page_title: Paul Kelly (Australian musician)
section_title: Personal life
hierarchical_section_title: Paul Kelly (Australian musician) / Personal life
caption_attribution_description: English: Paul Kelly and Dan Kelly performing "The A-Z Shows" at Rockwood Music Hall in New York City, September 27, 2011.
context_page_description: Paul Maurice Kelly AO is an Australian rock music singer-songwriter and guitarist. He has performed solo, and has led numerous groups, including the Dots, the Coloured Girls, and the Messengers. He has worked with other artists and groups, including associated projects Professor Ratbaggy and Stardust Five. Kelly's music style has ranged from bluegrass to studio-oriented dub reggae, but his core output straddles folk, rock, and country. His lyrics capture the vastness of the culture and landscape of Australia by chronicling life about him for over 30 years. David Fricke from Rolling Stone calls Kelly "one of the finest songwriters I have ever heard, Australian or otherwise." Kelly has said, "Song writing is mysterious to me. I still feel like a total beginner. I don't feel like I have got it nailed yet".
  After growing up in Adelaide, Kelly travelled around Australia before settling in Melbourne in 1976. He became involved in the pub rock scene and drug culture, and recorded two albums with Paul Kelly and the Dots. Kelly moved to Sydney by 1985, where he formed Paul Kelly and the Coloured Girls.
context_section_description: Paul Kelly's first marriage (1980–1984) was to Hilary Brown; the couple had a son, Declan, who later worked as a radio presenter on 3RRR's Against the Arctic from 2006. As of 2007, he was a DJ around Melbourne and played the drums. For Paul Kelly: Stories of Me Declan recalled his feelings whenever he hears "When I First Met Your Ma", which describes Kelly's courtship of Hilary. Hilary remembered "songs written especially for and about her" but also about other women, she quipped "There are too many girls out there! One for every song!"
  Kelly's second marriage (1993–2001) was to actress Kaarin Fairfax. The Monthly's Richard Guilliatt travelled with Kelly, his band and "his new love and future wife, the diminutive" Fairfax on a section of the group's US tour prior to the release of Under the Sun. The couple have two daughters, Madeleine (born 1991) and Memphis (born 1993). From 1989 to 1992, Fairfax supplied backing vocals on tracks by Paul Kelly and the Messengers. In 1990, as Mary-Jo Starr, a country music artist, Fairfax released three singles, and an album, Too Many Movies. Memphis Kelly starred alongside her parents in the Rachel Perkins short film, One Night the Moon (2001), for which Paul Kelly composed the score. After the couple separated in 2001, Madeleine and Memphis stayed with Fairfax, but Kelly maintained contact with his daughters. In 2010 Madeleine and Memphis formed a pop indie trio, Wishful, with Sam Humphrey; they were later joined by Harley Hamer and Caleb Williams. In March 2014, Wishful performed at the Port Fairy Folk Festival.
  Kelly was in a relationship with Sian Prior, a journalist, university lecturer and opera singer, from 2002 to 2011. They met when Kelly was interviewed on her Sunday Arts ABC radio program. Kelly wrote "You're 39, You're Beautiful and You're Mine" for Prior who was already 40 by the time he finished. Prior has played clarinet and provided backing vocals on some of Kelly's songs, as well as with the Stardust Five. She has performed live with Kelly on several occasions including clarinet on six tracks of his A – Z Recordings boxed set. In his memoir, Kelly credited Prior with inspiring him to give up his long-term heroin addiction, "I got lucky, I met a woman who said: 'It's me or it'. She gave me the number of a counsellor ... I thought about 'it' every day for a long time. Less now". The couple had separated during the making of Kelly's biopic, however the separation is not mentioned and Prior is not interviewed in the film. According to Prior after a date in 2011, "[we] came home. He sat on the bed. 'I've decided I want to be single again,' he told her. 'Yes, I have been with other women.'" The split occurred after she had filmed her interview and "after the breakup, [she] requested the footage not be used. Her presence in Kelly's life is as a footnote in the credits. It's as if she was never there."
  Kelly's brother, Martin, is the father of Dan Kelly, a singer-guitarist. Dan has performed with his uncle on several of Kelly's albums, including Ways and Means, as a member of Paul Kelly and the Boon Companions, and on Stolen Apples; Dan and Paul were both members of Stardust Five, which released Stardust Five. Dan has released three albums, two of which received ARIA Award nominations. Kelly's younger sister, Mary Jo Kelly, is a Melbourne-based pianist who performed with him on the track "South of Germany" for Paul Kelly Live at the Athenaeum, May 1992 (1992). She has performed in Latin bands and worked as a music teacher at the Victorian College of the Arts Secondary School. Mary Jo provided piano on Archie Roach's album Charcoal Lane (1990), which was produced by Kelly and Connolly.
caption: Paul Kelly (at right) and his nephew, Dan Kelly, performing at Rockwood Music Hall in September 2011
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