Party: Perry Keyes

Party: Perry Keyes

Raised in the inner-city working class suburb of Redfern, Perry Keyes has released three critically acclaimed and award-winning albums including the ABC Radio National Album of the Year and AMP shortlisted ‘The Last Ghost Train Home’ and the ARIA nominated ‘Johnny Ray’s Downtown’.

Perry’s fourth album Sunnyholt is both the largely untold, widescreen story of Sydney’s western suburbs diaspora and, more importantly, the personal tale of a family disintegrating under social and economic pressures.

Perry grew up in the inner city working class area of Sydney known as Redfern. He grew up in a home populated by various uncles, aunts, cousins and grandparents. Every Saturday morning his grandmother would do the housework whilst playing the likes of Ray Charles and Roy Orbison at a volume loud enough to spill out onto the neighboring streets, lined with tightly-packed terraced houses, warehouses and textile factories.

It was within this environment that Perry formed the band The Stolen Holdens in 1989. Musically inspired by the likes of The Clash and Elvis Costello and lyrically taking his cue from artists like Lou Reed and Bruce Springsteen, Keyes and The Stolen Holdens developed a small but loyal following in the local Sydney music scene.

Perry re-emerged in 2003, playing solo sets featuring songs that would make up the bulk of his debut double album Meter – released in 2005 to critical acclaim and numerous years end best-of lists.

His next album, ‘The Last Ghost Train Home’ was received with much anticipation upon its release in 2007. It went on to be short-listed for the Australian Music Prize and was named the ABC Radio National Album of the Year.

In 2010 he released the ARIA nominated ‘Johnny Ray’s Downtown’ a 16 song portrait of the marginalised, often neglected and rapidly decaying inner city areas of Sydney and of the lives of the people that inhabit them.

“Perry is the real deal. Songs from the heart, from the Aussie street. He is a rare talent” – Peter Garrett “Perry Keyes is a Sydney romantic who can see the battered beauty beneath the gloss” Sydney Morning Herald