Deborah Conway’s new musical experiment

SINGER Deborah Conway comes across as an artist at peace with her place in the world.

She attributes the wistful, deeply personal nature of her latest CD, Half Man Half Woman — a collaboration with husband Willy Zygier — to a sense of contentment and freedom.

“We’re just pleasing ourselves and we wanted to make the best record we can possibly make at this time,” says Conway.

“There was no feeling of ‘well, we have to write a hit,’ or anything like that, it doesn’t even enter our thinking. We set out to write and produce a record we like. The raison d’etre was to find out how far we could take the sound of two guitars and two voices and to what extent we could create a piece of work that relied only on that.”

It’s been a while between drinks too, with Half Man Half Woman just the second release from the pair since the acoustic Summertown in 2004. Both albums were released on Conway and Zygier’s own record label, Intercorps.

“Having a record label makes you think about things very differently. You’re forced to be more inventive, but that’s also a freeing thing as well.”

Conway and Zygier’s marketing inventiveness was demonstrated when they played intimate gigs in the homes of contest winners to promote Summertown. They plan to do it again with Half Man Half Woman.

“The other thing we can do as the record company is spend a small fortune on designing a very unique and collectible package. The CD comes with its very own pop-up pornographic origami orchid,” Conway says, referring to the album art.

Half Man Half Woman is a country/bluegrass/folk/blues combination, with vaudevillian instrumentals, epic biblical allegories and a delightful, rambling ditty sung by Conway and Zygier’s three young daughters.

The theme of love in the Middle Ages is unmistakable and ties the album’s genre miscellany together well — something Conway says they were conscious of from the outset.

“The through-line from the first track to the last is very deliberate. The way that you’re deposited at the mood of the next song was very important to me.”

But the duo had help -— Conway used renowned producer and session musician James Black to help polish the album and admits the process was hugely beneficial, if painstaking.

“I felt like we needed another set of ears to reflect back to us a different perspective. It was a very educational process,” she says.¬† “A lot of the songs didn’t survive, but some of the songs got much stronger.”

Conway has left her mark on the music scene, from her band, Do Re Mi’s debut album Domestic Harmony in 1985, to her debut solo album String of Pearls, released in 1991, which won her an ARIA award for best female singer.

String of Pearls’ release was accompanied by an extensive national tour with band The Mothers Of Pearl, in which Zygier played guitar. This was the start of a highly successful songwriting and personal collaboration for Conway and Zygier.

In 2008, Conway took on the role of artistic director for the Queensland Music Festival.

Conway and Zygier begin a hectic three-month concert tour this week in Melbourne, which will take them to country Victoria, NSW, ACT, Queensland, WA, SA and Tasmania. They will also appear at the Shir Madness Jewish music festival to be held at Bondi Beach on August 15.

ADAM KAMIEN

PHOTO: Deborah Conway’s new CD.