Kasey Chambers a dead ringer for success

By ELEANOR BLACK

Kasey Chambers is lounging on the sofa in her Avoca Beach home, north of Sydney, contemplating her stomach. The chatty, alternative country singer is eight months pregnant and settling into her first round of telephone interviews for months.

She is not usually a fan of these back-to-back, all-day sessions, but she stopped work a month ago to get ready for the baby so talking about her work is a welcome novelty.

"You do notice the difference between the first interview of the day and the last," she admits with a raspy chuckle. "But don't worry, you're only [third] today. I'm still fresh."

The 25-year-old singer-songwriter has good reason to be pleased with herself and life in general.

While the baby is her biggest project to date, Chambers is a rising crossover country star in the US and a firm favourite with Australians, who have followed her career since she was a teenager travelling with her family band, the Dead Ringers. In New Zealand, her single Not Pretty Enough has risen to No 4 in the charts.

After going solo in 1999 she won two Arias (the Australian Grammy) for her double platinum freshman effort, The Captain. Her second album, Barricades and Brickwalls, is already triple platinum in Australia, but it is her achievements in the traditional home of country music that has the industry buzzing.

Chambers prefers to view her Nashville success as a fluke, but her pop/country/folk sound, a mix that is difficult for radio programmers to categorise and caused her grief in the past, has also found favour in Hollywood.

Two songs from the new album are to air on episodes of Roswell and Dawson's Creek. Chambers has appeared on The Late Show With David Letterman and Austin City Limits, an influential country variety programme. And she's performed at the Grand Ole Opry.

Barricades and Brickwalls went to No 1 on the American blues and roots chart, leaving Willie Nelson to settle for second place.

Part of her popularity, says Chambers, with another of those appealing throaty laughs, is related to the affection Americans have for Australians, especially actors. Nicole Kidman, Naomi Watts and Russell Crowe (hey, they think he's Australian?) are leading examples of Aussie cool.

"It's been like a whole lot of stepping stones - and we're still not taking America by storm," says Chambers, disregarding breathless press reports that compare her to Lucinda Williams and Emmylou Harris, both idols.

"To be honest, I think there's a whole lot of luck. I don't know what's happening, some breakdown in the system ...

"I grew up listening to American country music and I still mostly listen to American country music.

"To get to go over there and play gigs and actually to meet some of the people I've listened to and been influenced by, tour with them, and work with them is really amazing.

"Sometimes I do feel like I'm this little girl from Australia and here I am trying to show them how to sing country. It's ridiculous!"

Having spent years worrying that her music was too poppy for the country scene and too twangy for mainstream listeners ( Not Pretty Enough refers to this angst), Chambers has given up trying to please industry hitmakers who get nervous when they can't easily package an artist's sound.

Not only does she not sound like a traditional country singer, she doesn't look or act like one. Chambers' dark hair is cut in an asymmetric bob and frames a face that, while arresting, is not conventionally pretty. A round metal stud sits below her bottom lip and there is another in her nose. If she wears a cowboy hat on stage, it is too small and tilted to the side in parody. And she listens to the Red Hot Chili Peppers.

"I don't think I ever feel like I really fit in, but saying that, I don't think I really try to either. I like doing my own thing."

Chambers' unconventional music springs from an unusual upbringing. In 1976, when she was three weeks old, her family moved to the Nullarbor Plain, where parents Bill and Diane spent 10 years trapping foxes for fur.

When they moved back to "civilisation", the adults reignited their singing careers by performing in pubs.

When Chambers and her brother, Nash, were old enough they joined in and the family band became a national legend, lauded by Australian country king Slim Dusty and winning a saddlebag full of Arias and Gold Guitars.

All the family are still part of her music - Bill plays slide guitar and dobro, Diane takes care of merchandising and Nash produces. Chambers hopes her baby, with actor partner Cori Hopper, will be a part of the family tradition. Later in the year she wants to take the baby on the road.

"I'm just playing it by ear. My mum keeps saying all babies are different and all mums are different. You might really enjoy going out on the road or you might hate it.

"I was such a part of my mum and dad's lifestyle when I was growing up, and I thank them for that now. I'd like my baby to have some of that too."

And if being a mother overtakes her music, that would be okay too, says the contented Chambers, even if it means her dream collaborations with Ben Harper and Emmylou Harris stay that way.

"If it all goes away tomorrow, I've had a hell of a time and I can't complain. I'm having a ball."

* Barricades and Brickwalls is out now.