How Stephen Cummings got his rhythm back
While recovering from a stroke, Aussie music icon Stephen Cummings rediscovers the joy of music – and produces a new EP.
For almost five decades Stephen Cummings has been revered as one of Australia’s greatest songwriters and singers. Why the former frontman of the legendary Melbourne outfit The Sports isn’t in the ARIA Hall of Fame is a travesty.
The last few years have been tough for Cummings, 71, as he dealt with the aftermath of a stroke. But still he continued to write songs and create new music. The latest addition to the canon is a new EP, Joy.
Rather than presenting a new batch of original material, the four–track release finds Cummings revisiting songs by other Australian artists – including Spectrum, Pel Mel, Jess Ribeiro and Melbourne indie act Dag – while filtering them through the unmistakable lens of his own voice.
It’s a gentle, atmospheric record that feels less like a covers EP and more like a meditation on the music that shaped him. The project came about as Cummings was contemplating hanging up his rock’n’roll boots.
“I just thought – can I do a record?” he says with a laugh. “An old school friend of mine died and left me a little bit of money, so I was able to pay for the recording myself.”
‘So I thought, I’ll do an EP of covers that I really like. And what I really like is Australian music’
That unexpected windfall gave Cummings the freedom to make something small and personal. Working with long-time collaborator Robert Goodge, he assembled a band and mapped out a short list of songs that meant something to him.
“I just got sick of writing songs that no one much ever heard,” he says with his typical disarming honesty. “So I thought, I’ll do an EP of covers that I really like. And what I really like is Australian music. I always have.”
The four songs on Joy span more than 50 years of local songwriting. There’s Living in the Balance, originally recorded in 2021 by Dag, alongside Jess Ribeiro’s haunting 2015 song Unfamiliar Ground. From the post-punk archives comes Pel Mel’s 1980 track No Word From China, while the EP reaches all the way back to 1971 for Spectrum’s Fly Without Its Wings.
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“They’re not necessarily my favourite songs,” Cummings says. “They’re just songs that I like on a personal level. They have strong meaning for me.”
Part of the spark for Joy came from seeing a new generation of Australian artists perform live
That connection goes all the way back to his teenage years. Growing up in Melbourne, Cummings saw Spectrum, a progressive rock outfit, play live numerous times – an experience that left a lasting imprint.
“I remember going to see them play in a circus tent,” he recalls. “A friend from art school dragged me along. We both loved them.”
Decades later, the music still resonates.
Part of the spark for Joy came from seeing a new generation of Australian artists perform live. Cummings recently caught Leah Senior playing a show and was immediately struck by her voice.
“I couldn’t believe I’d never heard her before,” he says. “She was incredible.”
Senior and her sister Andi Senior ended up contributing the EP’s dreamy harmony vocals — a key ingredient in the work’s luminous, almost pastoral sound.
“They really lift the songs,” Cummings says.
The recording sessions themselves were refreshingly old-fashioned. After a brief rehearsal, the musicians entered a studio and tracked the EP in just two days.
“We actually sounded like a band from the early ’70s,” Cummings explains.
Once the sessions were finished, Goodge set about mixing the work – and just like that, Joy existed.
“It all came together really easily,” Cummings says. “As though it was meant to be.”
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That ease is especially striking given the aforementioned challenges Cummings has faced in recent years. In 2020, while in Brisbane, the singer suffered a stroke – an event that might have ended many musicians’ careers.
“I don’t really know how I managed to keep singing,” he admits. “I had to do a lot of therapy – exercises to try and get my throat working properly again.”
Breathing remains a challenge, but Cummings pushed through to finish the record.
“Somehow I got through it,” he says simply.
Alongside Joy, one of Cummings’ most revered works from his back catalogue is about to find a new life. His 1988 solo album Lovetown — originally released on the indie label Rampant — is being reissued on vinyl by Cheersquad Records & Tapes.
Recorded in an eight-track studio in Hawthorn owned by John Rees, Lovetown marked the first time Cummings worked with key collaborators including Shane O’Mara and Rebecca Barnard, alongside long-time writing partner from The Sports, Andrew Pendlebury.
“I was aiming at a sound like John Martyn on his classic ’70s album Solid Air,” Cummings says. “Because we were limited to eight tracks, the songs had to be methodically worked out ahead of the recording. For some unfathomable reason, I was also interested in the idea of using a basic drum machine against the acoustic guitars.”
The result was a record that felt intimate and deeply personal — qualities that define Cummings’ solo work.
“Lovetown had a good feeling to it,” he reflects. “It was done for the right reasons and motives. I just wanted to make that record. I wasn’t thinking it was gonna be a big success or anything. It was more like I had the idea of that sound, that sort of sound I thought was like me.”
he remains bemused that neither the band nor his solo career has been fully recognised in Australia’s institutional halls of fame
Featuring Some Prayers Are Answered, You Jane and She Set Fire to the House, the album was met with widespread critical acclaim, topping Rolling Stone’s critics’ poll at the time and later earning a place at #38 in the magazine’s list of the Top 100 Australian albums of the 1980s.
Despite the EP’s beauty, Cummings is philosophical about his place in the broader music industry. While The Sports enjoyed international success – even cracking the American charts – he remains bemused that neither the band nor his solo career has been fully recognised in Australia’s institutional halls of fame.
“It does get frustrating,” he says. “Sometimes I think – what do I have to do?”
Still, recognition isn’t the main motivation these days. Cummings is more interested in small creative moments – making records when the opportunity arises, discovering new artists and occasionally stepping back into the studio.
“I might write some more songs,” he says. “For a while I couldn’t really play, but I’ve started playing guitar again.”
For now, Joy stands as a quiet but powerful addition to the Cummings catalogue as a reminder that sometimes the most meaningful records are not about chasing the next big idea, but about reconnecting with the music that shaped you.
“It was just fun,” Cummings says.
After everything he has been through, that simple word might be the most fitting title of all.
Joy is out through Cheersquad Records & Tapes and now streaming. Lovetown is re-released on May 1 when Stephen Cummings and his band celebrate the re-issue in a live performance on Triple R in Melbourne. Also at George Lane, St Kilda, on May 2, 2.30pm-5.30pm.
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