Ron Kingston
Ron Kingston is an Australian singer-songwriter with a career spanning 10 years and 15 countries. During his three-month stint at the InterContinental Hong Kong, where he performs acoustic sets at the hotel’s Lobby Bar, the Melbourne native talks to Penny Zhou.
HK Magazine: Are your parents musical?
Ron Kingston: My parents are in fashion business, which I’ve never really been interested in. They import ladies wear from Hong Kong, and have passed through a few times. But I’d say they’re musical people—my mother played the piano and my father played the violin. As a kid I loved listening to stuff from my parents’ record collection, from The Beatles to Stevie Wonder and Sting, but I think my first passion in life was drawing, until I found music and songwriting an even better way to express myself.
HK: What was the first song you ever wrote and what was it about?
RK: Oh my god, you’re really testing me, haha! I think I wrote my first song in high school, and it was about something I dreamt about. I just manifested my dreams into songwriting. And later on, my biggest songwriting inspiration became traveling and meeting people.
HK: How did you get into singing?
RK: It’s kind of unusual. I was very interested in acting—I still am—and so I liked to imitate other people’s voices. When I was watching movies I couldn’t help but start to copy different characters’ ways of talking. One day my mom took me to a Billy Joel concert and I was so fascinated by his music I just imitated his singing. That’s probably how I began to sing. I’ve never had any professional musical training; it just happened like that.
HK: Can you tell us something about your album, “All You Need to Know?”
RK: It’s my new release and it’s a two-CD album. The first one is five original studio songs and the second one is a live CD recorded two years ago when I performed unplugged with a cellist and a percussionist at this [InterContinental Hong Kong] hotel. It’s great coming back here to sing again and I hope people in Hong Kong can enjoy the live CD.
HK: What’s the best thing and worst thing about being a traveling musician?
RK: The best thing is definitely being able to meet different people and experience different cultures all the time. It keeps you rolling and active, and you know—a rolling stone gathers no moss, haha! The worst thing for me is probably the language barriers, because as I travel in Asia quite a lot I encounter them. But it has actually made me a more patient person and made me try other ways to communicate with people other than talking.
See Ron Kingston perform live every Tue to Sun at InterContinental.