Welcome to a breath of fresh air with Sandy Kaye. Hi there, thanks so much for tuning in to a breath of fresh air, where we dive into the stories behind the songs with the artists who made them. Right up front, I’m going to remind you to let me know if you have someone special you’d like to hear from, and if you could do me a favour of giving the show a rating or review on your favourite podcast platform, I’d be really grateful for that too.
Today we feature a guy who’s best known as the lead singer bassist of the 80s Australian rock outfit, The Church. Steve Kilby is also an accomplished solo artist and writer, whom I’m sure you’re going to find kind of quirky and amusing. In fact, our conversation was derailed from the start with a discussion about what lay behind both of our last names.
Not quite sure how that happened, but I decided to leave that in for you because it gives you a terrific sense of who Steve Kilbey is. In case you haven’t heard of The Church, here’s a reminder of their biggest hit. Sometimes when this place gets kind of empty, the sound of their breath fades with the light.
I think about the loveless fascination under the milky way tonight. Sandy Kaye, is that really your name, Kaye? Or is that, did you have a long, complicated European name, which when your parents or grandparents arrived, they changed it to Kaye? Have you already talked to me about this once before? Yes. No.
That’s, I did. That’s how all Kayes become Kayes. Really? They came from Eastern Europe and they changed it on the boat coming across.
Like Danny Kaye. Yes, who I always said was my uncle until he was determined to be a pedophile. Danny Kaye was a pedophile? Absolutely.
Oh no. I know it’s terribly disappointing. And was your name changed, Kilby, or that’s what it was? No, that was, what would you change that from? Could it have possibly, what, Kilby Finkel or something? Maybe.
No, it’s always been Kilby. But when I was a kid and I knew I was going to be hopefully one day famous, I did think about, could I get away with Steve Kaye? I like it better than Kilby. Steve Kaye.
I thought a lot about names at school. I wanted to have a more common name. The fact that it’s Kilby and then I’d be Killer, and the fact that I wasn’t very tough or a very good fighter, added some real irony and so all the kids called me Killer Kilby.
But yet, I wasn’t a killer at all. So I always wished I was Steve Brown or Steve Gray or Steve Kaye. Would have been good.
Wow, you’ve been a deep thinker since you were a child. I have, I have. I’ve been thinking it all through ever since I could remember.
You won’t believe this. I walked into my parents’ bedroom when I was three, and I said, I’ve never known happiness. And they thought that was really funny.
But it was a very heartfelt thing that I was saying. And I was freakishly precocious, you know? As opposed to what you are now. Well, at 70, you can say, I’ve never known happiness.
And they go, oh, you poor old bugger. But you know, when you’re three, they thought that was really funny. And then every time I would ever complain about anything, they would bring it up again.
My mother didn’t like having a precocious son. She wasn’t used to it because we were living in peacetime. Suddenly, all these children were coming through and they weren’t.
You do that. Why? Because I said so. And I’m like, why should I do what you say? And all the old, all the old rally.
He’s a very cheeky boy. You should discipline him. I questioned all of that.
I hated all of that old guard. I’m very precocious. You certainly weren’t the only one.
You were like that, too. Absolutely. Yes.
Then take me to the river. And put me in the water. Bless them and forgive them.
Of the cold, they just own. All the gifted children. I want to talk to you about your whole career and a bit of personal stuff in there also.
Yeah. You came to Australia from the UK at age three. And you settled in Sydney.
And is it true that you first got into music through Frank Sinatra and, of course, then the Beatles, Stones, Bolan and Bowie? Yeah. Well, we were very, very poor and we arrived in Australia and my dad bought a little record player. And we only had two records.
And one of them was Frank Sinatra, Only the Lonely. And this record really appealed to me. And it was like the best torch songs, beautiful, beautiful songs of longing and unrequited love and break-up songs, beautifully orchestrated by Nelson Riddle.
So the first songs that ever rushed into my head were these really well-written, very clever lyrical songs. Each place I go Only the lonesome little small cafe The songs I know Only each melody Of course, the way Frank sang in his conversational manner, because before that, singers were like, Whoa, whoa, whoa, whatever. And then Frank comes along and he sings like I sing, like, It’s a lonely old town when you’re not around.
Like the way you would just talk. It wasn’t some big thing. That really influenced me.
My dad was a musician and he was a piano player. Not professionally, but he was a really good piano player. He encouraged me in music, told me music was very important.
We’d drive along in the car and the radio would play and he and I would talk about the songs that were playing. And he would go, Come on, this is a stupid one, isn’t it? And I’d go, You know, it was the age of My friend, the witch doctor, And the purple people leader. Well, I saw the thing coming out of the sky It had a one long horn One mister shaking and I said, Marie, it looks like a purple people leader to me It was a one eyed, one horned, flying purple people leader One eyed, one horned, flying purple people leader Sure looks strange to me Well, he came down the road and he lit a tree I said, Mr. Purple people leader, don’t eat me I heard him say, and I lost my breath I wouldn’t eat you cause you’re so terrible My dad thought this was all pretty low brow and stupid and he sort of influenced me in his own way and then the Beatles came along and I was ten years old, nine years old when I first saw them and heard about them and it wasn’t just the music, it was all the implications of the way the girls loved them and the teenagers who were a few years older than me were besotted and obsessed by them and talking about them and I just got sucked into the whole thing and then when I was eleven, my dad got me tickets to see the Easybeats who were Australia’s biggest band and I went along and saw them and they just blew my mind and I felt like it was my manifest destiny to be a pop star I felt this was what I could do I felt like I can do this, I can be this I can’t play anything, I haven’t written anything yet I was a very average looking kid but I felt like I can surely do this I woke up, I know I wish she was mine I’ve got something to tell her Whenever she laughs, every night She’s so fine, she’s so fine Come on Harry When I was sixteen, after a lot of nagging my dad, a voice in my head started going buy a bass guitar, you’ve got to be a bass guitarist you’ve got to be a bass guitarist I nagged my dad into buying me a bass guitar and I just practised, taught myself as much as I practised, I looked at myself in the mirror wow, look at you in the mirror playing that bass guitar I just inhaled music and then I found all the magazines I listened to the radio I listened to shows that played esoteric music and kept up with it and I realised there was a lot more out there than just what they were playing on the local station 18, 19 started forming bands being in bands, playing with bands a few years later I got a four track tape recorder which would be released for the first time you could get a domestic tape recorder that you could do overdubs on and I quit live music and I just stayed home for three years making music with myself on a tape recorder What did your dad have to say about all this? Did he encourage you? Unfortunately he died before I really got anywhere he was dead by the time I got the tape recorder I never let him come along and see me play because I was always waiting until it was going to be better Right He obviously saw that you were heading in that direction He did of making a professional career out of it Oh yeah, he completely, and he also went guarantor see, okay, so I’m 19 I’m a bass player and a singer so in those days I needed bass amp I needed bass guitar I needed a PA and I needed a microphone and I needed a freaking car to drive it all around in and my dad helped me get all of that Yeah, yeah, yeah So in the early 70s you were actually working as a bit of a computer programmer you weren’t doing this full time I was I was in the public service and in Canberra See how that must have suited your personality It didn’t I was terrible I was a terrible public servant I never served the public at all She never said Get out of bed, let’s put on a shoe I’ve got a notion what we ought to do It’s a number you can try to ring But I’m still thinking about all the things I parked my car by the memories And told my story to the laughing trees They don’t know what’s wrong with me She never said Get out of bed, let’s put on a shoe I’ve got a notion what we ought to do It’s a number you can try to ring But I’m still thinking about all the things She never said There was an import record shop and I spent all of my money on import records I had a huge record collection I’d completely forgotten the days of import record shops Of course we had that here because there was such a lag and it was so difficult to get American and British releases in this country for a while It was, and not only that If it did get released it would be released with a single cover and an inferior pressing and a plastic sleeve instead of a paper sleeve So say you bought a T-Rex record from England It would come like in a double fold out cover with pictures and lyrics and a bag and in Australia they just put out this flimsy old thing It could be a three month lag and the powers that be in Australia would go No, no, no, we’re not going to release that Not going to release that, not going to release that In fact, my parents went back to England one year and I gave them a list of all the records I wanted them to get and they walked around record shops in England buying me German and English records that you couldn’t get in Australia I moved out again Charged on the rail Still never made it Babe, I want to be your man Do you remember me? Yeah, I’m your boy, you take me A little bit sad, a little bit good Your first band was called Baby Grand? Yeah Tell us about that There were others before that Baby Grand was kind of the main thing It wasn’t very good There is a record out there that someone put together of all our demos You can actually find that You can actually hear it I will It’s pretty bloody awful The record was mastered from cassettes that had been sitting in someone’s drawer for 40 years I was still computer programming or that’s what I was supposed to be doing and Baby Grand would sometimes play at night Then I left Canberra and threw in the job and I moved up to Sydney I was silk-screening T-shirts and selling them at Paddington Market and then at night I was getting the church together and I decided I couldn’t have a day job anymore I had to give everything to music And you did That was a good decision Yeah People who hedge their bets It can be fatal If you’ve got a good job but you have some musical talent and you feel like you should be a musician You’ve got to chuck the job in But you know there’s the boulevard of broken dreams of people who chuck their job in and then still didn’t make it as musicians It’s sort of tragic But what you’re saying is if your calling is strong enough and you believe in yourself enough then you really need to go full forward with it Look, I didn’t have a belief I had a conviction I had total conviction that this was going to happen for me I don’t know why It wasn’t really justified by anything Despite all the years of nobody liking anything I did I still convinced that one day I would find my place and everybody would like it So it wasn’t really It wasn’t just sort of faith It was more than that It was like a I don’t know, manifest destiny I would call it.
This is a breath of fresh air with Sandy Kaye. It’s a beautiful day. When I meet young guys occasionally, I say, I say, do you believe, do you really believe, do you really feel that you are going to be a rock and roll star? And if they say, oh no, not really, I go, don’t do it then.
You know, you’ve got to really, because this belief, this faith, and more than that, got to get you through some really hard times. You had plenty of those because you did go through years of rejection. Nobody wanted your music for quite a while, did they? No.
So when I got my first bass guitar, I was 16, and when the church appeared on Countdown, I was 26. Wow. And so there was ten years of, in those ten years, not one person liked one single thing I did.
Wow. So what was different about the church? Tell me about putting that together, and I want to know also why you called it the church. I just had a list of names and everybody thought the church was okay.
There’s no, I like the feeling of there’s something spiritual going on here, and everybody went, yeah, okay, let’s call it the church. What was different about the church when we were in Sydney? You can’t make it from Canberra. See, that was a half-arsed idea.
I will hang on to my job and live in Canberra where it’s safe and warm and comfortable and try and make it here and make it in Sydney and Melbourne. No, that didn’t work out. So I committed and I moved to Sydney, and we popped up at the right time.
I reconnected with Peter Koppes, who was the lead guitarist in the church, who had been in Baby Grand a bit. He was in an earlier version of Baby Grand, so we already knew each other, and between me last seeing him, I had bought the four-track, and I said, I met him at the markets, and he was playing in a kind of a semi-successful band in Sydney. I said, come around here, what I’m doing.
He came around, and there’s a real difference between if you get a bunch of people and you sit down with an acoustic guitarist, I’ve got this song, and you play it, they’re like, ah. They put a tape on where the song is fully arranged and all the guitars and bass and the drum machines playing and all the vocals and keyboards, and you put this and that on it, which I did. So my demos by this stage were quite superior.
And when he sat down and heard what this could be like, he said, yeah, let’s do this. And then he and I made some demos together, and it sounded even better with him playing guitar. He was a much better guitarist than me.
And we met Marty Wilson-Piper. We had a real rat bag who was a drummer. He made things hard, but we kicked him out.
The first guy who heard our tape signed us up, and we got a deal with ATV Northern Songs, and he got us a deal with EMI. Our first single was a complete flop. Meanwhile, we were playing every frickin’ night in Sydney, and sometimes Melbourne, sometimes Brisbane.
We were going up and down the highway playing every show we could. We were getting better and better. We suddenly got this drummer from Adelaide who was 18 when we kicked the old drummer out for being a rat bag.
We got this 18-year-old guy, and he was so full of energy and such a joker, Richard Plough. And then we got on Countdown, and it was literally rags to riches. It was like the Friday night before Countdown, Nobe at our show, the Monday night after Countdown.
We played a gig in Melbourne at the Prospect Hill Hotel in Kew. There were 900 people there, and sort of girls screaming and blokes shaking your hand and managers giving you money and snorting speed. So hard, finding inspiration I knew you’d find me crying Tell those girls with rifles for mines That their jokes don’t make me laugh They only make me feel like dying In unguarded moments Long between mirages I knew you’d find me drinking Tell those men with horses for hogs That their jobs don’t make me bleed They only make me feel like shaking In unguarded moments It was a very fertile time for live music then, wasn’t it? And Countdown was the equivalent of the UK’s top of the pop.
So if you got on to Countdown, as you said, you exploded. Sometimes, not always, there were bands that got on Countdown that didn’t explode, and you usually only got one chance. And I’ve been watching this.
There were bands that you’d heard of, and they’d get on Countdown and it wasn’t the right song, or Countdown didn’t film them the right way, or something kind of went wrong and it was all lackluster. Somehow, there we were, we had the haircuts, we had the mascara, we had this great backdrop that was supposed to look like a church, but it didn’t. It was sort of like psychedelic.
And there we were with our cheekbones and all of this, and bang, people freaking loved it. And not only that, we were a huge threat to all the other bands, all the established bands, because we were better looking than all of them, and younger and groovier. It was just marvellous.
It might not have been marvellous. Still, with all of that, we could have gone on. There was a video that we can, that a guy made, and it was a terrible video.
He was trying to make us look like Queen, all in a row, going, Ah! And that was so bad. And I could see how easy it all could have gone wrong. But luckily for us, that performance on Countdown, the girls screamed, the lights looked good, we all looked good, and that was it.
We never looked back. Rags to riches. Which blinded me Burns away so long ago For our time Now the warmth is forgotten and gone Pretty maid is not far behind I’m almost with you How can sense live away from me? I’m almost with you Is this the taste of victory? I’m almost with you It’s the early 80s at this stage.
You talk about your competition in established bands around Australia at the time. How would you describe the music and who were your competition? The only Australian band I liked was Flowers. I thought Ivor Davies was amazing.
And I’m sorry to say this, but Rose Tattoo, Akka Dakka, The Angels, Chisel, all of them, I didn’t care for. That shouldn’t be like heresy. I mean, even saying it now, I go, Oh my God, people are going to be angry with me if I say I didn’t like it.
I didn’t like all that stuff. I didn’t like that. The music had so changed from the 70s and all this hard edged punky sort of music that didn’t seem to be what you were about either.
It wasn’t. It was pub rock. It was about, it was like about alcohol.
Yeah, you know, I was about marijuana. I was about, and that’s very important, there’s a big distinction. My stuff was set in a European city in the middle of winter at night.
You know, I was, I was walking down a snowy street with a Belle Dame Sans Merci. You know what I mean? Like I’m not, I’m not fixing a ute in Oud Nadatta. I’m in Cologne.
You know, like, and the bands are kind of a European band and we’re playing, we have these literary allusions to whatever was creeping in all the time, singing about dreams and ambiguity and all of this kind of business. And the bands at the time, they weren’t like that. It was like, it was like Aussie, Aussie rock and roll, drink beer, suck more piss.
But I enjoyed, except for Ivor, who was, he was like Australia’s David Bowie. But I enjoyed that. It gave me something to react against.
You had a massive point of difference. I mean, that first hit single, The Unguarded Moment, reached number 22 here. It went gold.
How did you feel when that happened? Tell me a little bit about that song. It was just written accidentally. I wasn’t trying to write a hit.
It could have been any song really, but they all kind of sounded the same at that stage. It was great. It was great to have a hit.
Not my favourite song, wasn’t then, still isn’t. But you know, it’s churlish to lash out against the song that gave you your success and go, I don’t really like it. But that would be a very typical Kilby thing to do.
It was great. It was great times. It was great to be a pop star.
It was all that I wanted. Well, you had the music, you had the girls chasing after you and trying to follow you everywhere. What was The Unguarded Moment? Was there an Unguarded Moment? I don’t bloody know.
Just a song, isn’t it? Yeah, okay. So, Unguarded Moment came out and you started touring around everywhere. You were getting a lot of compliments and a lot of people drawing comparisons to bands like The Byrds.
I think especially because of Marty’s use of the 12 string Rickenbacker guitar that was similar to Roger McGuinn’s, wasn’t it? Yeah. Right? Yeah, I mean, The Byrds, that was just an accidental thing. When people started saying The Byrds, then we went, oh yeah, we’re a bit like The Byrds.
But it wasn’t like an intentional thing. So, what was your intention? It was sort of like my intention was, see, all the other guys had different intentions and that’s what’s great thing about that. My intention was David Bowie and Mark Bolan and then a load of other things behind them like The Beatles and The Stones and Dylan and Prog Rock, believe it or not.
But Peter Coppers, he was a big fan of Jimi Hendrix and he liked the blues and guitar solos and stuff. And Marty was a big fan of Prog and Marty was in a very malleable state when he joined. He was the biggest listener out of all the people in the band.
But he hadn’t really found his own voice on guitar where Peter had already figured out. And so one day we’re in the studio and the producer came in and said, look, I’ve got you a 12 string guitar. And he started playing it and then people said, oh, that’s a bit like The Byrds.
And then, oh, cool. And then obviously we had all heard The Byrds before but we started listening to The Byrds more and we upped The Byrds quotient a bit. Although the vocals are nothing like The Byrds, like the harmonies in The Byrds and stuff.
So, you know, we sort of emphasised that a bit. The band was a huge hodgepodge and melting pot of thousands of different ideas. And I would take the best bits of everything I found, everything I heard and saw not only music but books and films and everything all ended up in the songs.
And you were the main songwriter, weren’t you? Yeah. The studio fills my head with light Only the voice of a girl on her way to love Falling from her height And turns to leaves in their caviar Doesn’t prove my right Only ever in and of this day or night I sit and look And I suspect you already know How does that seem so very, very clear Even when you’re close Electric flash, trees in the studio A vibe that you can’t see Only the voice of a girl on her way to love Drifting from her waist And turns to leaves in their caviar Doesn’t prove my right I sit and look How does that seem so very, very clear Even when you’re close Despite the obvious comparisons with the Byrds, the church’s double lead guitar sound also touched on 60s psychedelia and moody post-punk and even found Steve Kilby weaving in elements of poetic mysticism with his lyrics. It was a sound the group would champion over four more albums, all of which reached the top 20 on the Australian charts and helped build a core fanbase in the United States.
Away from the church, Steve Kilbey made his solo debut in 1986 with the album Unearthed. Recorded at his home in Sydney it was somewhat looser than his work with his band at the time and found him utilising a drum machine and overlaying guitar and keyboard parts. Nonetheless, it had a folky, surrealistic charm that prefigured much of the singer’s future projects.
I didn’t go solo, I made a solo album because I couldn’t be constrained my creativity couldn’t be constrained by a band that only released an album once every blue moon and I was doing things at home as I had been for a long time now on my tape recorder that I really liked and the band couldn’t, wouldn’t, didn’t want to take part in and there was, if you listen to my first solo album there’s a lot of synthesizer and drum machines and the sort of things that the church wouldn’t do.
This is a breath of fresh air with Sandy Kaye. It’s a beautiful day. I still have multiple collaborations and multiple things out there.
I make so much music that one band can’t possibly have it all. But the church is always my flagship. The church is always the most important thing.
But it’s like if you want to dive deeper behind the church, then you could listen to my solo albums and my collaborations with other people. Which were all very successful. I mean you say the church didn’t put out many albums.
By 1988 you’d put out your seventh album called Starfish. That’s right. And that one was produced by Waddy Wachell.
Wachtell. Wachtell, thank you as well, by Waddy Wachtell, who had been with Fleetwood Mac, Randy Newman, James Taylor, and that produced the single Under the Milky Way. Did you like that one? The single? The album? Well, yeah, both.
Yeah. Yeah, I thought it all worked out well. It’s like a funny thing, it all worked out well for the wrong reasons.
It wasn’t really a marriage made in heaven working with him. He was trying to go one way, we were trying to go to the other, and accidentally in the middle came Under the Milky Way. It sort of came out of it.
So it was good, but it hadn’t been planned to be that way. It was just a very lucky accident that that’s how it ended up. Under the Milky Way tonight Lower the curtain down, Memphis Lower the curtain down, alright Got no time for private consultation Under the Milky Way tonight Wish I knew what you were looking for Something shimmering and white in the night Wish I knew what you were looking for Might I know what you were buying Wish I knew what you were looking for Might I know what you were buying It ended up pretty well for you, it was top 10 here in Australia and top 50 in the US.
Yeah. It’s still your biggest hit, isn’t it? Oh, totally. I did an interview the other day and someone said, I hope you don’t mind me saying this, Under the Milky Way is bigger than the church.
Your song is bigger than you, and I said, that’s true, it is. People know that song that don’t even know me, and you cannot, you would not, I challenge you to listen to all the cover versions on YouTube. There’s like a thousand different people on YouTube doing it.
It’s been used in movies, it’s been used in car ads, it’s been used in tourism ads, it’s been used in TV shows. Everybody’s had a go at it, and it’s bigger than me, it’s bigger than the band. Yeah, absolutely, there you go.
I wish I had 10 songs like that. I wish I had 10 songs that were as big and as famous as, you look at the Beatles, they had like 50 of those. Yeah.
But I’ve only got one. Do you keep trying for the next one, the next big one? Oh, it’s too late. Yes, the band, we can’t have a hit single now, you don’t have hit singles in your 70s, you know, it just doesn’t happen.
But yeah, we tried to have more hit singles. Metropolis, which came on the next album, was kind of a minor-ish hit. I’ve never been, never cried like you Never heard from you Don’t say nothing good will ever come Say the damage is worse than Back in the tropics Circuses and elephants Where the oranges grew Back in the tropics The fever never topples When I’m standing with you It’s a cloud of orchids Circuses and elephants Fell down on their knees Hope they scramble for leaves Circuses and elephants Where the oranges grew Back in the tropics The fever never topples When I’m standing with you It’s a cloud of orchids Circuses and elephants Fell down on their knees Hope they scramble for leaves Circuses and elephants Yeah, I did it for the money.
They offered me, I don’t know, 20 grand. Hey, write your memoirs. Note it’s my memoirs, not my autobiography.
I wouldn’t have known the difference between those two things. I don’t think I do. No, there is a kind of a difference.
Your autobiography is like A cleaned up version. No, no, it’s more deeply philosophical and like the whole history of everything from the beginning up until where you are. Whereas my memoirs were just like the highlights of some good and stupid things that I got up to.
Then I dated this girl and then I took this drug and then I appeared on this TV show and then I blah, blah, blah. That’s far more interesting actually. Yeah, yeah.
But there definitely is a difference between memoirs and autobiographies. Well, I found myself needing to check this out further and upon investigation discovered, as Steve had rightly pointed to, that an autobiography provides a factual, chronological account of the author’s entire life covering major events and themes. A memoir, by contrast, focuses on a specific period, theme or set of experiences within the author’s life prioritising emotional truth, personal reflection and the subjective experience of those events.
The primary difference is the slice of life versus the whole pie where an autobiography is the entire pie. The memoir is a slice, a focused exploration of a single event or theme within that life. I haven’t read Steve’s book, Something Quite Peculiar, but I’m going to make a point of doing just that.
I did it for the money. I love your honesty. Yeah.
And I love your music too because you’re up to your 25th studio album, Man, Woman, Life, Death, Infinity, how profound, in 2017 and you still kept working, doing your own solo stuff as well. So there’s never been a time where you’ve actually stopped making music, or not to date, right? No. And loving it? No.
I have to keep going all the time. Or what will happen? I would sort of explode. I’d be really unfulfilled because I’m just as creative now as I ever was and I’m working with all these, I’ve got all these different collaborators now.
I’ve like all these, it’s me and Martin Kennedy, me and Gareth Koch, me and The Wind Heals, me and Speed of the Stars, me just on my own. Do you have one favourite song? One favourite song? Yeah. No.
Good. It’s too many. I know, I know, and it’s like picking between children, I get that.
Yeah, if you’ve got 1,500 children, as is Stephen. You may well have, Steve Kilby, for all we know. I could do.
From the life that you’ve led for sure. But I do want to talk to you about this tour that you’re undertaking. Yeah.
With the church. You’re heading off to America, you’re heading into Australia later this year. It’s called The Singles Tour and it’s the first time that the church has ever played a show in this kind of format.
It is. Tell me a little bit about that. I just, I just, it just seemed like a good idea.
It seemed like that’s what everybody wanted. I’ve got a very good friend who’s a promoter and he said, Steve, let’s do the singles show. You know, like what are you waiting for? He said, I guarantee it’s just going to, people are going to want it.
And I thought, yeah, you know. Why not? There used to be a show and it was all because you asked for it. And so that’s what, that’s what I say to myself.
I’m doing it. I’m doing it because people want me to do it and they want to hear all these songs together. And it’s about bloody time.
I’ve been doing a lot of esoteric navel gazing in my life and that’s good, but it’s time to, you know. Hold your head up. Pull on the grease paint and go out there and do the singles show and I’m kind of looking forward to it.
Awesome. Well, there are so many hit singles. You must have a favourite of those.
Which one do you like playing most? Well, have you heard Ripple? I haven’t. Okay, it’s on Pre Sequel’s Aura. It’s a really good song.
I really enjoyed playing that one. Can’t even find the gold fleece In the drag of this atmosphere Now I don’t wanna be A delicate matter No, I’m much rather A bribe of life Cause bribery gets me everywhere But she’s punching the tires And crossed all my wires I’ve burned your record lights As I fuck our riders And the fire’s setting it on fire Love you like you’ve been in a cold plain sea You’ll be my girlfriend like you will be I wish you something like To love you more That song from The Church’s 25th studio album. Steve seems to have lost count of the number of albums he’s released on his own.
I make it around 20. As he mentioned, he’s been doing lots of collaborations over recent years, the latest of which is an album called The Road to Tibubara. It’s the second album by the band The Winged Heels, which features Steve on vocals, 12-string guitar, electric guitar, and bass.
People talk about Your faults and your addiction There’s one thing They fail to see They stitch you up And bitch about your predilection You are like A father to me Sometimes you live the truth Sometimes you live the fiction Sometimes a buccaneer Sometimes a refugee You sign sweet benediction If you’re interested in catching The Church with Steve Kilby in concert, many of the Australian dates are already sold out. There are a couple of new shows available for late 2025, early 2026, and Steve is excited that the US tour is now set to take place in the summer of next year. I’ll let you go, Steve Kilby.
I think we’ve beaten the battery on your phone. Thank you, Sandy. It’s been a real pleasure.
And any time again, I’d love to do more in-depth talk with you, for sure. Awesome. Sounds good to me.
Lots of love to you. Bye. Bye, Steve.
Bye, Sandy. Cause it’s a beautiful day You’ve been listening to A Breath of Fresh Air with Sandy Kaye. Beautiful day Oh, I bet any day that you’re gone away It’s a beautiful day A breath of fresh air