How to Make Gravy

For the film, see How to Make Gravy (film).

How to Make Gravy
A picture of a 300 mL bottle of White Crow tomato sauce is shown on the left. The artist's name is on the right with the album's title below it. To the right of the word "to' is a floral leaf.
EP by
Paul Kelly
Released4 November 1996 (1996-11-04)[1]
Recorded1996
GenreRock, pop
Length15:02
LabelWhite
ProducerPaul Kelly, Simon Polinski
Paul Kelly chronology
How to Make Gravy
(1996) 		Roll on Summer
(2000)
Alternate cover
A sepia coloured image of a woman presenting a platter containing a large roast bird (possibly a turkey). Her smiling face is visible beyond the bird, her fingers appear below the platter. The background is red. A strand of coloured Christmas lights stretches across the top of the image. The artist's name is located to the left of the woman's head and the words, Christmas Single, are to her right. The title of the single is written over the image of the roast bird.
US (Vanguard Records) release

How to Make Gravy is a four-track EP by Australian singer-songwriter Paul Kelly and was originally released on 4 November 1996[1] on White Label Records in Australia. The title track was written by Kelly and earned him a 'Song of the Year' nomination at the Australasian Performing Right Association (APRA) Music Awards of 1998. It tells the story of a newly imprisoned man writing a letter to his brother, in which the prisoner laments that he will be missing the family's Christmas celebrations. The same character appears in two of Kelly's earlier songs, "To Her Door" (1987) and "Love Never Runs on Time" (1994). The gravy recipe is genuine – Kelly learnt it from his first father-in-law. It was covered by James Reyne on a 2003 tribute album Stories of Me: A Songwriter's Tribute to Paul Kelly, and on Reyne's 2005 acoustic album And the Horse You Rode in On.

It has also been covered by David Miles, Luca Brasi, From Nowhere, Semicolon, Ghostwriters, Karl Broadie and Lawrence Agar. In September 2010, Kelly titled his memoirs, How to Make Gravy. On 29 September 2012 Kelly performed "How to Make Gravy" and "Leaps and Bounds" at the 2012 AFL Grand Final. A film version was originally set for release as a Christmas movie by Warner Bros in December 2023; however, the movie was delayed to late 2024. It stars Hugo Weaving and is directed by Nick Waterman.

"Gravy Day" (21 December, the day on which the prisoner in the song writes the letter) was created by fans and is celebrated by internet memes each year.

  1. ^ a b "New Releases – Product Available from: 04/11/96 (from The ARIA Report Issue No. 350)". ARIA. Retrieved 13 April 2024 – via Imgur.com.