Kate Miller-Heidke on Logies snub: ‘I’m still not important enough for plus one’
Kate Miller-Heidke and husband Keir Nuttall reveal how they fell in love, ahead of her Logies nomination.
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In a heartwarming and hilarious edition of Couple Goals, husband and wife Kate Miller-Heidke and Keir Nuttall share how they fell in love over VBs and why they’re each other’s biggest fans. The couple have been together for 24 years and married for eight of them and share nine-year-old son, Ernie.
Keir asks:
What were your first impressions of me?
Kate: I remember seeing you at the Conservatorium of Music and we didn’t have anything to do with each other at uni. You were studying jazz guitar. I was studying classical voice. But I remember your piercing eyes. I remember thinking, oh, there’s a lot going on behind those eyes. I wonder who that guy is? And then we actually met for real at The Regatta. There was a band competition. You were up against my band and it was judged using a clapometer. You won the competition. The prize was four jugs of VB and you were kind enough to share some of that VB with me. I fell in love with your songs without knowing you.
Keir: I remember being worried that I wouldn’t like your songs, because I wasn’t listening that night. And so when I went to your first gig, I was really relieved that I loved your songs too. Now I think you’re just the best songwriter that I know.
What is the most romantic thing I’ve ever done for you? Kate: Neither of us goes in for this sort of textbook sentimentality. Like Valentine’s Day we don’t celebrate, we barely even celebrate each other’s birthdays.
Keir: You often forget my birthday.
Kate: And you’ve often forgotten mine. I think if I came home to see a bunch of rose petals scattered around I’d think like you’d lost your mind. I think underneath that all, you can be really romantic. When I met you and I knew what a great songwriter you were, I was badgering you to write me a love song and eventually you did and it’s just the most gorgeous, beautiful, pure love song. It’s called Space They Cannot Touch. It became the first song on my first EP. It was the reason I ended up getting a record deal.
How has having a child impacted our relationship? Kate: It’s really deepened our connection. I’ve seen what an incredible father you are. It’s truly been 50-50 ever since Ernie was born. We are a partnership. You changed every nappy for the first couple of years.
Keir: That was the deal, you breastfeed, I change the nappies.
How do you feel about being a music veteran up for a “newcomer” award at the Logies?
Kate: I feel amazing about it actually. I think it’s a total honour. I used to bristle at the word veteran. It felt like something that should be reserved for the elderly but now I think it’s quite a privilege to have had a pretty long career in such a fickle, strange industry. Really lucky and how cool to get to open a window into an entirely new world, the world of television (as a coach on Channel 7’s The Voice).
Keir: Yeah, it’s wild. Who saw that coming? You’ve done really well. I’m excited for you. I think it’ll be a trip. I mean, you probably won’t win but it’s an honour just to be nominated.
Kate: Totally. I’m still not important enough to get a plus one. I’m sorry that you’re not invited.
Keir: That’s okay, I don’t like getting dressed up too much. Today was already a bit of a stretch. But you’re going for the journey, it’s a wild ride. I mean, you’ve never won an ARIA?
Kate: I think I’m the biggest ARIA award loser in history.
What’s the toughest thing we’ve gone through as a couple? Kate: It’s navigating how to work together as a couple long term. You have this sort of intensely close and intimate relationship and then sometimes when you take that into a collaborative work setting, you can be a bit inconsiderate with the other person’s feelings. We’re very blunt with each other. If either of us does something that the other one doesn’t like or if you spend four days working on something that you think is awesome and I listen to it once and go, no, I’m not into it, it can be really hard for our whole relationship.
When did you feel the most vulnerable in our relationship? Kate: It would have been during childbirth and straight after. It was a really traumatic birth. You were right there, you know, during the whole messy process, me shitting myself. Our baby was sick for the first week and he had to stay in a humidicrib and I’d just given birth and everything felt really tenuous and like life was sort of hanging by a thread. I like to feel in control. It is an exercise in surrender.
Kate asks:
When did you know it was love?
Keir: I think it was when we had that night together at Woodford where we just hung out and we saw John Butler Trio. We sat on the hill, it was the first night we got to spend a long time together. I’d seen you around the festival that day but we finished the night together drinking VBs and I was watching the way you had this lust for life in the way you were drinking your tinnie of VB and there was just something so wonderful about it. I remember lying awake in my tent just going, I was completely struck and that was when I think I knew I loved you.
If I’ve had a rough day, what’s the first thing you do to help? Keir: Run you a bath.
Kate: You’ve never done that. What you do is talk to me about it and I think that’s the thing that makes me feel better.
What’s the one parenting job we both try to avoid? Keir: Well, I’ve avoided the one that I most wanted to avoid, which is really good because you do the mornings and I do the nights. I’m more of a night owl.
Kate: I know mine. The parenting job I try to avoid is looking at his Minecraft builds.
Keir: Oh yeah, we’re both on the same page in that we’re not at all interested in Minecraft.
What is one thing about me that still surprises you? Keir: You’re a very clever woman, obviously. You continue to get better and better at songwriting, even though I thought you were already the GOAT. You know, I think your recent work has been jaw-dropping, it’s actually intimidating and I don’t really like it because I was supposed to be writing songs for that new record too and hearing your songs wasn’t necessarily helpful, it’s too good.
What do you find the most annoying thing about me? Keir: I think it’s your strength in a lot of ways, and it’s helped us a lot, but it’s how you are always on to the next thing. It would be your theme song. I like to dawdle or meander or stroll around and you’re just like, right, let’s go.
If we got matching tattoos, what would they be? Keir: They’d be of Ernie. Ernie’s pudgy face when he was a little baby.
What were our early years like as a couple?
Keir: We both were so immersed in that Kate Miller-Heidke career for those first years of it. Because you have to be. You’ve just got to say yes to everything.
Kate: We spent seven or more years on the road in America, just the two of us in one car, in one shitty hotel, eating the depressing grey egg at the hotel for breakfast.
Keir: The amount of hours we spent together in three years would be the equivalent of a normal couple in 10 years.
Kate: It’s kind of a miracle we’re still together.
What do you think people get wrong about me? Keir: Early in your career, your publicity department were doing their best with what they perceived to be the right way to market you, but I think a lot of that stuff has hung around in people’s perception of you. They touted you as a quirky, “popera” (pop/opera) princess. You’re quite a shy person and people don’t realise that.
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