The Pilbeam Theatre crowd thrilled to a blend of his old and new numbers, the big brash sound of his band and the quieter, more intimate ballad moments.

The opening notes to Paul Kelly’s perennial classics such as ‘To Her Door’ and ‘Dumb Things’ had the Rockhampton audience singing along and jiggling in their seats.

Paul Kelly had a gutful of his home town by the time he left school so, like so many young people of that era, he and his mates hitchhiked their way around Australia.

When they ran out of money in Rockhampton, in the early 70s, the Adelaide boys got jobs working on the railways out west.

This was among the many stories Kelly shared with the Pilbeam Theatre crowd, packed to the rafters, on Tuesday night, during his sellout On the Road Again tour.

Saturday nights, he said, there were two entertainment options and Alpha, being closer to camp than Emerald, became Kelly’s preferred weekend drinking venue, “singlet fresh and sideburns shaved”.

Forty Miles to Saturday Night was released in 1987 on the same album as Dumb Things and To Her Door, which was highest charting single of that year.

It’s a testament to Kelly’s connection with the land, and the people he meets on his travels, that he continues to draw crowds of all ages to his gigs.

His latest is a far cry from his small pub gigs of the ’70s; with help from his musicians and the ever-gorgeous voices of Vika and Linda, On the Road Again is a big, bold light and sound experience.

But no amount of amps or gobos distract from the man himself, who tells stories from the heart about the decades he’s spent on the roads, bringing Australia’s music to Australians.

“There’s a lot about water in my songs,” he told his Rockhampton audience, during one of its wetter winters. “Water, rain, rivers, the sea, storms…”

In the song Midnight Rain, he’s wandering about in his dressing gown, wondering “are you talking soft and low underneath the sound of the midnight rain”.

Deeper Water begins with a five-year old boy “jumping over the ripples, looking way out to sea”. In St Kilda, “if the rain don’t fall too hard, everything shines”.

But there’s a swag of haulage in there too. Kelly’s got a thing about covering distance.

To Her Door, he’s “riding through the streets in a silvertop”. (The crowds love his new numbers too, but it’s the perennial favourites which attract a whoop of excitement as their first chords sound out through the auditorium.)

In How to Make Gravy, “the brothers are driving down from Queensland and Stella’s flying in from the coast”.

Another story he told on Tuesday night was about growing up in Adelaide with heaps of siblings and cousins.

Driving home from his cousins’ home in Gawler, he would fall asleep to the sound of the radio.

“I don’t know what woke me up/Maybe a country song or a big truck passing…”

Hard to believe, some of us in Tuesday’s audience have been watching Kelly play live gigs for as long as he’s been at it. He’s seen more of Australia than most people would know exists and he’s worked with the finest in the industry.

But the younger crowd had a ball at the Pilbeam too. Kelly bridges that divide between country and rock, between ballad and wanna-get-out-your-seats-and-dance the same he has for all these years.

With Fanny Lumsden out before him, and Vika and Linda still beside him, Paul Kelly and his splendid musicians had some vocal chops to draw from.

And his first encore piece was a recitation of Banjo Paterson’s Clancy of the Overflow, just for a change of pace.

But as is always the case, it was his lyrics, his stories, his memories which drew the audience in and made them grateful, after all this time, he came all the way to Rockhampton to see us once again.

As one fan told The Morning Bulletin after the show, “Loved it. Absolutely loved it.”

Other Queensland gigs which have sold out this week include Mackay, Townsville, Cairns and Port Douglas.