The story behind Kasey Chambers' 'Sweetest Waste of Time'

Married Australian songwriters Kasey Chambers and Shane Nicholson released 'Rattlin' Bones,' a seamless country-roots collaboration, last year, and the album has earned an easy pair of nominations at this fall's Americana Music Association awards. We talked with Chambers, who plays two shows with Nicholson on Monday at the Cactus Cafe, about one of the songs on the record.

'Shane came up with the idea – either a riff or a lyric – for most of the songs on "Rattlin' Bones," and then we'd base a song around that and write together. The "Sweetest Waste of Time" is the only one where I came up with the idea. To be honest, it was just one of those weeks where you get onto an album and listen to it all the time. I was listening to a lot of Gram (Parsons) and Emmylou (Harris).

'I wrote the song while I was sitting on the bus. I was just sitting there humming that on the way to go buy my groceries for the day, and I wrote half the chorus by the time I got home. I took it to Shane and said, "Here, I've got one! It's finally my turn to bring something to the table." Shane isn't into that traditional country as I am, but he's starting to get more into the old-timey stuff. He was already big into Lucinda (Williams) and Patty Griffin and Steve Earle, but now he's more into the traditional stuff like Hank Williams.'

— Brian T. Atkinson