Danielle Caruana explores the decay and transformation of love as Mama Kin in album Promises

Danielle Caruana is an award-winning singer-songwriter better known to many by her on-stage moniker of Mama Kin.

This spellbinding singer and percussionist taps into the DNA of generations of creatives before her as half of the duo Mama Kin Spender—mesmerising audiences with their firebrand performances and courageous songwriting.

In their latest album Promises, Mama Kin Spender explore the rise, fall and transformation of love. On this episode of Streets of Your Town Danielle tells us how she lays her heart bare in the lyrics and emotion of this album, going into the layers of the demise and saving of her relationship with fellow indie musician John Butler, through raw percussive energy and beguiling harmonies.

“We’ve never been a mainstream artist. We’ve never been played on mainstream radio,” she says proudly.

“We’ve never been championed by the cool, what’s cool and what’s pop. It’s also that folk style of making art for people to connect with people. It’s a vehicle for connection.

“Not one of our sales that attributed to our position in the charts came from streaming. It was all purely people who chose to buy.”

When I read aloud to Danielle some of the lyrics from their single Arrows she teared up at the memory.

“You and me / What a team / Then something started creepin’ in / A lazy blamin’ kinda thing / Just when I, I thought that you, could be my everything”.

“It’s interesting even hearing you read that out, I got a bit emotional. It’s really speaking to this incredibly ironic human trait that we somehow save our worst behaviour for the ones we love the most because it’s where we are playing out our trauma,” she says.

“That song really is looking back and going, `Oh God, we did a number on each other didn’t we. We really did a number on each other—right when we had the Garden of Eden in our very hands. We had love’s own promise in our hands, and instead of doing everything we could to protect that flame from every prowling wind, we became lazy with it’.

“That song is a confession and it’s a confession of like, `Hey, I’m sorry and I behaved in these ways and I also accepted this level of behaviour from you, and I don’t want that for us anymore’.”

The songs on Promises are so raw in their intensity—capturing such a common experience that breaks so many relationships. But Danielle hopes that others find hope that there can be renewal from that, that there can be a breakthrough. That this doesn’t have to be the end.

“As my partner and I were travelling through these very difficult parts in our own relationships to each other and to ourselves, we had this moment where I said to him, Hey, we’re going to be grandparents together one day, and we’re going to set the tone in that room and that’s our responsibility. And I want to build backwards from an experience where we are looking at each other with absolute clarity, love, connection, and commitment. And the details of who else is in that room is irrelevant to me, but that’s what we are responsible for that kid and for our kids. So let’s design backwards.

“Let’s design back from that moment and make sure we are super solid. I don’t care if there’s other partners in the room, if we are fully doing that, that’s okay with me, but that’s our core goal. If we are in a relationship, then that’s also fine, but our job is to make sure no matter what that moment comes and all the moments that come after that and before that, that we’re rock solid.

“So that kind of gave a different thing, a different question of should we be together? Should we not? Are we separating? Are we divorcing? Are all of these things that can get clouded in the moment because they feel they’re about tomorrow? And I was like, well, let’s make this about 15 years down the track and work backwards because the questions become different. I want to ask a different set of questions.”

Exposing the musings of her soul in song has come with its rewards—Promises debuted at number 2 on the charts on release and was nominated for an Aria this year.

And all by nurturing a relationship with her fans away from digital streaming and instead relying on human connection from searing performances to build her fan base one by one.

“I think the album debuting at number two was a real stop, drop and roll moment,” she says.

“We’ve never been in the charts—that was completely fan-fuelled—and you can really get stuck in the metrics and the back end of data of how things look.

“But we are really buoyed by the genuine energy and support of our fans and supporters and we earn them one fan at a time through festivals like Woodford [Folk Festival], through festivals like WOMAD, these people who just go to festivals, because they want to find new music and then have a relationship with that artist.

“So as far as ‘have we celebrated?’—yes—because we knew we should and we were very reverent to how much work had gone into it and that no part of it was a fluke.”

Danielle wholeheartedly explores how to stay fierce as a woman and is unapologetic about desiring success and recognition for her work.

“It’s the culmination of years of work really, and it’s been so great, but it’s like careful what you wish for in a lot of ways,” she says.

“My youngest turned 18 last year and I’d made a plan when he entered year seven that I was like, okay, I’ve got six years till he’s 18, and I know that I don’t want to start then as far as what that’s going to feel like to move from the role of primary parenting into them being in their own lives.

“It’s been a year of really actually realising long held ambition. And I don’t say ambition lightly because I think as a woman…I’ve certainly experienced shame around ambition in the past and with this campaign I’ve just had zero.

“I’ve just decided not to have that, and I just don’t have any shame about being ambitious, about having goals, about celebrating them when we achieve them as a team and as a collaborative unit.

“And that’s been really liberating to just say, `Hey, we want to chart. Hey, we want an ARIA’.

“And yeah, just watching the community of our supporters come up around that—it’s just been so encouraging.”

Read more about Danielle Caruana on her website and listen to a preview of the album below.

It’s that time of year again! Woodford Folk Festival is just around the corner and here’s my story for In Review featuring none other than Mama Kin herself and my interview with the head honcho of Woodford Folk Festival these days, Amanda Jackes.

The State Library of Queensland has advised me that I am their featured podcast online this month! My podcast collection is featured on the search page for the catalogue. Clicking on the image below will take you straight there! I understand from their staff that it is likely to be the feature collection for all of December.

Thank you my ever supportive Streets of Your Towners for keeping me and Mildred the Cantankerous Kombi on the road and getting these stories that will now be kept in the State Library of Queensland collection for generations to come. As one of the librarians so kindly told me when I asked her why they bought the rights, she said that I had captured stories of Queenslanders that in a hundred years no-one would remember—what it was like to be a refugee, to be a struggling actor, or to trek into the Woodford Folk Festival. You can see how to access the State Library collection in this previous newsletter!

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Love yas!

Nance