Hugh Laurie, in a scene from House.
Some big Hollywood names are headed to Canberra in the coming months.
Lisa Marie Presley will visit Canberra next month to perform with her band - but she will miss out on seeing an exhibition about her famous father at the National Portrait Gallery.
Lisa Marie will bring her Storm and Grace world tour to the Canberra Southern Cross Club in Woden on March 23 while the Elvis at 21, Photographs by Alfred Wertheimer exhibition at the gallery closes on March 10.
Lisa Marie Presley.
And it's been more than 30 years since he was last in Australia, but Hugh Laurie maintains everyone will still recognise him when he tours the country in April.
It helps, of course, that the British actor is the much-loved star of the hit US show House, although many more would know him from earlier roles in Blackadder, A Bit of Fry and Laurie and Jeeves and Wooster.
Lisa Marie Presley to tour
It's her first Australian tour in eight years, and she will perform with her five-piece band for eight Australian shows, choosing smaller venues in less glamorous locations such as Frankston, Bendigo and Campbelltown from March 19 to 29.
From forever being known as Elvis' daughter to her short-lived marriages to Michael Jackson and Nicholas Cage to more recent notoriety as the mother of up-and-coming model and actress Riley Keough, Lisa Marie has continued to work on her musical career through all the background noise.
The publicity blurb for the tour recognises her simple desire to make music. ''With all the hoopla that has surrounded her, it's easy to forget that Lisa Marie Presley is at heart a simple Southern girl whose earliest musical memories are of obsessively listening to 45s in her bedroom at Graceland and of her dad catching her singing into a hairbrush in front of a mirror at the age of three,'' it says.
She has earned praise for her efforts with music bible Rolling Stone saying her latest album Storm and Grace was the one ''she was born to make – a raw, powerful country, folk and blues collection that finds her embracing her Southern roots and family name''.
The video for one of the tracks, Weary, was filmed at Sun Studio in Memphis where Elvis made his first recording.
The 46-year-old moved in 2010 from the United States to the English countryside with her fourth husband Michael Lockwood, who also produces his wife's music. They have five-year-old twin girls. The twins are named Harper Vivienne Ann and Finley Aaron Love. Elvis' middle name was also Aaron.
"I got rid of a lot of the toxicity around me, but I also lost a lot of my drive and love for song writing," she says, of the move. "The creativity was kind of wrung out of me."
Presley resumed song writing collaborations in 2009, writing 28 songs in eight months.
Her third album's ''conciliatory theme grew out of wanting to have peace in her life after a period of turmoil and letting go of what no longer suited her''. "There were a few years there where everything around me had fallen apart," she says. "All the things that had become my foundation were gone and I had to shed a lot of skin. I found myself really vulnerable afterward and that's what birthed the album's vibe. It's me without any attitude or anger at a time of rediscovery."
- Bookings for the Lisa Marie Presley concert on Sunday, March 23 at the Canberra Southern Cross Club in Woden can be made on 6283 7288.
Hugh Laurie in concert
He might be best known as an actor, but this tour is all about Hugh Laurie's other career, as a blues musician, and he'll be here with his band, the Copper Bottom Band, for a show that takes in generations of blues performers from New Orleans and upwards across the US.
He'll be performing a mix of blues, tango, southern and South American music, a concept that many may find hard to square with either his comic British persona or his po-faced House.
In a press release this week, Laurie was keen to reassure his Aussie fans that he was still the same person.
"The last time I was there was in 1981 in a comedy show, and the world has changed a lot since then. I haven't though. I'm exactly the same. It's uncanny," he said.
"Obviously I'll be hoping to restore some national pride after the Ashes. If anyone throws anything at me, I'll lob up an easy catch to the balcony."
Hugh Laurie will be playing with the Copper Bottom Band in Canberra at the Royal Theatre on Tuesday April 22.
- Tickets are available through Ticketek.
