Songs of ‘Home’: Ending/Beginning

Time to embarrass my children now. LOOK AT THOSE PHOTOS. They were (and still are) too cute.

I’ve participated in the I Heart Songwriting Club, run by the wonderful Francesca De Valance, on and off for years. This piece was one that I sketched out roughly as a weekly challenge way back in 2016, the year that my oldest baby, Charlie (now in his last year of uni), was finishing primary school. Any mother knows that this is a time when you feel all the feels (even though it seems a bit silly now to get overly emotional about him finishing Year 6) and writing this was cathartic at the time. 

That year I also had a really beautiful group of Year 12s - the first that I’d seen through Senior Music at my old school. I grew close to them and was dreading when I had to say goodbye to them at their graduation (I tell myself every year that I’m not going to get emotional, but I do every time). I wrote this one just before their last school performance, and played it for them (through tears because I am a sook), with my boys in the audience.

I didn’t do anything more than that with the piece until it came time to find songs for the album. I was happy with the sentiment of the song and the music, but I can never express myself as eloquently as my friend David Megarrity can. He’s always known what to say and how to say it, even if the subject is difficult. (One of my favourite lyrics of his is from a song he wrote for The Goodbye Notes in the early 2000s - “I’m making a home for you to leave/I’m holding you close now so later I can grieve…” . If that doesn’t capture parenthood in two sentences, I don’t know what does.) I sent the lyrics of Ending/Beginning to him at the end of 2023 and, in true David fashion, he sent back a perfectly crafted story of a parent experiencing the bittersweet years of watching their child grow, and letting them go. I’m so grateful for how he wove my story around and through his clever words. 

I started planning the album in late 2023, just as my youngest son, Toby, was finishing high school, which gave it a new meaning for me. Last year ended and this year started with enormous changes for us, including us preparing the house that we’ve lived in for most of the kids’ childhoods for sale. I’ve never been very good with change, and I have so many regrets about not being around enough when the kids were little, so letting go of that time hurts right in my chest and stomach. I’m really grateful for being able to process all of these feelings through music - I can’t imagine how I’d ever do that without it.

I’m forever grateful to the wonderful Kristin Berardi for lending her voice and heart to this piece. I always heard her voice in my head when I imagined what the piece would sound like, and to hear the real thing is more than I could have hoped for. I’m also very happy to have a former student from that Year 12 class, and incredible vocalist, Rahel Phillips, performing it at the album launch, which feels like taking it full circle.

This song is, of course, dedicated to my sons, Charlie and Toby, with every ounce of my love, and excitement to see what they do at the beginning of their new big journeys. xx

Songs of ‘Home’: 22 Years

This guy. 

When you’re married to a brilliant, prolific, renowned composer (shut up, yes, you are), it’s a bit daunting to compose music yourself, let along compose a piece *for* him. 

22 Years is how long we’d been married when I wrote this one - it’s 23 now. That’s a lot of years of giggles, sleepless nights with little babies, terrible jokes, car trips, Sunday mornings, laughing at dogs, tears, lots and lots of music, and even more hugs. It’s not even close to possible to put all of that properly into words, so I did my best to put it into music instead. Even if it was the most spectacular piece ever written it still wouldn’t be enough, but hopefully he feels the sentiment behind it anyway. 

Love.

Songs of ‘Home’: The Spaces In Between

Mum and Dad (photo by Jill Kerswill)

This piece is about small and consistent acts of love. Grand gestures are lovely, but it’s actually the little everyday things through which true love is demonstrated. The cups of tea, the messages asking how your day is going, the unexpected hug in the kitchen while tidying up after dinner. The knowledge that someone is thinking of you and has your back, no matter how crappy or wonderful your day has been.

I’ve been lucky enough to have incredible role models for this in my parents. It’s definitely not always been rosy (because, you know, marriage), but they are each other’s rock, and safe space to fall. There have been some almost unendurable trials in the past decade - we didn’t think that Dad would be here now but he was discharged from palliative care last year (who even does that?!) - and it’s an absolute joy to see them both embracing life again, although it’s different than before.

Throughout it all, Mum has been there for all the appointments, the unending dressing and redressing of wounds, the countless scans, tests and procedures the chemo, radiation and immunotherapy, the times when it felt hopeless and impossible. Last year was so hard for everyone in our family, but it forces you to stock and notice all the small things. The way that Mum and Dad’s love has grown even stronger despite everything has been a privilege to witness.

During one of the darkest moments in mid-2024, I sat down to just play, to find some kind of solace in the chaos and grief. This piece seemed to fall out, almost complete, as if the universe wanted to help me process everything that was happening and reassure me that it was going to be ok, no matter what happened.

Real love is not necessarily flowers on Valentine’s Day, or big showy displays of affection for other people to see. It’s the quiet, unspoken, unseen acts that happen in the spaces in between, the everyday things that make life worth living and love worth treasuring.

The Spaces In Between is inspired by and dedicated to my parents, Paul and Kerri Crooks, and the family that they have lovingly built over 47 years of marriage.

Songs of ‘Home’: Kintsugi

A framed print by @sogayjen of an illustration of Hannah Gadsby with her quote, “There is nothing stronger than a broken woman who has healed herself”.

I wish I could go back in time and tell Baby Kellee what the period between 2019 and the end of 2024 was going to be like. I think she’d look at me wide-eyed, incredulous and probably scared, unable to believe that she’d come out the other side in one piece. It was a lot, and seemed never-ending. This isn’t the place to go into all the ridiculous details (buy me a non-alcoholic drink sometime and I’ll tell you about it), but it felt like I was lurching from one traumatic event to another and I couldn’t see the alleged light at the end of the tunnel. I totally lost faith in people and isolated myself.

This was just after Australian treasure, comedian Hannah Gadsby, released Nanette, their ground - and heart - breaking Netflix special. They were so honest and open and *raw* in this piece - if you haven’t seen it, I can’t recommend it enough. The show is about their life, their trauma, their self-discovery, their strength, (and is somehow also hilarious and deeply moving at the same time) and I was very affected by it.

At one point, they said something that felt like a thunderclap in my brain.

There is nothing stronger than a broken woman who has healed herself.

Not long after that, I bought a print by @sogayjen with an illustration of Hannah Gadsby and this quote. I have it hanging on the wall in my bathroom where I put on my war paint (i.e. make up) as a reminder. Seeing that everyday seared it into my mind and helped me to push through some of the various forms shit that life has thrown at me over the last few years.

Kintsugi - the Japanese artform - is, to me the artistic, tangible embodiment of this quote. It’s the practice of taking pieces of broken ceramic objects and using lacquer and powdered gold to put them back together again. The result highlights the cracks rather than trying to make them invisible, and is stronger and more beautiful than the original.

So am I. Kintsugi came out of my processing of the events of the last few years. It has moments of introspection and anger, but, despite everything, is hopeful and retains a sense of humour that I thought I’d lost. Playing it for the first time with Samuel and John was incredibly fun and somehow vindicating, and I really appreciated them rolling with the changing emotions of the piece. Samuel solos like a boss during a transition that builds beautifully into John leading us in some crazy double-time feel madness at the end, with some very cathartic bashing and crashing.

Don’t let the bastards win.

Songs of ‘Home’

This is an ongoing series of thoughts about each of the pieces from the upcoming release, Home, which will be available digitally on March 6.

Home

Our boys, not long after we bought our house

The main melodic idea for the song Home came into my head years ago. I was in the middle of a ‘I Heart Songwriting Club’ program (in which musicians sign up for a 10-week challenge to write one song each week in an hour) and this melody just popped up. I didn’t use it for the challenge that week, but I burrowed it away somewhere in the deep recesses of my brain for the future.

I finally got around to working on it during one of the first pandemic lockdowns in 2020. That was a really strange, scary time for everyone with so much uncertainty. Tom was lecturing online instead of in person at the Con, and the boys were doing Year 8 and Year 9 from home and I was trying to run a Prep to Year 12 extracurricular Music department from my computer without actually being able to properly make music with any of the kids. Added to that were the terrifying unknowns… not knowing whether one of us was going to get sick, worrying about family, the empathy we felt with so many of our musician friends doing it really tough after having lost all their gigs.

Despite everything, I have some fond memories of our time in lockdown. We’re a family of hermits and often quite like just being together at home, so we made the most of enforced confinement. There were chess games, movie nights, playing with the dogs, taking things slow, and lots and lots of pots of tea. It felt like the universe was standing still for a while and, while most of the rest of the world bore the brunt of it, we enjoyed the slower pace of life while it lasted.

When I play this song, I think of that time. It’s lightness and lazy Sunday mornings with no alarms to set. It’s long breakfasts of crepes and coffee with ABC Classic playing in the background. It’s finishing class online for the day and sitting outside, watching the dogs play tug-o-war with a rope, the big one dragging the little one around the yard. It’s cross stitch and podcasts and watching the boys draw or read or giggle while they play computer games.

I am forever indebted to Andrew Butt, my good friend and mentor (who we often call Jazz Dad) for playing saxophone on this song, and for recording, filming and editing a live version of it in 2021. It’s likely that I may not have done anything with the piece, or continued writing more, if it weren’t for his belief in me and my music. He even submitted it to the 2022 Queensland Music Awards, for which it received a Highly Commended. Andrew also generously offered for us to record the album in the studios at Marist College Ashgrove, for which I’m very grateful, as well as for his performance on another of the tracks.

The updated album version of Home also features Samuel Vincent on double bass and John Parker on drums. They have incredible ears and insight, and John really changed the feel of the piece by adding a train beat (who woulda thought?) which I LOVE.