Recharged: Aussie icon revamps hit tour to catch growing wave of nostalgia
Kate Ceberano is counting her blessings by celebrating Australian music and her long career and dedicated fanbase by touring the country – again!
Kate Ceberano has never been particularly interested in standing still. Across four decades she has moved from the sophisticated pop and funk of teen band I’m Talking to an enormously successful solo career, jazz, theatre, collaborations and, more recently, a flourishing parallel life as a visual artist.
An exception is her Australian Made tour, which is now under way. In a very un-Ceberano move, Ceberano has revamped the 2025 production for another run around the country. The decision to revisit the concept was ultimately made for her by the audience.
“Australian Made is an anomaly, especially in this time and considering the cost of living and various other things,” she says. “I think people need it. They need a nostalgic adrenal hit. And they love having me sing their life with that experience for them.
“I generally don’t like resting into something and getting too comfortable because I kind of feel like I don’t learn enough if I don’t place myself into the next element of risk. I don’t know if that’s sane or not. But it’s just the way I roll.”
This time around Ceberano is taking the concept into larger venues and reshaping the show rather than simply repeating it. Joining her on stage are Kathleen Halloran on guitar and newcomer, multi-instrumentalist Dusty Lee.
“It’s quite a different set list,” she offers, “but we have all of the favourite medleys of last year, the ones where I get to go and bash the drums and have a lot of fun.”
The tour title, of course, carries considerable historical weight.
Ceberano was there for the original Australian Made tour in 1986-87, when I’m Talking joined an extraordinary bill featuring INXS, Jimmy Barnes, Divinyls, Models, The Saints and Mental As Anything. Seen from 2026, it is a line-up that seems almost impossible to replicate.
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“They were all touring internationally,” she says. “They were smashing it out of the ballpark. INXS, Jimmy Barnes had just been in LA and the Divinyls were taking off overseas.”
Her own music with I’m Talking continues to find new listeners in 2026. A recent vinyl reissue of the seminal LP Bear Witness provided a reminder of the affection that still surrounds the band.
“That vinyl sold out in nanoseconds,” she says. “It hits a young generation. They’re like, ‘man, that’s really vintage’. It’s pristine and it still works.”
Ceberano draws an interesting distinction between I’m Talking and the solo career that followed.
“Brave was an act of survival,” she says of her landmark 1989 album. “That was just trying to survive my way out of a difficult situation. It was sort of hands out into the dark.
“But I’m Talking was a very deliberate act of art. The people we were working with were people who had been working with Ryuichi Sakamoto and Scritti Politti and Lou Reed. The kind of people that were around that project – it was a very deliberate art project.
‘I’m like a small-batch boutique label’
“To that effect, I think it’s standing the test of time because it was so deliberately curated.”
These days, “art” means something else as well.
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Away from the stage, Ceberano has quietly built an art practice and community around painting, textiles and embroidery. She says her art club has grown into a community numbering in the hundreds.
“In the face of AI, I feel like the grassroots Kate Ceberano-ness really appeals to people,” she laughs. “I’m like a small-batch boutique label.”
Ceberano talks about workshops, embroidered box sets and an international community that has begun extending into Nashville in the US and the UK.
“My whole life is alive in that area,” she says. “It’s just not anything that people really know about too much.”
There is something fitting about Ceberano discovering another creative language at this point in her life. Long before she became one of Australian music’s most recognisable singers, she was a fan. Her first concert was James Freud performing at a Blue Light Disco after releasing Modern Girl. Ceberano remembers planting herself directly in front of the stage and screaming at him.
“I’m such a band moll,” she laughs at the memory. “A diehard, a 100 per cent fan.”
Years later, she would sing on Models’ hit Out of Mind, Out of Sight.
“It was as if I’d written the script and there I was living my greatest and wildest fantasy,” she explains. “I only got into music because I wanted to meet all my idols.”
On the day we chat Ceberano is fighting jet lag after returning that morning from performing in Prague and Budapest.
“You feel like, ‘Oh, my God, I am possibly the luckiest human in the entire universe’,” she says.
Now Australian Made offers an opportunity to put what she calls an “exclamation point” on this phase of her career before taking a creative sabbatical. What happens after that remains deliberately uncertain. There are decades of archives to explore and new ideas to pursue. Ceberano mentions the possibility of eventually building a show around an anniversary of Brave, but makes no promises.
“I don’t actually know what I want to do,” she says. “But I know that this is a beautiful way to put an exclamation point on this fantastic show, and then I can just rest it for a bit and see what happens.”
For an artist who has spent her career avoiding the comfort of repetition, not knowing what comes next may be exactly the point.
Kate Ceberano Australian Made Tour ends November 20 and includes Mackay September 11, Gladstone September 12, Rockhampton September 13, Cairns September 25, Townsville September 26, Ayr September 27, Port Pirie November 5, Renmark November 6, Adelaide November 7, Brisbane November 14 and Caloundra November 15.
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