those songs every night. And, of course, I also had three children under five and the idea of being able to get full night's sleep while Willie was doing all the hard yards that was also incredible.
Cheryl Lee:I've got three girls as well. I take my hat off to you, congratulations. We've got to get on to your new collaboration, which sounds really interesting we want to know all about. One other thing that I really liked was the Broad Festival Program. That was fun too.
Deborah Conway:That kind of grew out of the whole summer wear thing. And my most recent project, of course, which you may or may not mention, is that I have written a memoir which I assume you've read because you're getting all this information. Well, I didn't mention the campaign for drugs and stuff in this because I didn't remember. The Book of Life memoir came out in October, just recently. And I do talk about the Broad Festival and, as you would recall, there was a kind of a trajectory from the summer wear parties which we were doing when we first went independent and we were paying for everything ourselves without a record company, and these were all ways of experimenting with trying to find new ways to play music, find new ways to connect and communicate with audiences, and the summer wear party was one. And then Broad kind of came out of that.
Deborah Conway:Having seen the success of how people could respond and warm to the breakdown of the barriers between performer and audience, it was great to do that on a larger scale and have the breakdowns between performers all the performers on stage, and then all the performers and the audiences in turn. So the idea was to explore the idea of female singer-songwriter, which always sounded like a fairly monolithic category to me and I wanted to just introduce the idea that female singer-songwriters are across a broad range of genres, yeah, and they can work together and they can work separately and we can all discuss our craft and we can collaborate on each other's music. And it made for a very emotive experience. Actually, it really was beyond the sum of its parts, and we ran these shows for four seasons and there were terrific artists that came out of that and went on to become huge superstars. Actually, like Kate Miller-H eidke was really young when uh had barely begun. Claire Bowditch had only just begun her career. Mostly people were kind of yeah, just very fresh.
Cheryl Lee:I think we should have a Patsy Cline song. How about Stupid Cupid? And back to speak some more to Deborah Conway shortly. There's so much to the Deborah Conway story, so do get last year's memoir. It's called the Book of Life. Find out all about it. And some other interesting things, for instance a portrait of you as Medusa, finalist in the Archibald Prize in 96.
Deborah Conway:You've really gone deep, haven't you?
Cheryl Lee:Yeah, go hard or go home. That's my motto. 2022, another portrait with another finalist in the Archibald Prize. That year, you were also inducted into the Victoria Music Hall of Fame. Congratulations, that's a very quick, speedy Deborah Conway history. It is Good stuff, Well done. That brings us to your current project. You are singing some Carole King songs and James Taylor songs and taking that around the country. How did that come about? Why Carole? Why James?
Deborah Conway:This was not my idea particularly, but I am a good friend of the musical director. His name's James Black. James Black might be recognised by some of your viewers, listeners, as the keyboard player in Rockwiz with the cowboy hat.
Deborah Conway:Anyway he's a very old friend, very dear friend of mine, and he was approached by the producer of this show and, you know, was he able to suggest someone to sing Carole? And he just said, oh, Deborah, Deborah, do a great job. So I was contacted and I said, yeah, I'd love to do it because I love those songs.
Deborah Conway:Tapestry was one of the first albums I think it was, in fact, the first album that I ever bought with my own money and I learned or I didn't learn, I didn't need to, I just ingested all those songs easily because they were so catchy and they just spoke to me. There was a moment, you know, I was like I don't know, 12 years old or something, and they were fantastic and so it was very easy to get enthusiastic about that. And there's a terrific young man called Darren Coggan who's playing James Taylor, and we're going to have a lot of fun and we haven't begun rehearsals yet, so I can't tell you exactly. You know how it's going to, what the shape of it will be. I know I kind of roughly know, but I do know that my aim is to get on that stage and every single song is going to make people smile and go oh, I love that one, and that's the kind of show that I really want to do. Cheryl, it's time.
Cheryl Lee:Darren. He's a little bit country but he's also got some hidden talents, like he played Richie Cunningham in the Happy Days musical and in Grease he played Teen Angel and Vince Fontaine. He's also done a theatre show called Moon Shadows with Cat Stevens versatile young man.
Deborah Conway:He's a very good choice.
Cheryl Lee:We can't wait to see you guys together. Get onto the Google-o-meter and track down when Darren Coggan and Deborah Conway are going to be in your neck of the woods. And grab your tickets and I'll see you down the front.
Speaker 1:You are listening to Still Rockin' It the podcast with Cheryl Lee from the 1971 Tapestry album.
Cheryl Lee:Now, Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow, Carole King, and back to say farewell to Deborah Conway shortly. One more question, Deborah, if we've got time, yep, when you're driving in your car or in the shower or wherever it is that you get to listen to what you want to listen to, what's on your playlist?
Deborah Conway:A lot of Carole King at the moment, funnily enough. You know I loved Paul Simon's last record. I thought it was absolutely beautiful Seven Sons. But I also went back in time and listened to Graceland again, which was one of those records when it came out in 1986. I would crank it on the stereo, throw open all the windows and just have it blasting out into the ether, into my neighbourhood. No one ever complained either.
Deborah Conway:I listen to a lot of podcasts. Yeah, I mix it up a bit. I take recommendations. People say, oh, you've got to hear this. I'm very interested in hearing whatever this might be.
Cheryl Lee:Thank you for spending so much time on a busy, busy time for you, I'm sure with us today, and we wish you and Darren all the best for a successful tour, and we can't wait to see it.
Deborah Conway:Thank you very much, Cheryl. I do note that there is a guitar in the corner of your room, so if you're not playing it, someone must be. That's not real. Oh, it's a very good impression of a guitar.
Cheryl Lee:It's actually a CD player. Is it really quite nifty then? Yeah, thanks again. Enjoy the rest of your day, I appreciate it.
Deborah Conway:That's a pleasure, Cheryl. Thank you for talking to me.
Cheryl Lee:Let's go out with Under My Skin, a song by Australian singer-songwriter Deborah Conway, released as the second single from her debut studio album, String of Pearls in 1991. You're with Cheryl Lee, that radio chick. Thank you so much for joining me on the Still Rockin' It podcast. Hope to catch you again next time. Get out when you can support Aussie music and I'll see you down the front.