November 2009
Country lovin'
He might have conquered the music charts, but it’s marriage and fatherhood that have brought Keith Urban peace – and success

WORDS KATHY BUCHANAN
The phone rings 20 minutes later than expected. Keith Urban is on the line, backstage in Portland, Oregon, and apologetic for his tardiness. “I’m sorry, mate,” he offers humbly. “We’re performing here tonight and I just finished doing sound check.”

The Portland pitstop turns out to be yet another sold-out performance in Urban’s hit Escape Together world tour. His travelling road show of 13 semi-trailers and nine buses has criss-crossed more than 50 cities across the US and Canada, and is now headed home to Australia for five mega shows in Melbourne, Sydney, Wollongong and his home state of Queensland, where he will play two shows in Brisbane in December. With a jam-packed schedule, it’s no wonder Urban is running late.




“I took eight days off last week and that was the longest break I’ve had since I began touring in May,” he tells Jetstar Magazine in an exclusive interview. “It was purely a selfish reason why I took the break, too: because I’ve got such a good marriage. It took me half my life to find my wife and now I just don’t want to be away from her.”

Urban, 42, spoke with refreshing candour for a star whose tabloid-baiting marriage and troublesome past have made him a staple for gossip magazines around the globe. Through his trials and tribulations – which included being catapulted into the country-pop stratosphere and falling back to earth, via the Betty Ford Centre for drug and alcohol rehabilitation – Urban has emerged in the most comfortable place.

You can hear it in his voice. Unwavering, he gushes about his three-year marriage to Nicole Kidman. The couple have a daughter, Sunday Rose, who turned one in July. “They’re my girls,” he says with pride. “It’s the simple and normal things, such as having breakfast as a family, which have brought such a grounding into my life. It’s such a wonderful experience.”

Urban is finally living the life he used to sing about. In the past, he wrote about meeting the girl of his dreams and living happily ever after. Now Urban’s songs are filled with upbeat messages about love and life. It is, he admits, a portrait of domestic and personal bliss.

“I wouldn’t go back in time for anything,” Urban explains. “I had an idea what it might be like to be married and a father, but for me, what has happened in my life is beyond anything I could have ever dreamed.”

Urban’s new-found contentment is reflected throughout his latest album, Defying Gravity, which debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard chart and reached No. 3 in Australia. Its success also

netted Urban a record haul of five nominations for the Country Music Association Awards – including Entertainer of the Year. The winners will be announced on 11 November.

Urban says he was drawn to the positive tone because it was the energy that pulled him through the dark shadows of drug and alcohol abuse. “The title Defying Gravity is a metaphor for love and the power of the human spirit. When I started writing this album, it was really apparent to me that I was in a good place in my life, with the love of my wife and a new daughter,” he explains.

“Having lived overseas for 17 years, I had gone through some real highs but also some intense lows, so it was an ideal time to make this record.” The song “My Heart is Open” has special significance. “This song was sourced at the beginning of our relationship,” Urban reveals.

“It came from a conversation I had with Nicole, when we had just started dating. I asked her how her heart was, which was a really strange question. It was a way to find out, ‘Where are you at?

Is there a chance for us to go forward?’ Nic responded, ‘It’s open.’ I was really taken aback by that answer on so many levels. I thought it was an amazing thing to say, a really brave thing to say, to admit that to me,” he explains.

Urban’s rough-hewn pretty-boy looks have not just seduced Kidman. He has pushed a legion of women and their estrogen levels into the red with his formidable guitar talent and sharp songwriting. That talent was honed at age four, when his father gave him a ukulele and told him to strum in time to songs on the radio.

Born in Whangarei, New Zealand and raised from an early age in Caboolture, Queensland, Urban’s parents belonged to an amateur country and western club, where they immersed their son in their record collection, which featured old-school artists such as Don Williams, Dolly Parton, Ronnie Milsap, Glen Campbell and Charlie Pride.

Then, at seven, Urban predicted to his dad: “I am going to live in Nashville.” “I’d been playing guitar for about a year and I used to read the back of my parent’s records,” he remembers. “They all said ‘Recorded in Nashville, Tennessee,’ so I said, ‘I want to make records, and that’s where I will go to do it.’ Here we are today.”

After recording his first solo album in Australia in 1990, which scored four No. 1 hits, Urban left Queensland for the US and soon found himself playing guitar with the bestselling musical duo of all time, Brooks and Dunn.

Individual stardom beckoned and soon Urban stepped into the spotlight in his own right. First, as the leader of the band The Ranch, and then as a self-titled soloist in 1999 with an album that hit the top 20.

Urban’s musical life would go on to include two coveted Grammys, a swag of other awards and chart-topping albums and singles, which have guaranteed his place as one of the most successful touring and recording acts.

His Escape Together concert tour, on sale now and which kicks off in Australia in Melbourne on 2 December, sees Urban playing multiple arena shows. His young family will be travelling in tow.

“Sunday Rose hasn’t seen a show yet,” Urban says. “It’s a pretty loud and crazy environment, but she does come down to sound check every now and then. I’ve walked her around the stage and showed her all the lights, cameras and video screens. “I don’t know how much of it she’s going to remember but certainly for Nic and I, it’s a beautiful time for her to see all this.”

For Urban, his return to Australia will be all the more momentous: a celebration of hitting the wall, and surviving in better shape. “It is remarkable,” he says. “I’m sitting in my tour bus right now, and as I look around, I think good God, I’ve got a bus. To have this success and Nicole and Sunday Rose, it’s absolutely heaven to me.”

FAVOURITE DESTINATIONS KEITH URBAN’S
A cornerstone to Keith Urban and Nicole Kidman’s romance is privacy. While the couple primarily reside in several properties in the US, it is at their private retreat in rural New South Wales where they escape the trappings of celebrity. “We will spend Christmas there, this year,” he says with glee.

KEITH URBAN’S TOUR DATES
SATURDAY 12 DECEMBER* – ROD LAVER ARENA, MELBOURNE
MONDAY 14 DECEMBER* – WIN ENTERTAINMENT CENTRE, WOLLONGONG
WEDNESDAY 16 DECEMBER** – ENTERTAINMENT CENTRE, SYDNEY FRIDAY 18 DECEMBER* – ENTERTAINMENT CENTRE, BRISBANE
SATURDAY 19 DECEMBER* – ENTERTAINMENT CENTRE, BRISBANE

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