Katrina Brandon
HERE comes legendary the Don Walker, a member of Cold Chisel, who is coming to Gippsland on March 24 at Live At The Bundy, supporting his 2023 album Lightning in a Clear Blue Sky.
With the recent performance by Ian Moss at The Wedge and now Don Walker, you would think that this year is a Gippsland Cold Chisel experience. Who’s next? Jimmy?
In and out of Cold Chisel, Mr Walker’s writing skills have been admired by others for his meticulous focus on getting the song just right.
“I sometimes work hard on getting a line right, and sometimes I have been lucky enough to have a whole song downloaded into my head in real time. It’s the full range of experience,” he said.
Sparking inspiration to write his first album of his own in 10 years, Mr Walker said that over a year, his new album didn’t take long. Rather, it was just spread out over a few days between Melbourne and Sydney. The album was finished by October 2022, eight songs within it, and for vinyl listeners, a bonus disk with a separate recording of the same songs.
Mr Walker told the Gippsland Times that he most resonates with songs ‘Empty Dance-Hall’ and ‘Jungle Pam’. He said that ‘Empty Dance-Hall’ was him going with jazz, and ‘Jungle Pam’, a swampy rock song, was inspired by something that George Young would play and listen to.
Behind Mr Walker’s strong song writing skills, are his real-life insecurities, such as hoping that the crowd is having the best time they can, features a spot in his mind.
He said, “ultimately, I am in front of people and trying to do what I do with people around me. Doing what we do in the best and convincing way possible so that the people there see something worth being there for is a good way to spend their time. I want people to have fun.”
“Having remembered the last line mixed in with the fear of forgetting something in the next line because the songs I do, not all of them, can be quite dense with the storytelling. If you screw up, there’s much more pressure than if I am singing by memory.”
Besides the challenges, Mr Walker has enjoyed his time as a musician and has had many highlights, such as hearing his songs on the radio.
“People starting to like the songs that I wrote that Cold Chisel was doing when we were doing what people weren’t supposed to like. That was a big surprise for me,” he said.
“The people that I play with are very good. They’re the best. They are the people other bands look at, and so we take what we do musically very seriously, but to get there, there is a lot of humour in it. I think that people can see a bunch of people on stage who are pretty good at what they do and don’t take it lightly.”
To get to where he is now, Mr Walker said that starting off, he wanted to do something completely different from those already established artists and says that those who want to do music should do the same.
“Ignore any advice from old people … we thought we had a much better idea, and we did. The real people, young people coming along, are not following advice from those who came before. They are staying true to the force within them,” he said.
For more information, go to the Live At The Bundy website.
Lightning in a Clear Blue Sky is Don Walker’s fourth studio album.
