Dempsey grabs his shotgun and covers up again

PAUL Dempsey is stepping on stage again with a notebook full of songs instead of a setlist.

The Something for Kate frontman is backing up last year’s solo tour of covers with a second instalment, Shotgun Karaoke Vol. II, which will visit Barwon Heads next month.

Dempsey he was first and foremost a songwriter and had been one for 30 years, but had found himself between projects.

“I just wrapped up a project that that I’ve been doing with Bernard Fanning from Powderfinger for the past few years [Fanning Dempsey National Park] and working on a new Something for Kate record,” he said.

“So this is one of those palette cleanser kind of things, just running around playing other people’s songs and having some fun. It’s a bit of a no-brainer for me.

“It’s kind of liberating and it’s just a lot of fun, you know? I just love these songs and I love bashing them out in this really simple stripped-back way.”

Dempsey believes the idea of only doing covers sprang from a Something for Kate tour in 2012.

He said bassist Steph Ashworth and drummer Clint Hyndman challenged him every night after soundcheck to do a cover with only 10 minutes’ preparation and then filmed it.

“So it became this series every night we were on this tour and by the end there were like 30 cover versions on our YouTube channel,” he said.

“People seemed to dig it and then people were like: ‘You should go and record these and make a record of out of it’, so I was like: ‘Oh, okay, fine’.

“I’ll take any excuse to go out and play shows. I love playing live, so this is just another fun way to do it.”

Dempsey said the format of the tour was no-frills but what he played each night was highly variable.

Shotgun Karaoke Vol. II is named after Dempsey’s second album of covers released in 2025 (the first came out in 2013) and the gigs will often include tracks from it, such as Don Henley’s Boys Of Summer, Tanita Tikaram’s Twist In My Sobriety and Max Q’s Way of the World, but not exclusively.

“I deliberately keep it as loose as possible,” Dempsey said.

“I go on stage with not so much a set list, it’s just a notepad, there’s about 40 or 50 songs in there and I can kind of jump to anything.

“And I’m always trying to add things as well. I did the first night of the tour in Frankston the other night and I played four things I’ve never played before.”

Those four songs were Pearl Jam’s Better Man, Porno for Pyros’ Pets, David Gray’s This Year’s Love and Lloyd Cole and the Commotions’ Rattlesnakes.

Dempsey described his approach to the covers as “brutalist” with just his voice and an acoustic guitar, but has stuck to his rule of only performing songs in their original key.

“I won’t change the key to make it easier for me to sing,” he said.

“I would cover Love is a Battlefield by Pat Benatar, it’s one of my favorite songs ever, but I just can’t hit the notes in the original key, so I just won’t do it because I would rather not change the key.

“So when we did Sweet Nothing [on triple J’s Like a Version], I was hitting Florence Welch notes and it’s not very easy for me to do! I was well and truly stretching at the very top of my range.”

Paul Dempsey will perform at the Barwon Heads Hotel, supported by Kaitlin Keegan, on 12 June.

For more information, head to pauldempseymusic.com