Chasing Ghosts’ Jimmy Kyle on the stories behind his music
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04.05.2019

Chasing Ghosts’ Jimmy Kyle on the stories behind his music

Words by Anna Rose

Young Henrys’ Best Served Loud series returns this month with a swathe of top notch music from local talents across some of Victoria’s most-loved venues – and it’s all free. 

In April, the program’s third instalment will see the likes of Luke Yeoward, Hanny J and Jimmy Kyle present a night of poignant storytelling.

Best known as the frontman of Chasing Ghosts, Jimmy Kyle is scheduled to perform at Best Served Loud with something a little different to what fans know him to have done with his band. “The biggest difference is new material,” Kyle says. “It’s an opportunity to showcase some of the new writing for the album I’m about to release.

“I think as well it’s an opportunity to talk through some of those subjects a little more intimately – I guess the stories are more poignant.

Still trying to get his first coffee down his gullet, Kyle doesn’t quite know what to say about his set at Best Served Loud. But if it’s the intimate stories he’s noted, then there’s nothing better than a coffee in hand as he mulls over his latest work. “It’s about overcoming obstacles that I guess were universal obstacles in some ways, but they’re quite specific in their circumstances.

“One song we’ve been working on, is around a friend of mine who was bashed really severely as part of a hate crime for being a gay man. That’s the depth of the story but it goes further where during the court case, my mate advocated for the two men that bashed him to not face prison time.

“He said well ‘Hey, doubling down harder isn’t the answer’. I think there’s a bigger story there than just an assault happening – there’s this story about someone with so much depth in their humanity they have a humane approach to the horrific circumstances.”

Of Indigenous heritage, Kyle also places a heavy focus on Aboriginal issues –  his music discussing where Australian society is at today with its First Nations people.

“As an Aboriginal person, I’m perplexed by how [wide] the gap of understanding is,” he says. “It’s hard to get my head around how people can live in a country they claim to be a part of but not speak a single [Indigenous] word, they still speak a foreign language.

“They have that foreign head of state, they can’t understand every summer why they get sunburnt and say that ‘we’ve established white colonies’. It’s like, ‘Nah bro, these are Aboriginal lands, New Zealand lands, Maori lands.

“This is the black part of the world. That’s why white people get sunburnt – we have the highest rate of melanoma on the planet.”

As Kyle talks about trying to create stories of humanity, he’s also attempting to look broader, and contemporise his musings. “Some of these discussions are trying to get people conscious of facts and realities,” he says, “and to talk about the narrative in a way that will engage people. That’s what I’m hoping to bring to my set.

“I’m trying to refine classic tales and find the modern elements in them that haven’t been told yet.”

A lot of what Kyle is trying to get out there is, to some degree, best explained with his music. “There’s a craft to telling a story,” he says. “A big part of Chasing Ghosts is the banter and I think it’s very singer-songwriter in that sense.

“There’s definitely an art to telling a story before one coffee. But I think that’s also part of the challenge between now and then – learning how to articulate stories around these sorts of subjects.”

Jimmy Kyle performs at The Standard Hotel as part of Young Henrys’ Best Served Loud series on Thursday April 25. It’s all free.