Keith Holland Releases GET ON BOARD Single Ahead of CASTLES IN THE SAND Album
The Corowa-based songwriter recorded the track with longtime collaborator Greg Stace at Ralph Street Studios in Sydney.
Corowa, New South Wales based singer-songwriter Keith Holland releases 'Get on Board,' the second single from his upcoming sophomore album, 'Castles in the Sand,' arriving this September. Where lead single 'Life' wrestled with the meaning of existence in the abstract, 'Get on Board' tells an actual story, a fever dream about a ghostly train, an old conductor, and a passenger who learns his time has not yet come.
The song follows a narrator who falls asleep reading an old railway journal and wakes to find himself standing on a long-abandoned platform, the tracks around him a twisted, rusted network on the ground. A whistle blows, a train pulls in, and an old conductor with, as Holland puts it, 'the eyes of father time,' sits down beside him. 'Get on board, this train is going somewhere,' the chorus insists, 'get on board, the ending we don't know, get on board, this never-ending journey, get on board, relax and enjoy the show.' But before the passenger can settle in, the conductor delivers the song's real message: 'Son, you know this is not your journey, there's still so much in life you have to do.'
The imagery comes directly from where Holland lives. Rural Australia is dotted with abandoned railway stations and stripped infrastructure, and Holland has long found something quietly moving in them, a reminder that nothing around us is permanent and that everyone eventually returns to the dust they came from. 'Get on Board' turns that observation into its own kind of comfort: death arrives only when it is genuinely time, never a moment before, no matter how close the ghost train might feel.
The song has already earned an unexpected compliment. Holland sent it to respected Australian music reviewer Anita Monk, who told him it reminded her of The Seekers' 'Morningtown Ride.' For a lifelong fan of the group, Holland says he could not have asked for a better comparison.
Holland played nearly every instrument on the track himself, joined by longtime collaborator Greg Stace on drums, with Stace also handling mixing and mastering at Ralph Street Studios in Sydney. The song was recorded, like the rest of 'Castles in the Sand,' at Keitho's Factory, the home studio Holland built himself in Corowa.
Holland's path to making music at all is as unlikely as the song's premise. He spent most of his adult life in social welfare, eventually working as a prison case management coordinator, before deciding during the early days of COVID that he had finally had enough of paid work and wanted to give music, something he had only ever tinkered with, a real chance. With no roadmap for how to do it, he placed an ad in his local newspaper seeking a music marketing professional. Weeks later, Albury based music professional Jon Navaho called, and after hearing Holland's early demos, spent close to two years teaching him how to properly produce and arrange his own songs, a collaboration that shaped Holland's 2023 debut album, 'All in the Groove.'
'Castles in the Sand' carries that same hands-on, lived-in approach across 11 tracks that move between mainstream and country rock, drawing on decades of memory, loss, faith and observation, from childhood summers at his grandparents' beachside shack to the years he spent watching creativity get quietly worn down by office life. 'Get on Board' gives listeners one of the album's most vivid single scenes, and one of its clearest messages: whatever the ending looks like, it is not yours to meet yet.
With 'Get on Board' out now and 'Castles in the Sand' arriving this September, Holland says he has no plans to slow down, already writing new material and not ruling out putting a band together for his first tour.
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