Five time ARIA Award, APRA, AWMA, NLMA and 2 time AIR winner Katie Noonan has released her thirtieth studio album, Alone but All One, and is now embarking on a huge national tour to commemorate its release.
For Katie, this album is a quiet turning inward and a return to something essential. In late 2024 Katie found herself at the end of a life chapter after a long and deeply committed marriage. The album, Alone but All One was Katie’s attempt to sit with the stillness and to honour, explore and ultimately transform it.
Glam Adelaide sat down with Katie to discuss her new album, the music, and her tour.
Last time that we spoke with Katie, she was about to embark on a tour to celebrate Jeff Buckley’s incredible Grace album. As a result of that album and tour, a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity arose for Katie.
“I love Jeff Buckley’s Grace record and it changed my life. I think after COVID, people are sort of craving the nostalgia of pre-COVID a little bit and an album like that was such a seminal record for our generation. The documentary came out last year as well. The whole tour was so much more successful than I had originally anticipated – I just got a plaque from Frontier Touring celebrating the fact that over 20,000 people came to the concerts, which is a wild amount of people. It was some of the hardest material, in terms of vocal technique, that I’ve ever sung because he was such a freak and also being male he had falsetto which girls don’t have. I wanted to honour the songs, so where we could I kept them in the original keys.
“Amazingly what happened from that tour was Gary Lucas, the man who co-wrote and played guitar on parts of the Grace record, reached out. He thanked me for celebrating this album and asked if we could collaborate.” So I recently got back from three weeks staying in Harlem, New York, and co-wrote in the exact same apartment in Greenwich Village that Gary and Jeff wrote their whole Grace album. I was literally singing into the same old 58 microphone that Jeff sang into decades ago. So that was pretty wild.”
All but All One is a very raw and beautifully honest recording from Katie. Musically, it is very stripped back — just Katie, her piano and a string quartet. The album was recorded in her lounge room on Gubbi Gubbi Country in the hills behind Nambour in Queensland. For Katie, it feels like a deep breath before the next chapter of her life.
“I didn’t intend to write this record, to be honest. It’s been a very traumatic 20 months but these songs just fell out. The opening track of the album, you couldn’t make that stuff up. Every single thing in the lyric is what happened. I went from a busy, full home to you know packing up my life and living on my own. It was incredibly lonely but as always, music has been and is my best friend, and the only way I know how to process my emotions.”
Katie’s dear friend, author and journalist Trent Dalton gifted to her 156 pages of unpublished lyrics. Katie used some of these lyrics for a new song cycle, Just for Dreaming for her a cappella vocal quartet (AVÉ Australian Vocal Ensemble) but she also used some of them when composing Alone but All One.
“My good friend and incredible lyricist Trent Dalton reached out and he gifted me 156 pages of exclusive unpublished text that he had written between 2000 and 2006. At that time he was emerging into young adulthood and moving away from the trauma of his very violent and difficult childhood as well as falling in love with his wife, Fiona. I felt myself drawn inexorably to these little vignettes that were all about celebrating the birth of love and remembering that because that exact same period was the golden period of my marriage, the time where I was desperately in love with the father of my children. It was nice to go back and remember that and honour it. Despite all the hurt, anger and all the feelings that come up in the demise of a relationship and in particular the way it was done, it was important to me to honour the love as well.
“Trent’s words are just devine. He certainly knows how to capture moments. Two of my favourites are ‘I found a cradle in your heart, a perch to rest upon’ and ‘I know how to sleep and still hear you breathe’. He’s an analogue guy, like I am, and writes everything down into books.”
As part of Katie’s album release, she is currently touring the country and will perform a very intimate and special performance this Thursday, 30th July, at The Gov.
“I love The Gov — it’s such a great venue for live music. It’s been surprisingly emotionally challenging performing this record and tour. I really did underestimate the emotional journey of it all. We’ll have an incredible string quartet. I’m bringing the leader of the River Suite Orchestra, Sarah King, with me as well as picking up three of the best players in Australia and Adelaide, including Stephen King, who used to be the principal violist in the Australian String Quartet. We’re going to have a really, really beautiful quartet. The performance will be the album essentially, but also interspersed with other songs, little snapshots from across my career.”
Tickets are on sale now.
Join Katie for this warm, honest and deeply connected performance centred around storytelling, reflection and song.
Katie Noonan – Alone but All One Tour
The Gov
Thursday 30th July
7.30pm
Special Guest: Mark Wilkinson
https://www.katienoonan.com.au
Photo credit: Cybele Malinowski
