As you read this, Paul Kelly is somewhere on the road in Australia, where he has been sharing stages with Neil Finn as part of an 18-concert tour. Having only just caught his breath after a month in the United States, Kelly knows he will have to postpone any rest for quite some time. Three months into 2013 and he is already describing it as ''the year of touring endlessly''.
Next on the agenda is a brief New Zealand trip, which includes a show at Knox Church, Dunedin, on Wednesday, March 20. Next month, he heads to Europe, then it is back to North America.
''If I toured all the time, I'd go nuts, I think. I like going away but I like having time at home, too. It is a matter of balance,'' Kelly says from his home in Melbourne a couple of days before his Australian trek with nephew Dan Kelly and Finn was due to start.
''I really wanted to do the New Zealand tour with Neil but the dates didn't work out for him. I reckon I'll chuck in a Neil Finn tune during the shows. I think I'll know a couple by then.''
Kelly plans to perform his new album, Spring & Fall, in its entirety for the first part of the Dunedin show before rambling through older material, a rather formidable catalogue that includes To Her Door, Before Too Long, Bradman and When I First Meet Your Ma.
It makes sense that he should play all 11 songs (plus a bonus song) from Spring & Fall. The album was devised as a song cycle, a coherent body of work in which each song relates to those before or after it. Its theme is the rise and fall of a relationship, encompassing passionate flourishing, cool withdrawal, regret and acceptance.
''With Spring & Fall, I had a few songs early on that I thought would work with each other. One song, For The Ages, is what I'd call a spring song; it's about the beginning of love. I then had a leaf-changing song called Cold As Canada. After I'd written that, it struck me as being the polar opposite to For The Ages, so I wondered if I could push the idea a bit further and make a link between the songs.
''For The Ages is one of the first three songs that set the scene before the turning point in the relationship; then we see the fall.''
In order to place more emphasis on the album's narrative links, Kelly decided he wanted to keep his music relatively simple, spare even.
''The idea for the music also tied into the idea of the song-cycle theme. By focusing on the story, I tried to make the album sound a little bit like one long song. I wanted to cut any musical excess.''
Kelly reveals he found inspiration from a seemingly unlikely source, Austrian composer Franz Schubert's famous song cycle Winterreise, in short, ''about a guy who goes to the house of his beloved but gets rejected, so he wanders about in the snow ...''
''The songs are short; they just get on with the story. That aesthetic was on my mind for this record - to not have big instrumental passages or long introductions and just report the words.
''Though it wasn't conscious, it was pointed out - by a smart reviewer who is also a classical composer - that Spring & Fall starts in the key of G major, a fairly bright key, then winds its way to the very last song, which swings between an F# minor and an E. We also put in a hidden track at the end of the album, which is in G. So perhaps we were more clever than we meant to be.''
Kelly has been working on another album, a collaboration with Perth-based modern classical composer James Ledger.
''Last year we wrote music to poems, which were performed by a student orchestra. I've been asked to write a song cycle for them. I said yes because I thought it was intriguing.
''I didn't feel confident enough to write lyrics from scratch so I went to poems and ended up making up this piece with James. I eventually did write some lyrics as well. It is called Conversations With Ghosts. We performed it last year and recorded two of the nights. It turned out pretty well, so when I get back from New Zealand we are going to mix it and release it.''
Born in Adelaide in 1955, Kelly is two years shy of 60. In a career spanning 30 years, he has released more than 20 albums (including soundtracks) and, such is his talent for distilling characters and cultural moods, his music has been described as the ''sound of a country growing up''.
An acknowledgement of the clarity and depth of his songwriting is the inclusion of his 2004 anthology of lyrics, Don't Start Me Talking, in the Victorian secondary school curriculum for English pupils.
Yet the observer has more recently been the observed. Last year witnessed the release of Stories of Me, a film documentary that deals, intimately, with both Kelly's life and art.
He admits he was not entirely comfortable with the idea when first approached, but says that should be the point of any valid examination. Had the film been mooted five or six years ago, he might not have been willing. However, the release in 2010 of Kelly's book, How To Make Gravy, in which he had written frankly about himself, softened the way for a documentary.
''Once I'd agreed to do it, I didn't want to have any control over it. I gave the film-makers free rein. It was a case of in for a penny, in for a pound,'' Kelly says.
''The film-makers were particularly interested in my family history. In our initial talks, I said if I'm to be the subject of a documentary, then put me in a wide frame: make it about my musical times, my peers, my influences. I also come from a big family and that has had a big influence on me.''
Given Kelly hails from a folk tradition, where music from a common well is borrowed and reinterpreted, it is fitting others should thus shed light on his influences.
''The book, albums and songs are things I have made, but the film wasn't something I did. It also wasn't made for me, but for other people,'' Kelly says.
In 2011, he received an Apra award for ''outstanding services to Australian music'' and a few years ago Australian radio network Triple J released Before Too Long, an album on which a range of artists, from Missy Higgins to Jon Butler, cover Kelly's songs in tribute to his long-standing career.
All of which begs the question: does he find such recognition humbling?
''Probably the opposite. It gives you a big head,'' Kelly laughs, before getting a little more serious.
''Apart from writing songs for myself, I'm also writing songs for other people. So to have a group of artists get together and sing my songs ... that's what I want. I want them to be sung by others.
''I'm a songwriter as well as a performer. I have a pretty good voice for the songs in my head but I do like to hear them done by ... real singers.''
See him, hear him
Paul Kelly performs at Knox Church, Dunedin, on Wednesday, March 20. His latest album, Spring & Fall, is out now.
