The Musical Legacy of a Rock Chick

Written by: Tom Wilson @thetomwilsonexperiment - Sense Music Media | Saturday 19 March 2022

When Karly Jewell was five, her grandfather – the late country music singer Tony Jewell – gave her the most important gift of her life: a guitar. Like a butterfly flapping its wings to cause a tsunami across the planet, the ripple effects of that small gesture are still seen today. Karly has spent close to a decade rattling eardrums with hard-hitting old-school rock, and with the release of new single Trouble We Are, she told SENSE how it all started.

I just finished Trouble We Are … How long have you been sitting on this track?

It’s pretty fresh. When did we record it? It’s only a couple of months old I think. I wrote it, and I sent it to Adrian [Kluke – guitarist] and the guys to listen to – just a really shitty demo at home, though I did create a drum beat, so it was half-decent – and I sent it to them and tried to convince them to meet me at the studio. We’d just go in there and record it … I said, “It’ll be easy – let’s just go and do it.” We got together and had, like, two rehearsals … just went in there and smashed it out. Some of the other songs I write, we’ll play them a few times live and stuff, but I think when you know, you know. You’ve just got to go in there and record it. So it’s not that old. We’ve only played it live once, which was great. I fucked up one of the lines, but no one knew, because it was that new! [Laughs]

It’s your song – you can do whatever the fuck you want with it!

That’s it! I saw a post yesterday actually that [said] “When people correct me when I’m singing … Well, how do you know I’m not doing a remix?” and I was like, that’s totally me, at least one song every set. [Laughs] Professional winger!

What inspired the lyrics?

You know, many things. Good times … the fact that we were out of all this lockdown bullshit, and music was happening again. I really wanted to write my best kind of rock songs, or the best songs that we could do live, because we were meant to be leaving March 3rd for our U.S. tour, and do our first show with ROSE TATTOO … I wanted to have the best songs I could possibly do live. I was sitting at home and thinking, “Fuck, I want to write something really cool.” The concept of “we’re at it again” was like, fuck, that’s it, I’m giving it my all this time, you know? There’s no more mucking around. Not that I muck around – everything I do, I put 100% in – but I wanted to put more in, and really have the best songs. I’ve never really written just from good times. I think everything [comes] from something that you go through, or when music is getting you through life … There was a lot of grief and stuff that I’ve had to deal with in the past fourteen years, and then losing my grandfather. I think, after losing my grandfather almost two years ago, he taught me everything I know about music, and I guess, I didn’t always write my best songs when he was here, looking back now, because I always had him there to lean on and to guide me. I’m really on my own now, and I can’t waste anything he taught me. It wasn’t until he passed away [that] it was like I had all this knowledge that I guess I always had there, but I still had him, so without him, all of a sudden I knew all this stuff that I’d been taught, and I was like, “I can’t let that go to waste. I have to do this. This is what I was born to do, and everything he taught me, now’s the time.” So I just wanted to write some really good live songs, and yeah, come out with the good times.

What kind of inspiration did you grandfather provide you, when you were growing up?

My grandparents were my everything. I grew up with them, and I spent from the minute I could walk in Pop’s studio, playing guitar and smashing his keyboard and touching everything I shouldn’t have been and always annoying him when he was trying to record songs. He probably saw something in me from a very young age, that I really took everything to heart and I was a nervous kind of person, and had been through a lot growing up. I think he saw that and made music my safe place, and kind of passed that on. I was five when I got my guitar, and he kind of gave it to me like a diary, you know? “When there’s nothing, you will always have music.” It wasn’t really until he passed away that I realised … anything that held me to earth was just cut, you know? I was just floating in some kind of void, like there was no place that felt like home, and I guess, when I released a song after that, and felt that connection that I created, I guess that then became family, and the home was in music. He kind of built that up for me the whole way, and I didn’t even see it until he was gone, you know? He inspired me from writing and playing guitar, and just to have a go at it, and always to remember that it’s not for anybody else, it’s just for me, you know? It’s just a story. He really taught me everything I could possibly know about writing songs, and he’d been drumming it into my head since I was first ever in the studio, that it’s not a good song without a good hook, you know? So I think that was my biggest thing, so I think he was my biggest inspiration, you know? I still want to be a songwriter just like him, and I want to do country music as well, and all that kind of stuff, because he was a country artist and wrote songs. He just inspired me really to be who I am, and do everything in music. I wouldn’t have it without him.

I really like hearing that. My daughter is seven, and very musically-inclined – loves to sing and whatnot. I remember thinking at the last two SPRING LOADEDs, this year and last year, seeing some of these women onstage … The first was Sarah McLeod from THE SUPERJESUS, who was just an absolute weapon. She literally jumped down into the photo pit and then climbed up on the barricade while playing … Stopping to pose for selfies with people while playing, and being an absolute rock goddess, and then I just saw, this last weekend, MAGIC DIRT for the first time, and Adalita walked out onstage like she owned the place … I really hope that my daughter has role models like that to look up to.

Yeah. When I grew up, I always had country music at the home, and it was very strict at home. Pop was a police officer, so there wasn’t anything out of control at home. [Laughs] Everything was strict. Then I’d go to my mum’s on the weekend, and she’d be listening to AC/DC and ROSE TATTOO and all the rock songs, and I’d be like, “Wow, this is badass!” Then I kind of got home and I’d be around the country music stuff and Pop would be teaching me, but I kind of always knew that I was going to go into rock music. It was really cool to have that. At home, I grew up in Wentworth, so a really small town, and the only two bands I knew were ROSE TATTOO and THE DIVINYLS, because they used to play in Mildura, so [they] were the only two bands that ever came there, unless it was to do with country music. I guess that was my biggest inspiration, when my grandmother would go to the shows and my uncle and all their friends, and bring home guitar picks and posters and stuff. It was really inspiring to have that, you know? … Then I kind of ventured off on my own, finding out who these rock bands were and listening on the weekend, and after school having my Walkman on tuned in to the rock radio, and whatever it was back at home then … Hearing all the rock songs, and going home writing songs, and knowing that I was always going to go down that rock ‘n’ roll path, I think. I was a bit rebellious. [Laughs]

How did you come across your bandmates?

Muz [Mariano Marcos - drums] was my drum teacher first, and we started the band probably a year afterwards. Muz was always playing with other bands, and John was my first guitarist, and he knew I always wanted to do a band, because it was always just me on my own. So Muz and I started everything, and we just kept it going, and then a couple of years later Dave [Beaton – bass] joined us, and then I had a couple of different guitarists … Adrian filled in for a few years, and I was like, “Well, you’re pretty much part of the band now. I don’t know if you’re filling in anymore. You may as well just be a part of the band.” [Laughs] He filled in since 2018, and then we started writing together, and we’ve been together ever since then. I think Dave has been in the band now for eight years, I think. I always forget how long we’ve been around for. I think, like, ten or eleven years now, because it just goes so quick, and you always think, “Oh, it wasn’t that long ago that we played there,” and I was like, “Oh my god, that was nine years ago!” So we’ve been around for a while, which is pretty impressive I guess. I think most bands get to seven years, eight years, and they get to that point where they feel like they’re doing the same thing over and over again. That was something I discussed in our band, and I was like, “We’re not going to do the same thing. We’ve got to take this to the next level, and this is what we’re going to do.” A lot of bands just give up because they’re doing the same old shit, but if you don’t … You only do the same old shit because you let yourself, you know what I mean? You’ve got to go and take it to that next level. We’re not in the 80s anymore. There are no record labels throwing you big cash and sending you on tours around the world, and building up these big teams around you. You’ve got to do it yourself, you know? We just kept at it!

Trouble We Are is out now.

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