Following the release of his diverse yet incisive second solo album Strange Loop, Something for Kate front man Paul Dempsey returns to The Tanks Arts Centre on Saturday 11th Febuary as part of his regional summer solo tour.
No stranger to The Tanks, Paul and his band Something For Kate have graced the Cairns stage many times over the years.
“It’s a great venue, I love it. It’s always nice to play somewhere that isn’t a pub or a club, or a theatre. The spot it’s in gives it a great vibe and it sounds awesome in there. Great for the crowd as you can see wherever you are standing, and when you walk out afterwards you’re amongst beautiful gardens. So it’s a pretty cool venue.”
As part of a 9 date regional tour, Dempsey has been taking his one man act to many regional cities including Maroochydore, Gold Coast and Cairns.
“I enjoy getting out to the regional centres. For me I just love to get out and play and I’ll go and play wherever I can basically. If there are people who are keen to listen then I’m keen to go there”
Having released two solo albums and six albums with Something For Kate, deciding what material to set aside for each project can be at times a challenging task.
“Mostly it comes down to timing and what the three of us (in Something For Kate) are doing next. When I go off and do my solo stuff, it actually breathes a bit of life and energy into Something For Kate. I think it’s good for all three of us not to do Something For Kate all the time. It’s good to have a break from it. It’s great when I do my solo work because everything is done my way, where Something For Kate is a collective process, the songs come out really differently because the other two have different ideas and thoughts”.
Having formed Something For Kate in 1994, Dempsey has evolved and grown in to one of Australia’s most respected songwriters with multiple ARIA nominations and two Number 1 selling albums for SFK.
“When we started out we were 17 and we were just enjoying ourselves in the moment. As we got older and the band started to achieve some success, I guess we started to take it more seriously and wanted to learn more about the art of song writing. We also wanted to become a great live act, instead of just making noise. You start to discover more challenges about music when you get older and before you know it a lot of time has gone by, and you’re still learning”.
His latest solo album, Strange Loop reveals a super-charged Dempsey; with his voice more potent and powerful than ever. His instrumentation becoming much more adventurous and his stories and characters magnified. It’s an album that sounds like doing what you want, and actually getting it right.
Having played every instrument on the record except Horns, Dempsey himself finds the recording process a lot easier for his solo work than other projects.
“The recording process for this record was actually a lot easier than in the past. They’re my songs so I know how I want them to sound. So I can go in there and lay them all out, without having to explain to other people how I want it to be. So it’s a lot quicker. That’s the beauty of a solo record. It is completely self-indulgent; it is about having everything your way. Otherwise it’s not really a solo record. You can have other musician involved, and that’s fine. But when I do a solo record, it really is a solo record (laughter). The main reason I do it too is because I write a bunch of songs and I really want them exactly how I want.”
PAUL DEMPSEY perform at THE TANKS ARTS CENTRE on Saturday 11th February. Doors open 6.30pm. Show starts 7.30pm. Tickets from Ticketlink.
Mitch Sullivan
© Copyright 2025 | NQ Music Press