brisbane 7 day magazine

As the once skinny, mullet-wearing, Queensland kid who took the fairy tale ride to Nashville super stardom by way of Tamworth, it's tempting to assume Keith Urban has arrived.

He's handsome, talented, sings, writes his own songs and plays a smoking guitar. Nearly two million albums sold in the US alone, six consecutive top 10 US country singles, one that spent a record-breaking eight weeks at No.1, a huge following in Canada, the mullet years long left behind for really great hair and dogged rumours of a relationship with former supermodel Niki Taylor. It certainly looks a lot like he's having it all.

But, Urban, 35, considers himself to have a long way to go before 'it all'.

"We were at the immigration office getting some paperwork together for me to get back to the States," says Nashville-based Urban on a brief promotional visit to Sydney, "and one of the guards said, 'Can I have your autograph?' I signed it and he goes, 'I'm sorry that your success hasn't translated here.' I said, 'Well, that's what I'm back here working on'."

Though Urban's second album Golden Road has enjoyed gold status in Australia, he's s till not exactly a household name. In the US, he has won country music's newcomer, the Country Music Association Horizon award. Nominations abound. He's toured the length and breadth of the US, having just finished a grueling tour with Kenny Chesney that has been this year's biggest grossing US country tour to date.

"It's not just about making it big in Australia, though I'd love to do that," he says. "It's getting a chance to tour here as much as we have over there. The only reason we've got anything there is relentless touring. Everyone's had a chance to see us so they can then make a decision. No one's had the opportunity to make a decision here. They haven't heard anything, seen anything, they've got no idea."

This explains why Urban jumped at the chance to strut his stuff in support of the US country-artist-turned-pop-star, LeAnn Rimes during October.

"I've no idea what this is going to be," he says of the tour, letting pass by the opportunity to talk up the double bill, then admitting he's a bit nervous about playing to the home crowd.

He is nothing, if not honest - sometimes perplexing so.

Asked if he's happy he replies, "Yeah, relatively, Yeah," then actually pauses to think about the question, which would imply a willingness to reveal something of himself, a trait most people who have reached his elevated level of US stardom simply do not possess.

"I think so. I walk by a piece of happiness every now and then; there it is," he smiles and adds, "I think to some degree, with certain artists, there is comfort in the struggle."

Keith Urban has had his struggles - in particular, his well-documented (thanks to this endearing but slightly alarming penchant for full and frank disclosure) lingering problems with cocaine addiction.

Is he, then, comfortable with the struggle? "I don't know about the comfort for me. There's familiarity with the struggle though. And there's a fine line between the dissatisfaction you have within yourself being what propels improvement, and that dissatisfaction being a very debilitating entity. To keep walking that fine line, where you accept who you are but not so much that you just stop trying - that is a balancing act."

It's a balancing act he pulls off most of the time these days, insisting that he has long kicked the drug habit. Recent reports suggested he hadn't.

"Any addict will tell you that you never beat it. That was what I said in an interview. I thought that was understood. But God, I don't struggle with it. I don't get up in the morning and go, 'Oh ####, I've gotta have some (cocaine).' I've had no desire for the longest time for any of that. But it's important to not get blase about it and I said that. It got taken out of context. It's all good though," he adds. "I know where I'm at. God knows where I'm at."

Shame the postman doesn't.

Whilst doing a very good impression of a workaholic, he is also doing a great impersonation of an itinerant.

Though Nashville-based, Urban is officially of no fixed address as he spends most of his time on the road in a bus with his band, on stage performing, or pushing up zeds in hotel rooms.

There's no resting on his laurels, let alone roosting on them.

As for the supermodel rumours, well, if he is in a relationship with the fellow Nashvillian Niki Taylor he repeatedly refers to as 'a good friend', then they don't see each other that often. His relentless tour schedule means he's lucky if he's in the same town as the divorced mother of twin boys a week per month.

"For now it's good. I don't own a home or anything in Nashville. There isn't anywhere I've settled yet. But the bus is tremendous and I'm doing what I really love doing while I can still do it."

If there is a sense of urgency to his work, it perhaps comes from the two confronting episodes of voice loss he has endured recently. Both times, there was the danger of irreparable damage, and doctors ordered complete rest - no singing, talking, no vocal usage whatsoever.

"The feeling that it's not going to heal is frightening. And then just the fact that you sing a certain way and develop a lot of bad techniques in the commercial field of singing which are not necessarily correct but which give you your sound; if you start messing with that.." he trails off ponderously. "I'm still trying to balance out how many shows I can do in a row versus taking lessons and so on and singing in a different way to conserve my voice. I'd rather take less gigs and just sing the way I sing. I've seen it in some singers where they adjust to their vowel sounds and snip notes off that it's all in the name of conserving the voice to get through a long period of time. That's cool but I still sort of primitively prefer the all-out thing and when the voice is spent, it's spent," He laughs. "I don't know."

The son of Bob and Marienne, Urban grew up in the country Queensland town of Caboolture, listening to his dad's collection of country vinyl. Young Keith would see the word 'Nashville' on the back of the records and and distinctly remembers figuring, at the age of six, that this was the place to which he was heading. "Call it fate, or just wanting to please Dad," he muses but the ambition was cemented in passion when his dad took him to see the late Johnny Cash live.

After four No.1 country hits in Australia, the limited prospects for country artists here saw him make the tough decision to leave family and friends and settle himself in the US home of country music, Nashville, in 1992.

Though he was continually on the up and up, playing guitar for Garth Brooks and the Dixie Chicks and recording with the band, The Ranch, before embarking on his burgeoning solo career, loneliness took its toll on Urban and he became reliant on cocaine.

When he pulled his act together, the result was the singe But For the Grace of God. It sent him to No 1 on the vital US Billboard charts.

A drug relapse, the sadness of a broken engagement and those voice troubles have puckered the road since. But mostly, the title of his second solo album, Golden Road, sums up how life is.

Right now, he says, his focus is the music and though he looks more like a rock star than a country music star, he says he's staying with his country roots.

"That's certainly the music which is at the core of that I do. But it's funny. Often the country audience goes," ' I don't think he's that country' and the rock audience goes 'Of course it's country.'

"It think country is really a spirit. It's just an indefinable thing you either have or you don't. I think I do."