From Muriel’s Wedding to musical maverick

HE’S starred in an award-winning film, earned acclaim as the world’s first didgeridoo-beatboxer, and shared the stage with artists including Paul Kelly and Jason Mraz — but Nathan Kaye is perhaps still best remembered for his role as Chook in Muriel’s Wedding.

Kaye was just 19 when he landed the part in the beloved Australian classic, which starred Toni Collette, Rachel Griffiths and Bill Hunter.

He had initially auditioned for the role of Muriel’s brother, Perry Heslop, which ultimately went to Dan Wyllie. But when he attended a third audition, the film’s writer-director, PJ Hogan, thought he’d be perfect for the role of Chook — one of Muriel’s soon-to-be ex-friends’ grooms who gets married in the opening scene of the film.

“They sent my agent the script an offer of a small percentage of the film profits for a lower fee, which my agent stupidly advised me to turn down, because up until Muriel’s Wedding, all Australian films almost always flopped — except for Crocodile Dundee, of course,” he said. “It’s a decision that I’ve always regretted after it became a worldwide blockbuster. It’s aired on TV several times per year. I’d still be getting handsome residual payments if I’d taken that deal!”

One of the highlights of the experience, was the freedom to improvise.

“When we were shooting the opening scene at my character’s wedding, where Muriel catches the bouquet, much to the chagrin of the ‘popular’ girls, Paul asked me to improvise a line,” he said. “I held up my ring finger and sarcastically yelled, ‘I’m already taken, love!’. It was the first line of the film, which set the comedic tone for the movie. I remember Paul exclaiming, ‘Brilliant! That’s it!’

“It was a tiny, yet notorious and pivotal role in an iconic film.”

Kaye became awed at the power of acting at age 17 after watching Russell Crowe in Romper Stomper and Mel Gibson in Hamlet. He began reading scripts, enrolling in acting courses and visualising himself on the big screen each night before bed.

“When I went to the Australian premiere of Muriel’s, I was sitting in the cinema and saw my 15-metre face (and butt!) and realised that I happened to be in the same cinema where I had first declared, nearly three years earlier, that I wanted to be on the big screen,” he said.

“In that moment I realised that we can achieve anything we put our minds to and work hard to achieve.”

His screen credits also include roles in Home and Away, Police Rescue and Water Rats. He played the lead in the feature film One Less God, based on the 2008 Mumbai terrorist attacks, which won Best Film at the Byron Bay Film Festival and both the Grand Jury Prize – Best Feature and the Industry Choice Award at the Dances with Films festival in Los Angeles.

But long before acting became a passion, music was his first love.

“When I was six-years-old I used to gather the kids from the neighbourhood in our family rumpus room, put on my blue suede shoes, play Elvis Presley and Beatles records and sing for everyone,” he said. “I started writing songs after my mum took me to an Aboriginal land rights protest when I was 10, but after a few years I realised that I need to be able to play an instrument to convey the music I was hearing in my head.”

At 14, a family friend gave him a guitar and he began taking classical lessons.

“It didn’t last particularly long because I just wanted to sing Bob Marley and INXS songs,” he said. “It gave me solid foundations, but from that point on I was self-taught.”

Kaye’s stepfather, Yabu Bilyana, was Indigenous, and Kaye received his first didgeridoo (yidaki) from a traditional Pintjantjarra tribesman who was visiting during a walkabout when Kaye was a teenager.

“He didn’t speak much, but we would jam,” Kaye said. “I’d play guitar and he’d play his didge. The day he moved on, he generously gifted me his didgeridoo.”

Kaye took to the instrument instantly. “You been black fulla before,” the man told him.

“With the yidaki, I felt that it could be a drum and bass instrument if played with percussive drum beat sounds,” Kaye said. “Nobody in Australia, or anywhere else, had combined those elements before. I didn’t realise just how much of an innovation it was until I was touring the UK playing in the official line-up of Glastonbury Festival and was subsequently invited to perform at the UK Beatbox Championships. I guess the word spread from that point on. For many years I was a breakdancer and human beatboxer.”

He’s also performed at the Burning Man Festival in the U.S., the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in Scotland, and Queensland’s Woodford Folk Festival.

These days Kaye regularly performs throughout the Northern Rivers — where he’s lived since 1998 — as a one-man-band, singing and playing slide guitar, slide-didge and electronic foot-drums. He also performs as a duo with his multi-instrumentalist wife. The pair launched a children’s band called Bark Side of the Moon at this year’s The Pocket Winter Festival.

“All our kids are multi-instrumental as well and so we sometimes become an Aussie version of the Partridge family,” Kaye said.

Kaye is currently preparing to release an EP titled The Bardo States, dedicated to his mother, who died from malignant mesothelioma. Proceeds will go toward raising awareness and funding for the disease.

The first single is a cover of Leonard Cohen’s Hey, That’s No Way to Say Goodbye.

“One of my fondest memories is that whenever I’d visit my mum, we’d sing Leonard Cohen and Beatles songs together, so I recorded a few of those cover songs, as well as a couple of originals,” he said. “There’s also an original album in the pipeline, plus a powerful sleep meditation album scheduled for release later in the year.”

See Nathan Kaye live at Club Lennox on September 12, Suffolk Park Hotel on September 19 and Kingscliff Beach Bowls Club on September 20.