Culture
All summer long
by Gordon Campbell
More than 20 years after the Clean first disbanded, David Kilgour is still evolving as a songwriter and guitarist. And still making a living. Thank the fans in Nashville. And the folks at Telecom.
The externals look pretty sweet. These days, David Kilgour lives with his partner Genevieve at the top of a turning column of flower-and-weed-tumbled steps, in a wooden house with a sunny porch, near the end of a pleasant cul-de-sac in Dunedin’s North East Valley. In his living-room, Kilgour has one of his own paintings – an orange, Keith Haring-ish effort – on the wall, and his nine-foot Malibu surfboard is propped down the hall, ready to go. In a few days’ time, some of Kilgour’s pals from the Nashville indie band Lambchop will be coming to visit, with the band room turned into a guest room for the duration.
It feels like a home. Probably not what the Kilgour brothers had in mind when they formed the Clean 25 years ago with big plans for world domination, but nice enough. “I don’t need much to get by,” says Kilgour. “Every year is so hard to describe but … like, last year was the best year I’ve had, financially. I got a publishing cheque or two and that was enough for me to live on for a year or two, maybe. Or a year of living well. It’s up to me,” he says wryly. “Will I blow all my money now, or will I wait for my next cheque … ?”
Sometimes, the touring pays the bills. Last year, it was advertising royalties that largely did the trick. “What’s made me some money was a Telecom ad that [former Clean bass player] Bob Scott and I wrote for his solo LP. It was like, on a Telecom ad for a month or so. You couldn’t even hear it. But that will sustain me till the end of winter. There’s a couple of other cheques coming. I know that’ll get me through next summer.”
At nigh on 44, Kilgour has been making such calculations for most of his adult life. As a solo artist and central figure in the periodic reunions of the Clean, Kilgour has struggled both to earn a living and to keep on evolving as a musician, and succeeded. In 2002 – fully 20 years after the Clean first called it quits – Kilgour released a masterpiece called A Feather in the Engine, an album he recorded at home over the course of two years. Last year’s Frozen Orange, recorded in a Nashville studio with the gang from Lambchop, was almost as good. This at a time when few of his peers are still being remotely creative, let alone exceeding their previous peaks.
It’s still hard sledding, though. Overall, Kilgour estimates, the Feather CD has probably sold 5000 copies max worldwide, with most of those sales being in the US. “It might have sold a thousand here, maybe. But it cost me nothing to make. I also gave it to the record company for nothing, so immediately, I made money out of it.” But enough of the money talk. “I’m just grateful that I can still put a record out, and people will buy it, and I can pay my bills. Life is really as simple as that.”
The Dunedin sound passed into legend a long time ago. Almost dutifully, the film Scarfies packed its soundtrack with music from the city’s golden era. This month, the notice board in the Records Records store in Dunedin showed just how respectable those bygone years of rebellion have now become. Apparently, the local Kings High School plans to part-finance an educational trip to Japan next year through selling samples of album cover art by some of the classic Dunedin bands. A mere $250 can score you the original art work (done by Hamish Kilgour) for the Live Dead Clean EP, from 1986.
By and large, the Clean were the zeitgeist band of that era. It was David Kilgour, for instance, who coined the term “Dunedin Sound” in an interview, and the Clean’s Boodle Boodle Boodle EP was Flying Nun’s first hit, and it put the label on the map financially, and culturally. Even the Establishment has tipped its hat in recognition. In 2001, Kilgour was awarded an Order of Merit in the New Year’s Honours List, in thanks for his contribution to the musical heritage of this country. Reportedly, his mother Helen was very pleased.
As well she might be. Within the Dunedin family of bands, the Clean not only had great songs (“Tally Ho”, “Beatnik”, “Caveman”, etc) able to match any offerings by more pop-oriented bands like the Chills – but they also had credibility as a live band from the outset, even while David Kilgour was still finding his way around his guitar, and Hamish (his elder brother by four years) was still learning drums. The Clean were, in fact, a perfect example of the old punk adage – just because you can’t play your instruments doesn’t mean you don’t know exactly what you’re doing.
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