Still Rockin' It - Cheryl Lee

What has Kate Ceberano been up to lately? OR a 60th birthday tour that plays like a living mixtape of Australian music history.

• That Radio Chick - Cheryl Lee

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Join Cheryl Lee - That Radio Chick on STILL ROCKIN' IT for news, reviews, music and interviews with some of our favourite Australian musicians

The moment the walk-on music hits, you can feel it—the pulse of a country learning to believe in its own sound. We sat with Kate Ceberano to trace how that pulse became a life: from Melbourne’s alternative scene and a pivotal “no” to Stock Aitken Waterman, to I’m Talking, Brave, Jesus Christ Superstar, and a 60th birthday tour that plays like a living mixtape of Australian music history.

Kate brings the stories behind the headlines into sharp focus. She remembers the studio accident that turned into Models anthems, the sunburnt crush of Australian Made crowds, and the stubborn ingenuity of recording Bear Witness on early digital tech with real-time fixes from London. She talks about craft as a calling and a strategy—why songwriting keeps artists afloat, how Pash grew from one perfect memory, and what it means to watch an audience run a thousand private films to the same song. There’s reverence for lineage—Mahalia Barnes seeking her blessing, Michael Paynter’s vocal fire, and the responsibility of honoring a role like Mary Magdalene—and clear-eyed pride in firsts like the Order of Australia and induction into the Australian Songwriters Hall of Fame.

The conversation also moves into the art of surviving between spotlights. When COVID stopped the wheels, Kate launched Friday streams to raise money for Support Act, painted guitars to keep crews paid, and spent years creating a hand-stitched quilt with master quilters in the Philippines and local artisans—a psychedelic ode to Australian flora that travels as the band’s fourth member. We talk bikes, festivals, and a tiny scoop, but the heart of it is simple: authorship over shortcuts, community over ego, and music as the time capsule that binds us to who we were and who we’re becoming.

If you love Australian music, creative resilience, and stories that make your chest ache with recognition, press play and ride with us. Then share it with a friend, and drop a review with the Kate track that shaped your life.

What has Kate Ceberano 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

Cheryl Lee:

At Radio Chick Cheryl Lee here. Welcome to the Still Rocking It podcast where we'll have music, news reviews, and interviews with some of our favourite Australian musicians and artists. For this episode, you get to be a fly on the wall as we interview the amazing Kate Soprano for the telly. How do you fit such an illustrious career into just half an hour? We decided that we're gonna have to do part two when she comes back to Adelaide next time. Apart from all of her musical achievements, Kate received the Order of Australia for significant service to the performing arts in 2016. She made history to as the first woman to be inducted into the Australian Songwriters Hall of Fame. She received a Ruby Award as artistic director of the Adelaide Cabaret Festival. And she's also done a whole lot of fun things on the jelly. A judge on the inaugural season of X Factor, crowned champion in 2007 on Dancing with the Stars, mentored Australian swimmer Daniel Kowowski on It Takes Two, returned the following year to mentor AFL player Russell Robinson, who was runner-up. The family tree was featured on Who You Think You Are. She was a presenter on Getaway, relief host for Carrie Ann Kennelly's morning programme. Was on the mask singer. Is there anything this lady cannot do? And apart from that, she is an amazing bloody human. Please enjoy the chat we had with Kate. To catch up on podcasts from other favourite artists, simply go to that radiochick.com.au. I'd like to welcome you to this episode of Rider TV. It's part of our Legend series. And I'm so pleased to introduce you to a lady who actually needs no introduction, Kate Sabrano. Thank you so much for joining us in the studio today. You're in Adelaide on tour for your Australian made tour, which we'll talk about in a little minute. But we've got a lot of history to talk about in a very short amount of time.

Kate Ceberano:

Do we have to? Did we just talk about like there seems to be an awful lot of backstory, but okay, I'm I'm up for the challenge.

Cheryl Lee:

I'm known for my research. Yeah, I can see that. That's amazing. So we'll maybe just touch briefly on because it's been an amazing 40-year-plus career. Yeah. I've been so blessed to see you almost from the beginning. This was the first time I saw you perform. That's um New Year's Day. Australian Lee, look at that.

Kate Ceberano:

Oh my Australian Made. New Year's Day 1987. If I had that singlet, I'd wear that on this tour, The Wife Beater. What a great one. Look how cute you are. 21.

Cheryl Lee:

Daughter's that age now. Oh wow. Yeah, so that was the very first time I saw that you perform that. That was a great concert. You've created a great tour around it and a fabulous album, which we'll talk about. But Jeepers Creepers, you've done a lot. When you were a teenager, you were courted by the very famous Stock Aitken and Waterman, and you didn't do it.

Kate Ceberano:

You didn't go there, did you? You stayed in Melbourne. Well, I'll have to explain how Melbourne was in itself an eco-culture of bands that were slightly alternative. Not slightly alternative, actually, we're talking Nick Cave, the very early primal hunters and collectors. I mean, I was raised as one of the tribe, and I'm talking saw itself as a very experimental funk band that was also created within that eco-culture. To us, it doesn't seem to always make sense, but the idea of someone else's hand at authoring your sound seemed disingenuous to us. And I speak about the band and the way we were thinking. In fact, I read Mark Seymour's autobiography on it, and it explains exactly how we were allergic to that. Yeah. I mean, I could be laughing all the way to the bank now if I'd gone and applied myself fully. And with all respect to Stockhake and Waterman, they are they were and continue to be a phenomenon, but they weren't going to be my destiny now. No. Well, we're glad that you made the decision that you did. I'm glad I made the decision I did. I I must confess, no one starts in the business thinking they're going to be there at the end because it's a sort of like a uh well that would be a pipe dream, especially for Australians. We don't sort of love to sort of overextend ourselves. So at the age of which I met you, which would have been on stage for The Australian Maid, I was only uh 20. Yeah. And to me, the idea that I'd be singing or doing anything or wouldn't even know myself when I was near 60 was just no. It wasn't even there. It wasn't even a good idea. We were that age, like 30s old. 30 was serious. My grandparents were 30. Exactly. And I've just had my 60th, and you've got yours next year. Yeah. Big plans for a celebration. I've actually planned this is my 60th celebration. I've done it ahead of time. I wanted to I did. And I and I fed myself all of the nutrition that caused me to become the artist I am today. Like every single sip from every style of music that I was I was inhaling or sipping, or you know, or some were snorting, I wasn't. But of of that that that era that's made me the artist I am today is what I'm celebrating on this tour. Good on you. Yeah, it's my birthday. Oh, a happy birthday. My birthday in music, yeah.

Cheryl Lee:

One of the first places I remember seeing you was on countdown when you stole the show for the models.

Kate Ceberano:

Oh actually, I want to say it was a very distinctive sound. If we consider that Sean started the models without James, he'd already had his a really explosion, and I'm talking about that alternative Melbourne sound again. Like he was a purist, and the Alpha Bravo Delta album was pretty pure. And then he invited the show pony who was James Freud, formerly of the modern, what was his modern love, the band James Freud, and the I'm sure one of you all know viewers will know, and they'll write in. But then to add on top of that, two of the girls from I'm Talking. You know it was an accident that we got on those tracks at all. No. We were just happened to be recording in the same studio, and Nick Lawnay, the very celebrated producer for Midnight Oil and the models, I'm Talking, Myself, My Solo Career, and then years later, Silver Chair and other bands like it. He's uh he was a really powerful producer. He called us in and said, Girls, can you just kind of put a few BBs on this? Yeah. And that's how you got Barbados and Out of Mind, Out of Sight, and and I think that was the sound of that summer. So cool, just very organic how it all happened. I think music made that way ends up being more potent. More authentic as well. Yeah. Yeah. In the in the Osmaid tour, I open up with an overture, which has the walk-on music that NXS used during the tour, but then we bust out into a an a cappella burn for you. And that sound, it was the sound of Australia, and Jenny Morris was in the in the BVs. Renata, well, I think Renata was a very famed singer from the Stones. Shireen and Zan were in there. So you could hear the sound of our musical culture all in that one pregnant opening stanza. Yeah, yeah. Unbelievable. Can't wait to see it. Wait for you to see it too. You're gonna actually feel really nostalgic. I will. Because this is just as much as of you and for you as it is for me.

Cheryl Lee:

Yeah, I think the whole audience is going to have a nostalgic walk down memory day.

Kate Ceberano:

We've already done the tour. In fact, I kept the the best for last. Adelaide. Yeah, and that's the end of this tour this year. Audiences have been almost borderline hysterical with the joy that they've had, which I'm glad for. I've like felt like Boudica, like I feel like I'm on a chariot behind those drums, holding two horses, these wild electric guitarists on either side, Hartz and Kathleen. It's like, whoa, I can barely keep it still. It's amazing.

Cheryl Lee:

I remember that day so much, apart from the fabulous music. It was so hot. I don't know if you remember in Adelaide. It was like hot almost like a 39. It was scorcher, wasn't it?

Kate Ceberano:

And I got burnt to a crisp. Oh, I know. I remember that. It was so worth it. Oh, and I don't recall what you know, infrastructure back then. I don't even recall Portaloo's or drink stations or like it was sort of green. And if you look at the video, if you've looked at video footage, there is a famous documentary made about it now that you can check it out. And you guys are crammed in like sardines. You're just staring. You wouldn't even have room to sit down on the ground if you'd wanted to. No.

Cheryl Lee:

It was sort of like the precursor to, you know, days on the green and red hot summer tours. It was like was trend setting, wasn't it?

Kate Ceberano:

Well, I have to tell you that we were told that if you put an all-Australian bill, it won't work. It won't work. And that was the first of its kind in the country. And it did work. And Ken West, who was my manager at the time, went on to make a big day out. Ah, there you go. Vivian Lee's and your time, you guys. Yeah, pretty much. Well, we definitely were in the founding forefathers and mothers of Australian music. And what mothers is Australian music? I am. I'm a mother of Renee Geo and Chris Chrissy Amphlet, the mothers. Oh, yeah, there were some legends on there, wasn't there? And some we've lost. But let's talk about. I'm talking platinum debut bear witness. Goodness me. Rolling Stones Top 200 Australian albums of all time. Congratulations. Wow, that's cool. We often get neglected on the Australian polls because we were very niche. But I have to tell you, technically speaking, we were the first album ever made on a digital console in the world. Oh wow. We were still talking about groundbreaking. Yeah. Well, yes, obviously we were, well, it may have been happening simultaneously, but we were the first of its kind happening at that time. We would have to stop sessions sometimes to call through to London and ask if we could improve the program and they would fix it in real time so that we could record better, faster, more efficiently. But this is now, of course, you know, you can do it from your phones. But back then this was like breaking news.

Cheryl Lee:

Fast forward to 89, your debut solo album, Brave. Was that like um a turning point? That was triple platinum, just went gangbusters. Would that be one of the turning points in your career?

Kate Ceberano:

I think there'd been many milestones for me. We start as young as I did. I didn't have any, I've got to be honest, I didn't have any expectations. So with every turning of a page, which would it would deliver some new and exciting something, we would all just sit together because my mum even was managing me at the time, and we'd be like, Can you believe this is actually happening? Like, just pinch it's like a pinch me kind of moment, like, and and and so uncommon because there were so few and there still are so few women in and on the field. My mum was the first female manager in the country ever. Yeah. Of which there's only been two two since, two or three since. See, told you you're ahead of your time.

Cheryl Lee:

Yeah, and we didn't even really know. No, that's right. Yes, and your jazz album won four Mo Awards, two Aries. Like, it's been amazing, but one of the things that stands out to me, 1992, starring as Mary Magdalene.

Kate Ceberano:

How good was it all? It was amazing. It was amazing. That was a fully immersive experience. In fact, I got a tattoo here because I was sitting with Angry Anderson and it was my 25th birthday, and I was having lunch down. Yeah, you know that that that um what's that cafe that sits down there right on the water's edge underneath the festival centre? We were all having lunch there. There was John Farnum and Russell Morris and John Waters, John Stevens and Angry Anderson, and he was saying there's this famous tattooist. This is before tattoos were really cool. Well, no woman I knew had them unless they had three teeth. Like that was actually kind of pretty much or a slayer. Oh, yeah, right. That's right. And he said, There's a there's a famous woman from the Illustrated Man who's up on Rundle Street today. And I went, Well, alright. So I drew a diagram on a table napkin and I walked up there and lay myself over a chair and I said, Do your best, do you worst. Where is it? It's on my butt. But it was yeah, they're indelible, you know. It's gone from being a circle to being a teardrop, but apart from that, it's still doing a really good job. But um, to answer your question, Mahalia at Barnes, I'm about to go on tour with her dad, and we'll open up for her dad on the working class man tour this summer. But Mahaly and I, because in age, in some ways we have more in common, she manages her dad now. Did you know that? Yes, I did. And when she's recently performed the role of Mary, she rang me on getting the part, and before she signed off on it, she said, I I really want your blessing. So the woman before me was Marsha Hines. Yes. When I was 16, I opened up for Marcia Hines, ring A Gaya Christine Christina Anflet. Who else was on that bill? Colleen Hewitt? Yeah. And uh I recalled the same permission, I wanted the same permission to step into the space. So I said, Oh, permission granted, you'll have the time of your life, and she did. Yeah.

Cheryl Lee:

Well, it didn't come to Adelaide, so I took our three daughters to Sydney, and we watched it in Sydney. Superstar didn't come to Adelaide. With Mahalia. Didn't it? No. I took the girls to Sydney to watch her perform. It was an amazing show.

Kate Ceberano:

I know, right? And Michael Painter. Yeah, oh my gosh, what a voice. He's possibly the greatest voice I've ever heard in my life. I've never heard that kind of dexterity other than John Farnum. And that note. Oh my gosh! In Gethsemane. I mean, if he was like, so he was following The Blazing Trail, which is internationally regarded as one of the greatest versions of Superstar with John Fynum. He he could just he he stole not only the libretto, but he also stole the the emotional context for what we want out of this story. It's a it's a big story and it has many different facets and must be respectfully played, and he was just so respectful. So Michael then took it at another level. Michael is actually a very religious person, right? So he took it as a responsibility even more. He left blood on the stage, didn't he? Every night. Yeah, oh yeah, and it was like nothing behind. He left nothing behind. I mean, I watched and I was just like, oh my god, I'm watching something happening here that's almost beyond the physical form. It was just every night, and I saw it a couple of times. Yeah, just beautiful. Yeah. And Hubby and I will see you with Barnesy because well we got tickets for here in Adelaide, but they're not great. Oh we're going to rise a Harley to what's the vineyard we're going to in Victoria to see you there. Because we've got better seats. So that sounds great. And if you do have bikes as well, do you ever go to the Brighter Days Festival? We haven't yet, but it's definitely on the bucket list. So I'm performing there as well, which is if you're on the bike, there is no greater place to go, and not to discourage you from coming down for Barnsy as well. But do yourself a favour of if you're on bikes, come to the Brighter Days. It's it's a confluence of some of the greatest humans for a good cause. Yeah. Exactly. It's a really good cause. We need to. Uh leave, I don't even know what the date is. I'm going to get my fact checker. And who's going to Yeah, it hasn't been announced. Oh right. Oh, you've got the inside skinny.

Cheryl Lee:

Ooh, is that a scoop? Scoop. Yeah. It's a scoop. 7th of March. Oh, that's just in time for my birthday.

Kate Ceberano:

But it doesn't matter, it's just between we girls. Yeah. So you can keep that in. For those only those who ride bikes. And it is an amazing festival. Oh, I'm so glad to hear that news. Yeah. And you heard it first here. Anyway, that album from Jesus Christ Superstar stayed at number one for 10 weeks. That just got me a logie. Congratulations. And I well, actually, it got the boys a logie, but I kicked up a fuss because I was the only girl on the cast. I'm like, yo, if they get logies, what am I? Chop liver? Yeah. So they made me one. Well done. We're just going through 98 Pash. That album, you songwrite on every trail. That's right. I I was I think when you are ticking off milestones in each decade, you want to at least have won and failed at several things to determine what you like and don't like. One. And what you're good at. Yeah. And what you can survive and what you never wish to have to survive again. Right. So Pash was a certain type of freedom for me. I'd started crafting songs again. Brave was the first song I wrote at 16 with my brother. And this was the second time that I actually went into it. My husband set up a piano for me in the apartment we were in, and we were kind of living as artists in residence. And he'd just kind of demand that I get to it every day and write, right, right. Because ultimately, an album, or even being a performing artist, certainly being Australian, is barely sustainable. Yeah, yeah. I mean, I'm sad to say that the average wage for most musicians is a part-time job. Yeah. You have to have another supporting job to sustain your craft. Which in any other country, if I was as famous as I am here, I would be self-sustaining. And so my husband's very wiser. He said, Listen, you are a writer. If you had more confidence, you would get at least the royalty. If you don't get the physical sales anymore for these things, and and if say you're not touring at the time, you could be actually getting the your just desserts, having actually put yourself into the songs. So passion. Yeah, which it's it's minimal, but it's it's at least it's saying that you made something and you can receive payment for it. I wrote about a memory for me in eastern Melbourne at Westfield Shop Shop Center. And it was the perfect place in the perfect setting for the first time I was to be kissed because you can't fashion these things out of clay. You never know where you're gonna be, you never know who it's gonna be with. You could be kissing a frog for you, you know. The fact of the matter is there will never be another first. So you better either celebrate it or incinerate it. Yeah, and I just thought I'm gonna celebrate it and I'm gonna write this into a song and it's gonna last with me as a memory for the rest of time. It was, it was like the skies opened, I heard a symphony, I I lifted off the floor about five feet, and for the life of me, I don't even remember the guy's name anymore. And you know what? We relive that kiss with you every time we hear the song. It's cute. It's kind of the stuff of life. Without music and art and love, you people go to war for things, for the for the sanctity of having these things. They're the flowers of our existence. You know, they're the things we put behind our ears to make us feel better. They're the things we wear at night when we're sad and we need to remember something that, you know, beautiful. When someone is lost, you know, you find them in the dark again by remembering where you were and and what happened. So music, music is the sort of like the time capsule that glues us to these memories. And even at the moment on tour, I can tell, like I can I can scan out into the crowd, and in this kind of inky black above everyone's heads, it's like I'm watching a movie, and everyone has a different movie playing at the same time but with the same soundtrack. Yes, and I gotta tell you, as an artist, that is the most magical feeling. I I can't, I feel like the greatest conductor of all time. It's like conducting the human soul. It's like it's better than life itself. I just I I love it, I love it so much. Yes, I love it. And it comes across, I think. Now, I've got one of your greatest achievements to talk about next. Yes. And isn't she doing beautifully? My daughter! Gypsy, she's amazing. She was born in 2004. Yeah, yeah, and she's certainly since we spoke last time on the Zoom or the time on the phone, she's just blossomed and come into her own. You know, she's definitely blooming within her own time, and you can't force that with anyone really. Like, I think that the kids of COVID are sort of cooked on the outside, but they're still a bit sort of soft inside. It's a bit doughy. Yeah. Like I feel like they need to be left in a little longer than what we did. Like when I jumped out of the gates at 14, hungry for life, I was chasing a lot of cinema that was made in the 60s and 70s. So I wanted to go to London. I wanted to go to New York. I wanted to taste that gritty bagel on the corner at fifth and eighth. Yeah. I wanted to fall in and out of love with someone who was like a you know, like Marlon Brando meets, you know, Jimmy Dean. And then I wanted to go to London and meet the cure, and I wanted to work with Malcolm McLaren. And I had these things. I can't talk to young people and ask them for them to discover what dream they're chasing right now. They seem to feel blessed that they're just spending one day to the next. They're so concerned about the future, right? And it's keeping them almost sort of standing still. Yeah, a little bit stagnant. I I kind of feel so. So when I see the small movements my daughter's making towards wanting to do it, we go baby steps because I can really overwhelm her with my ambition. Yeah. I always had very strong ambitions for myself, and I went chasing my dream at like hurdling towards it. She's like, I'll touch it, then I'll come away from it. Yeah. We go towards it, and then I I think I'll just have a little break, isn't she? I'm just talking to my husband. Oh, so beautiful. She's just Is Lee keeping an eye on the time? Because I know you're a very busy girl with me. We've only just got our concerns with the radio. I'm on Dave Gleason next year. Five minutes. It's alright, we've got so much. We'll talk again. Yeah, yeah. We'll talk again. There's so much. I wanted to just quickly touch on your other hardy farty stuff. Painting and now quilting as well. Yeah, it's it's actually it's it's quite a um it's a going concern. It's like it's really real. And did that come from the lockdown in COVID? Yeah, yeah. I think that when I was stopped, it hurt so bad that I went into kind of a bit of a meltdown. You needed an outlet, didn't you? Well, and you talk about Support Act earlier off camera. I started a project. I and a lot of my friends were not eligible for any kind of funding, and that's all of your income. I was at a steady bolt before, and it just stopped, it took the wind out of my sails. And so Lee's a filmmaker. I was living with Kathleen Heller, and she moved into the back of our house. This is my guitarist. Yes, a young 25-year-old, she's young, yeah, a baby. Yeah, and she's scared. We're scared, we don't know what's gonna go on. Support Act, all of my musicians, my rogue crew, all of the sound engineers, lighting crew, nothing. They've got mortgages they can't sustain. So we put on Friday night sessions called Caden Friends. Yes, and all the money that we raised for that we gave to Support Act. Thank you. On behalf of Support Act. No worries. Thank you. I started painting guitars and anything I had in the house, and then suddenly all these collectors from fans who have kind of bought them like trading cards or something, they go, We'll buy it, we'll buy it from other states, and so that sustained me. And then I designed this um quilt to sort of help my friends in the Philippines, my family, a half Filipino, and I designed with the master quilters of the Philippines a template of an art piece, and it takes a year to make by hand. Wow, and then after a year it arrived, and still we were in lockdown. So I started embroidering on the top of it for another year. And then in the third and in the fourth year, I enlisted local artisans to help me continue to pimp its ride so that by the time it got to Australian made, it it was sort of like my ode to rock and roll, it's like a Persian rug, but covered in Australian fauna. Yeah, and it's become the fourth member of the band. It's really quite something, and she's a bit psychedelic, she changes colour and she kind of exudes this personality, and and I just love that she was made deliberately by hand over four and a half years. It just proved something to me that good things do take time and they can be made here in Australia.

Cheryl Lee:

It is beautiful. And is your art available to buy? Your time. It is you have to be really rich.

Kate Ceberano:

Because they take time, and there's only ever one of them. If you add up all the time and effort and all the hands that touch my art, I have a site that I'm developing called Soprano Art, and I will always put things up. I hand embroidered garments that are coming up for sale. Beautiful, and I had this series of kimonos and other things that I printed, and and they're all really rock and roll. Like the concept I wanted to have is that swagger that you know when when uh Jimi Hendrix would wear women's clothing, T-Rex, and then Marion Faithful would wear would wear mixed clothing, and there was this kind of like this fantastic sort of cross phase of of aesthetics. That's where I kind of live. Awesome. Well, get onto the gigalometer and track them down. You get yourself a once-in-a-lifetime piece of art from Kate Sabrano. Now, she's got to go and talk to someone, and a lot more important than speak to Dave Gleason now. Say hi to Dave. Oh, well, we've got so much to talk about. Next time you're in Adelaide, we're going to talk about all the fun, fantastic stuff you've done on YouTube television series. And where we were last, let's just pick up on that last chat. Thanks, love. And so we're going to let you go. We're going to ask you to sign a couple of guitars for Support Act. I'm the fundraising coordinator in South Australia. So we're going to auction one at Christmas. So thank you so much for the chat. My pleasure. Can't wait till we finish part two. Yeah. You're going to come to the Phoebe? Yes, we do. Yeah, gorgeous. Well, we'll organise that. Thank you so much.

Cheryl Lee:

You're with Cheryl Lee, that radio chick. Thank you so much for joining me on the Still Rocking Up podcast. Hope to catch you again next time. Get out when you can, support Aussie music, and I'll see you down the front.