"Perry's songs are so real, they ache with humanity. He chronicles life in the rough lane with a poet's eye, and a detective's nose for fraud and deception." – Peter Garrett, via Sydney Morning Herald
The celebrated bard of Sydney’s Inner South, Perry Keyes chronicles decades of living the grit and glory of public housing life in Redfern and Waterloo.
Across six albums, Keyes writes with a poet’s acuity, and the wit and empathy of someone who has lived – and still lives – alongside his subjects.
As Waterloo’s public housing faces bulldozing for top-end apartments, Keyes’ songs stand as acutely observed paeans to the communities that strived and – more or less – thrived there.
Black and White Town takes in the footy games, the drinking dads, the reckless teens and the police abuse, with Keyes’ songs set to the backdrop of the evocative images of Sydney filmmaker and photographer Johnny Barker. “These are stories of displacement, anarchy, homelessness and of people trying to hang onto each other in the face of what's happening in the inner-city right now,” Keyes says.
Tim Freedman and Peter Garrett are both dyed-in-the-wool Keyes fans, and veteran Sydney music writer Bernard Zuel likened Keyes to Bruce Springsteen and proclaimed him “the best chronicler of Sydney”. With his sixth album Black & White Town, Keyes’ sharp eye and pen eulogise the bruises of a community being excised from their home streets.
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