“I get itchy feet when I’m home too long,” Kasey Chambers says when I speak by phone to her at her home on the central coast of NSW.

“I’m looking forward to going on tour.” That’s her 30-date Backbone album tour, which will take her all around the country, including Canberra on March 28. 

Backbone is Chambers’ 13th album, and has hit #1 on both the ARIA Australian and ARIA Country albums charts. But this one is particularly notable because out of it there’s a new single and video of The Divorce Song, which features Chambers and her ex-husband, Shane Nicholson, singing together more than a decade after they split up.

“I guess if you work hard enough on making a divorce really work, then anything can happen,” she says.

It’s more than 25 years since her first album, The Captain, was released and as well as launching Backbone, Chambers has recently released her book Just Don’t Be A Dick Head, so she’s not been sitting around doing nothing.

Besides, there are the kids to think about, a 22-year-old son living in Perth, a 17-year-old son in Year 12 and a 13-year-old daughter also still at school.

“The Divorce Song is quite new, actually,” she says, “probably my newest. Shane and I wrote it a week before we went into the studio. We had made albums when we were married, but we hadn’t done any songs since we divorced about 12 years ago. It’s nice to go back to that. I think we do divorce better than we did marriage.”

It makes them both good role models for the broader community of fans, but Chambers says she did go through some hard times with the divorce.

“But you get to a point when you have children involved that you have to put your own shit aside and work out what’s best for the family. You need to have a good working relationship and put extra time into your family until they’re strong – we have a beautiful family unit now.”

The bitter-sweet lyrics of The Divorce Song are nothing new for Chambers, who is known for singing out about really personal things.

“When first I was writing songs, I would’ve said that that was my biggest weakness,” she tells me, “being so honest that it felt like every album was like a therapy session, but that has turned into an advantage because it means that every time I sing, I’m really feeling it, and people relate to that.”

At 48, Chambers is perennially popular, not just for that confronting honesty but for a peculiarly penetrating vocal mixture of little girl and adult that she believes permeates her songs. 

“Sometimes it comes across in a vulnerable way and other times it comes across as strong and powerful, so that you know I’m not just that little girl. That’s the way I am.”

“I haven’t done a proper big tour since The Captain anniversary tour just before covid, but this is different because the focus is now on Backbone and my book. Of course, I’ll still be playing some favourites as well as new numbers.”

Song titles in the album include Arlo, Take Me Down the Mountain and A Love Like Springsteen. Curiously, in the publicity blurb the album is described as ‘Americana,’ though the title track Backbone (The Desert Child) features a trip across the Nullarbor. 

“I did the book on my own as a creative thing. I want it to stand out that it’s not just a bunch of notes. I want to remind myself of the different ways I’ve learnt really important lessons in my life,” she says. 

“I give examples of how I learnt to become the powerhouse that I’ve become, warts and all, it’s a bit of an embarrassing thing and it’s an extension of how I play music.

“A good, recurring lesson I’ve learnt is that I make better discs when I am responding to my inner voice – I call her my inner foghorn – she knows me better than a lot of other people do.

“I really tune in and listen to her… I follow my own route rather than what people think, I live an authentic life.”

Kasey Chambers, Canberra Theatre, March 28.