More than 10 years ago, Australian musicians Kasey Chambers and Shane Nicholson divorced.

Now Chambers and Nicholson, both ARIA-Awards winners, have released a track together about it, The Divorce Song.

Chambers will perform at Canberra Theatre Centre on 28 March, as part of her national Backbone Tour, with tickets available to purchase at canberratheatrecentre.com.au/show/kasey-chambers-2025/

The ex-partners collaborated on two highly acclaimed albums together while they were married. But, Chambers said writing and recording The Divorce Song with Nicholson was one of her favourite musical moments of her career.

“And even more, one of my proudest family moments,” she said.

“Honestly…. when our marriage ended, I never thought Shane and I would ever write another song together again. But, I guess if you work hard enough on making a divorce really work, then anything can happen.”

Nicholson added: “For a long while, writing and recording together again wasn’t looking likely for Kasey and me, and The Divorce Song seems like the perfect way to revisit what we always did best together.

“(It) Only (took) an hour to put down on paper, but in reality, it took us 10 years to write this song because it’s a song that couldn’t be written until it was fully lived. And I’m proud of that, and us.”

You were in Canberra just months ago at the National Library of Australia to talk about your book Just Don’t Be a D**khead: And Other Profound Things I’ve Learnt. How do you feel about being back so soon?

I love getting around that area because we always have a lot of great support, and for the book, which I didn’t expect because it’s a different world to me. I’m not an author so I was surprised and happy that so many people came out and supported the book launch. It kind of ties into the new album (released in October 2024), they go hand-in-hand.

For the Backbone tour, I will only play a few new songs, plus The Captain, Not Pretty Enough, etc.

I like playing the songs people want to hear – I feel like that’s a way I get to connect with people. I feel like my old songs are such a big part of who I am as an artist and a person. It makes me want to play the old ones because I want to share the whole journey of my life when people come and see my show.

I’m looking forward to coming down there and playing the gigs – that’s the icing on the cake for me.

Jenny Mitchell is opening up for us – she’s from New Zealand – I’m so excited because I’m a big fan of her and I get to see her perform every night.

The tour is called Backbone. What does that word mean to you?

I feel like the album is a soundtrack to my life. There are songs on there that reflect my childhood and myself as a partner, my divorce and marriage, my strengths and weaknesses – it’s a bit of everything on there. It’s all the backbone of my life going through these experiences. I want the show to reflect that as well.

Will you perform your version of Eminem’s Lose Yourself?

It’s just so much a part of my life in the past few years which is why I put the live version on my new album. It feels like one of my staple songs I couldn’t imagine doing a gig without. I’ve even done it acoustically around the campfire, which goes to show any song can be played around a campfire.

Many people write songs about their ex-partner, but you’ve gone one step further to write and record with your ex-husband. How did you feel once the song was released?
It’s great. I think it goes deeper than just a song for us because it’s a reflection of how hard we’ve worked to get to a healthy divorce. It’s really poignant and important for our children that there’s a healthy divorce around them.

We have more of a successful unit now than when we were married. There’s something really special about that. Having the song out there and sharing it, we get a lot of people talking about that song now. Even people on the street coming up and talking to me about it or saying that’s the type of divorce I want.

We wanted to put more work into our divorce than our marriage

Will you continue working together in the future?
Absolutely. We do sing quite a bit even outside of this song, but this is the first time we’ve co-written together since we were married. Performing together, we’ll probably do that forever on some level as long as it’s working, and we both love the sound we make together. I thought maybe those days were over. It’s been more than a decade since the divorce. It’s about 12 years since we’ve written together.

What’s next for you?

I don’t have much after the tour. We go and tour America which I’m classing as the same tour because it runs into that. I finish (in Australia) in mid-June, then I’m home for one day then on a plane straight to America, which will take us through to July, then I will take a break. I haven’t planned much after that.

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