Podcasts

Kev Carmondy performing “Moonstruck” live on 98.9fm’s Drive Show. Kev Carmody grew up on the Western Darling Downs area of Southern Queensland. His early childhood was simple but happy, mixing mostly with stockmen, drovers, fencers, ring-barkers and timber-getters. His family, although poor lived largely off the land growing vegetables near the small three roomed ant-bed floored hut and hunting and catching everything from kangaroos to fish. In 1956, when he was ten, Carmody was sent to a “Christian school” which he has described as “little more than an orphanage”. After school Kev returned to his rural roots working for seventeen years as a back country labourer doing everything from bag lumping, cane cutting to wool pressing. He told one newspaper that his musical career was “a far cry from the 15 year old who thought he’d spent the rest of his life pressing wool. Mind you, I had a job then, I was actually making bloody money. Not with this music caper….” When he was 33 he got the opportunity to go to University where he studied history, geography and music eventually progressing to work on a PhD. His thesis topic, not surprisingly, was the history of the Darling Downs between 1830 — 1860. His career in music started while he was at University. He explains: “They accepted me in there on probation, and it was a bit of a funny one really because I could hardly read or write. I had no mastery of the written language… But I was lucky. I had good lecturers and they let …