Picking Apart The Living Legend That Is Deborah Conway

In honour of Deborah Conway being a Living Legend we asked some of the performers paying tribute to the singer-songwriter at The Gasometer Hotel on 10 July for Leaps & Bounds to tell us what they really think of her.

Clare Bowditch

"I adore this woman. She is one of our finest songwriters and I am honoured to be a part of this show."

Vika & Linda Bull

"We are excited to be performing at the Deborah Conway Living Legends show as part of Leaps & Bounds Festival because we first took notice of Deborah when she was in Do Re Mi singing Man Overboard and thought ‘Wow, what a voice!’ Fast forward 30 years and she is still a strong presence in the Australian music industry and her songwriting has proven that she is constantly evolving, getting better and better with age and we have been lucky enough to have sung backing vocals on three of her albums. We adore her."

Caroline Kennedy

"My brother first played me Do Re Mi’s Man Overboard when I was about 16. I couldn’t believe it and immediately made him play it to me again. The suburbs were dreamily boring then, as they may still be. It was street cricket, skateboarding on the footpaths and long summery evenings punctuated by mainstream radio floating out car windows. Deborah Conway’s voice broke into that reverie for me in a really dramatic way, her singing tone was so insistent it was like a part of my thinking was activated upon hearing it. She said the words penis envy and talked about shaved stubble on the sink. These were things I knew existed in the world – after all I’d seen men shaving and I’d heard adults joke about psychoanalysis – I was just surprised that this stuff had ended up in a pop song. I’d not yet listened to The Slits or The Raincoats, so Deborah’s voice was it for me at that time. She was singing about stuff that I had thought of, but had assumed was the sort of thing you never mentioned. Her doing that was a door opening into a kind of palace of themes. For me it was the start of an opportunity, and a way to think about and write songs, that began in one moment."

Rebecca Barnard

"I’m so happy for Deborah to see all these singers doing her songs. I love her as a songwriter and a friend. It’s an honour to be part of the show."