Dan Kelly is launching his new record GOLDFEELS at the Bridge Hotel on Sunday, September 8 with his band Regional Crisis (Gus Agars, Ben Woolley and Dan Luscombe). 

A rumination on the cycles of time, Kelly has used his home of Campbells Creek as inspiration to create songs for his latest album which brims with unexpected and invigorating moments that take listeners on a journey through the goldfields of Dja Dja Wurrung country. 

“I’m looking at the darker side of the ‘tree change,’ enforced isolation and looking at the bush,” Kelly told the Mail.“A lot of things happened during that time – my friend got sick and my father passed away halfway through COVID, which was a huge event in my life. 

“I went into a grey zone, where it was like, things that hadn’t happened were just about to happen. Sitting looking at the same bush everyday I started to get a real concept of the way different indigenous cultures think about time, that it is way out of this linear, events based process,” he said. 

“Even though this is my most intensely personal record, it’s not what you would call a confessional. I’ve had to construct these vignettes that tell a story of what I did and what I was thinking. Like the feeling of driving through the bush in a little Honda Jazz and getting completely dominated by everyone else’s white Utes or trying to get into the local doctor and it taking six months.” 

While GOLDFEELS deals with darker and heavier themes than Kelly has explored previously, it still brims with unexpected and invigorating moments of music on every track, pulling from influences from the most idiosyncratic sides of Sly Stone, Neil Young and John Lennon, flavours of yacht rock and classic indie rock. 

“As an over thinker I’ve had a tendency to over adjourn records in the past, but not for a while, so it was just a bit more like, let’s just capture this,” Kelly said. 

“The one thing I did do through Covid was teach myself a bunch of other instruments; mandolin and banjo, but particularly piano, in terms of being able to sing and play left and right hand, which is actually quite hard! “I tried to do my piano style in the late- 50s protopunk- African American piano based rock and roll – I’m fascinated by that, it can be humorous, everything happens in two and a half minutes, but there’s all these little worlds contained in it and it makes you feel good.” 

A dark compact epic, combining remedial piano boogie, widescreen electric guitar happenings, traditional Irish instruments and Dan’s patented macro/micro lyrical adventures, GOLDFEELS touches on important local questions. 

“It’s like Bob Dylan say’s, ‘I’m a song and dance man’. 

“I’ve grown up listening to all types of music and being part of a musical family that’s come down from my great-grandparents who were Opera conductors and singers. I just want to be a part of that – that’s how I place myself and I’m trying my best to do that.” 

For more information visit https://thebridgehotelcastlemaine.com/gigs.