Review’s Isolation Room: Don Walker of Cold Chisel offers solo piano take on Luck
For our Isolation Room video series, the Cold Chisel songwriter performs an intimate solo version of an optimistic song. | WATCH
Across more than four decades of performing live with the Adelaide-born rock act Cold Chisel, Don Walker has been a steadfast presence up the back, out of the spotlight, as his fingers worked the keyboard and the band burned through its collection of generation-defining songs.
Many of those were written by Walker, but plenty of Chisel fans have probably never heard him sing, as that task was shared between the formidable voices of Jimmy Barnes and guitarist Ian Moss.
For the newest instalment of Review’s exclusive Isolation Room video series, the pianist has chosen to step out on his own to perform an intimate version of his song Luck.
“It’s not something that I do often publicly, because if I’m playing piano, I’m behind other singers – or if I’m singing, I usually have a band behind me,” Walker told The Weekend Australian.
Co-written with Tom Busby from Queensland acoustic pop duo Busby Marou for their second album, 2013’s Farewell Fitzroy, Luck is an uplifting song that could be read today as portending the freedom of emerging from lockdown.
“All I’m hoping is as sure as the road is open wide / You got luck now on your side,” he sings in its chorus.
In Luck, Walker name-checks far-flung corners of the country, from the Queensland outback town of Camooweal to the Kimberleys of Western Australia – places currently off-limits to interstate visitors, but hopefully not for much longer.
Recorded at the northern NSW town of Alstonville, where his piano is stored, the solo performance offers a rare insight into the workings of one of Australia’s most celebrated songwriters.
“Tom brought in most of the music, and the version I’ve done here is pretty close to the original song that we wrote together,” he said.
“I’ve always been really keen on the song, and I’d like to do it my band at some stage,” he said. “When I was looking at what songs I could do for The Australian, this was one on the shortlist.”
Entering the Isolation Room required a technological leap on Walker’s part, too.
“I thought, ‘I’ve never done anything like this before, so this means I’ll have to figure out how the iPhone video works’,” he said with a laugh. “I had to drive into Officeworks in Lismore and get a tripod to put an iPhone on.”
As well, it demanded a bit of redecorating in order to bring a print by the Renaissance painter Pieter Bruegel into the frame.
“It’s a small, very bland room with a brick wall behind where I sit,” he said. “I thought I’d make it more interesting by hanging the Bruegel behind me. It was a quick decision, made in ignorance, to break up the brick wall.”
Walker is not sentimental about many objects in his life: “I have very little equipment,” he notes. “I don’t own a stereo system.”
Yet he makes an exception for the piano on which he recorded this version of Luck, given that he and others have written personal songs on it, such as Danielle, which he penned when his daughter was very young.
“It’s a white Kawai baby grand that I bought in 1980 or 1981, with the first money that I started to make out of Cold Chisel,” he said. “I had it reconditioned back in 2013. It’s not studio quality, but it’s always been somewhere where I can have access to it, in that 40 years.”
Walker’s contribution to the series now sits alongside his Cold Chisel bandmate Ian Moss, who performed a beautiful Bonnie Raitt cover from his Sydney home in May last year.
“Once I got into it, it was very enjoyable,” he said of his Isolation Room experience. “It’s a learning curve to do something like this, and I’m very glad I did it.”
To rewatch our Review’s Isolation Room archive, click here.
More Coverage
To join the conversation, please log in. Don't have an account? Register
Join the conversation, you are commenting as Logout