Kasey Chambers at City Winery

Kasey Chambers was born in Mount Gambier, Australia, and spent nine years of her youth living off the land with her family in the remote Nullarbor Plain; there the parents hunted foxes and rabbits for pelts. At night, she and her older brother sang old American country songs with their parents around the campfire. After nine years, the family returned to society and performed publicly from 1992 to 1998 as the Dead Ringer Band, named for the children looking like their parents. The parents divorced in the late 1990s ended the family band, and Kasey Chambers started a solo career in 1998. Five of her 12 studio albums have reached No. 1 on Australia's ARIA Albums Chart, she has won 14 ARIA Music Awards, and in November 2018 she was inducted into the ARIA Hall of Fame. Chambers released her 12th and most recent studio album, Campfire, on April 27, 2018. Chambers currently lives in Copacabana, Australia.

On her current tour, Kasey Chambers attempts to bring her family’s back-to-the-land years to her audiences. At City Winery tonight, Chambers on vocals and guitar was joined by the Fireside Disciples, comprised of her dad, Bill Chambers, on resonator guitar, Grizzly Train guitarist Brandon Dodd, and Alan Pigram on mandolin for a mostly acoustic set. (Chambers’ brother, who doubles as sound engineer, also performed on a couple of songs towards the end.) The four musicians performed on stools as photographs from the outback projected on screens. Between songs, Chambers told the stories behind many of the photographs, many for humorous effect (one photograph showed her holding a dead rabbit that she had found; she explained that this dead rabbit became her pet for three days). While it seemed that half of the performance was comprised of stories, Chambers performed songs from many of her albums in the same campfire spirit. Chambers sang well, and the sparse, acoustic accompaniment was stimulating. The campfire experience was a uniquely animating vehicle for presenting a thoroughly engaging modern country music concert.