Hi there, Brian here, joined by Simon and welcoming you to another edition of So the Jerker on songwriting.

With us for episode 304 is a celebrated Australian singer-songwriter and musician,

whose prolific and hugely varied output across a four-decade career has incorporated folk,

rock, bluegrass, country, contemporary classical and even experimental

dub.

Considered a national hero in his homeland, he was inducted into the ARIA Hall of Fame in 1997

and is the recipient of multiple APRA awards for his songwriting, as well as their prestigious

Ted Albert Award.

In 2017, he was appointed Officer of the Order of Australia for services

to the performing arts and promotion of the national identity. Only a year on from his last

studio offering, fever-longing still, he recently dropped a brand new record entitled 70. One of its tracks,

Rita wrote a letter is a belated sequel to his much-loved 1996 song How to Make Gravy, now an established Aussie Christmas

classic. We're delighted to welcome the great Paul Kelly to the show. Paul was

born in 1955 and raised in Adelaide, South Australia, one of eight children. There was

always music floating around the Kelly household, whether it was the radio, his

parents' classical records, or his mother's piano playing.

Paul himself took piano lessons for a couple of years before switching to the trumpet age 12,

which he kept up all the way through high school.

Through his elder siblings' record collections, he discovered The Beatles, the Stones,

Bob Dylan, Pink Floyd, the Moody Blues and Jethro Tub,

and his sister Sheila taught him his very first guitar codes. Our guest later briefly attended

Flinders University to study philosophy, drama and history, and while there fell in with a new

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