Not quite as old as Steve Kilbey, I am, nevertheless, old. When I was in my twenties I did a lot of long-distance driving, with the radio, cassette or later CD on full blast as I hewed my way through spacetime. I soaked up Mark Knopfler, Eric Clapton, Joan Armatrading, Ross Wilson, Leonard Cohen, and, yes, Steve Kilbey. I wasn't much of a gig-goer back then: in that era, I only made the effort to see Joe Jackson and Elvis Costello (There is only one king, and his name is Elvis. Elvis Costello) and a few long-defunct local bands: people like Unit 17 and the Gibbering Monkeys. My introduction to then-new music was mostly through the radio.
In my dotage I'm behaving more the way I should have back then, and I'm going to gigs more. Of course, Covid put the brakes on that. I'm also involved with the local writers' group, the Outback Writers' Centre., who have regular meetings in a nearby cultural centre.
I was on my way to one of those meetings last weekend, when a notice on the notice-board that I usually walk past at speed caught my eye. Steve Kilbey plays all The Church Singles in a night of music and conversation. I backed up, read it carefully, photographed it, then went to my meeting. Later, I got myself a ticket.
I've watched a few interviews over the years. Now, I know that when I've had enough of working (dreadful work or pet projects), I will do what most people do: I will turn on the TV and slump in my favourite chair. What do you think a creative musician like Steve does when he stops working? Slumps in a chair in front of a flickering screen? That's right, he gets out the brushes and does paintings. More work, more creativity.
I've been very active in the international Tarot community over a great many years, and in a treasure-trove of a forum that used to exist I heard that Steve Kilbey had put together a Tarot deck, out of reproductions of many of his artworks. I was never not going to get that, so I emailed the person in charge of marketing, and asked how I would go about buying a deck.
The story was this, back then. Currently the decks had been printed, but they were boxed up. The band were in Australia, getting ready for a tour of America, and the decks would only be sold through the merch table at their gigs. I said I'd be more than happy to pay for it to be mailed to me before they left. Nope. They'd mail me one, but only after the tour had started, and Americans had had first crack at buying it! Imagine that: an Australian deck-creator, still in Australia, with his decks still in Australia also, and his henchman refuses to make an early sale to another Australian, only a few hundred kilometres down the road!
To say I was bemused would be ... tactful. Still, I was given no other option.
I waited months. The tour finally happened. I eventually made a payment. An Australian deck was mailed to me ... from America.
And I loved it.
So when I got myself a ticket to last night's gig, I was always going to take the deck and see if he would sign it for me. Also, I was going to scan the merch table and see if they still had the deck in production - if so, I had evil schemes to buy as many decks as my little arms could carry, then later sell or trade most of them off in the hard-core Tarot community.
Because it is SUCH a potent deck. And with a limited print-run, it's automatically sought-after.
It took me a day to locate my copy, because it was lurking in the back of my collection, trying to be invisible. And it nearly got away with it, too! The box is a deep cobalt-blue, the backs also - no visible surface to sign, there. And I'd long rid myself of the title card, if there ever was one in the first place, so nothing to sign there. I'd have to get him to sign the face of a card.
So I sat down with the deck, thumbing though the well-known and well-loved images, deciding which one I could sacrifice to his signature. Muxing? Lost? I decided on Truce. It's a fairly odd watercolour: fence, windows, heterochromatic eyes. The Sun was another choice and perhaps would have been a better background colour for black felt pen, but he would have had to sign over one of his better self-portraits: a distrustful expression on a slightly older face than many of 'em. I wasn't about to let that happen.
I had the deck with me when I turned up and showed my ticket, then straight to the merch table, where a lovely, friendly young woman chatted to me for quite a while. I was disappointed that there were not decks for sale - I bought a book instead, "Something Quite Peculiar". I have a pile of to-be-read books waiting for me, and I'm looking forward to all of them, but I'm looking forward to this one, too.
We talked about the Tarot deck, too, which apparently is out of print, and I said I wanted it signed. At the end of a very enjoyable night the same girl strongly suggested that I should just force myself backstage and crash his unwinding-time. Others had done it, he wouldn't mind. I very much doubted that, but I did it anyway.
He looked at the box: Tarot of the Time Being, a gorgeous play on words that I have always loved. He said it didn't exist any more. I said here it was, blatantly existing right in front of his eyes. And not just existing, but loved. We talked a bit, he signed the card for me, I told him what my favourite Church song was (not a single, so not on the programme), and he was pleased - nobody mentions that one, and he seemed proud of the writing and ideas in the song. It exists on YouTube: look up The Day They Turned Off the Great Machine, from the album the Hologram of Baal. It's worth a very serious listen.
Before I left, he offered to pull a card for me. He pulled the Ace of Spirits. He thought it was predictive, and it was about what a wonderful day I'd have today. I thought it was expressive, and was about what a wonderful night I had last night. At the bottom of this post you can see it plus the card he signed. Below them are the three cards I pulled about his reaction to our contact. "Lover and "Imitation" seem to me to say that he saw me as an adoring fan. The Sun, with that strong expression leavened with a slightly ironic smile, implies that he didn't hate the contact between us.
The night had had a very early start, so we were done and dusted by ten. Friday is Karaoke Night, which ends at midnight. So I raced off down there, and sang "Unguarded Moment" entirely differently to the way he sings it, as a tribute.
But before I left the gig ... during the performance he had borrowed a capo from the venue as he'd left his own somewhere. They lent him one. I saw it being returned at the end of the night, so I sidled up to the staff, and offered to buy it. I am now the proud owner of a capo that has only ever been used by Steve Kilbey not on his famous bass but on a twelve-string. Used during a gig on the 7th October, 2022 in Dubbo. Such is its provenance.
I fell into bed at the end of the night, a very happy old woman.
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