Interview: Harmony James (part II)

This is the second and final part of my interview with Harmony James, an Australian singer-songwriter who can't seem to help making new fans every time she plays somewhere or releases a new album. Harmony's second album, Handfuls of Sky, was released earlier this year and I spoke to her not long after its launch during the Tamworth Country Music Festival.

Part I of this interview can be read here.

Would you consider writing songs for other people?

Absolutely, I’m assigned to a publishing company now and they know that I write a lot of songs and that I don’t necessarily record them all, and we’re certainly going to look at whether someone else lends a voice to them. And I write songs that are fun and then I think, 'I don’t want to own that, I don’t want to actually stand up and say that out loud as me', so it might be nice if someone else does.

I was wondering about the publishing company deal and that’s obviously a big benefit, that they can take your songs and put them with other people.

Exactly, and they’ve got contacts all over the world, so I expect them to stand and deliver at some stage!

I noticed on your forward schedule that you’re doing a lot of supports for Troy Cassar-Daley and then you’re headlining your own gigs sometimes at the same venues. Will you be doing those headline gigs as a band or are you on your own?

With a band. People don’t often get to see Harmony James with a band, because when I do the support stuff it’s been [with a] guitar, so it would be nice to be able to just sneak out and do a few ‘pow’ moments.

It worked very well at Tamworth, and watching your band actually made me realise that country music, at least in Australia, is really inclusive of all ages and it was just great seeing Dan Conway playing with Jeff McCormack and there was Glen Hannah and Steve Fearnley, your drummer, in that gig and I just thought it’s really about who wants to play with who, not what age anyone is.

Exactly. It was funny backstage, actually, because Jeff was saying, 'I remember when I was the young fellow in the room and now I’m the oldest guy here'. And then we had Dan who is, I guess, practically a kid when you look at those musos, but I think it’s really important that the industry also lets some of those new kids come through because at some point we’re going to need them.

I was talking to another performer in her early 20s and she said how she’d been embraced by the audiences and people who didn’t know her, and I think country does allow that to happen. It seems to be a bit easier to get a start with audiences and I don’t know if you found that at Tamworth in particular, in the past?

I think Tamworth is a unique place because when you’re in your establishment phase it would be hard to assemble a whole lot of paying people to come to your gigs, but you’ve got a better chance at Tamworth because at least you’ve already got a town full of people who know they probably like your kind of music, so if you’re going to put on a gig that’s where you go.

Just back to your songwriting. Not everyone’s like that - there are a lot of people who perform other people’s songs - and it’s quite a personal thing to perform your own songs but the motivations are possibly also different. With you in particular, listening to your songs, it feels like you’ve got a real drive to tell the stories that are in the songs, and I was wondering if that’s something that’s been with you for a really long time and if, in fact, you do have that drive?

It’s a funny thing because when I’m writing songs it’s just almost probably my own personal venting. I love music and I’m ruminating on whatever it is that’s going on in my head at the time, and a song happens and I just write. I’m never thinking at the time, 'Do the fans need this and will they sing it back to me?' Anything like that, I’m just writing. And then sometimes they just sit with you and you think, 'I think this is a keeper'. And so you start to have what ends up looking like a batch of songs that might be an album, and all of a sudden you’re on this slippery slope and you’re recording it and it’s all down in hard copy and then you kind of go, 'Hey, this was written in the privacy of my own room about my thoughts and things, and now I’m just going to broadcast them and I can never take that back.' It’s really odd, because when I’m writing that’s not the intention but then I just kind of go ahead and do it anyway.

And also you’re in good hands with your producer/manager because that seems to be a really good combination, you and Herm Kovac. How did you find him in the first place - given that you were running that project yourself, you could have picked any producer?

Yeah, that’s right. I didn’t know a whole lot, it was back in 2006 when I was thinking – initially I was literally thinking, 'I’m just going to record a single', and I had a couple of people I’d been aware of their work or what they’d been up to over the years and sort of thought maybe I should just get in touch with them and see what they thought, and Herm was one of them. I’m trying to remember how I was aware of him. You know what? I was aware of him because I knew he’d produced – it was all on the strength of one song, it’s a song called 'Stay' that Grant Richardson recorded, and I remember when I first heard that song on the radio I just thought, 'Wow, that sounds world class'. And so it was pretty much that one song that I’d heard that made me put Herm on the shortlist, and he was just one of the more courteous people who actually got back to me in a timely fashion and all those types of things, so I was quite lucky that he just had some good business practice going on and I ended up going ahead with him.

Well, I’m sure the people who didn’t get back to you are probably kicking themselves now. I would be, if I were them! But it has been a good combination, obviously. He really understands where to put your voice in the mix, for example, because you do have a strong voice but you could also be overpowered by the instruments with the wrong mix.

Exactly. He’s been quite a gem, to be honest, to find and work with. He’s very passionate about the music and he’ll crow to anyone who’ll listen about it because he believes in it as well, so I’ve had a few wins there.

So in the way of things in country music, are you now going to take up the banjo?

Personally, I would have to find a whole other lifetime worth of time to fit in any instruments. My big plan, one of these years, is to actually become proficient on the guitar.

I think that’s a bit harsh, you seemed fairly proficient when I saw you play.

You know how they say, in a room full of guitars, I’m a pretty good welder.

Except at that Tamworth gig a couple of weeks ago when I think there was one song you sang that you took your guitar off and you said you felt it wasn’t quite right, so even if you don’t think you’re good on the guitar you’re clearly attached to it.

Yeah, yeah. I think it’s like this little security blanket, isn’t it?

It is. So I think my time is about to be up, but I don’t think I’ve got any more questions left anyway!

There you go, perfect. Look, you couldn’t have planned it better.

That’s right. But congratulations on the album, you’re an amazing country music performer and we’re very lucky to have you in Australia, I think.

Thank you. I appreciate your time, listening to my record.

Harmony James is touring with Troy Cassar-Daley and then on her own. Go to www.harmonyjames.com for details. Handfuls of Sky is out now through Warner.

Interview: Harmony James (part I)

When Harmony James first appeared with her debut album, Tailwind, it was immediately obvious that Australian country music had a new star. Tailwind was an accomplished album full of wonderful songs, all except one of which were written by James. Tailwind was a completely independent release, which was one of the other remarkable things about it, as you'll see in the interview.

Since Tailwind's release, James has signed with a major label (Warner), signed a publishing deal, released a second album and joined Troy Cassar-Daley on the road for his current tour.

I spoke to Harmony James not long after this year's Tamworth Country Music Festival, which saw the release of that second album, Handfuls of Sky. I've been looking forward to this album for a long time, and wasn't disappointed, so it was a great thrill to be able to interview Harmony (warning, I probably come across sounding like a fangirl - because I am).

This is the first part of a two-part interview.

I saw you play in Tamworth, I think it would have been two weeks ago, almost exactly two weeks ago, you were probably walking off stage.

It feels like a year.

It was quite a different performance to what I’d seen a couple of years before that at the Southgate Inn. You seemed quite a lot more comfortable in your skin as a performer and as a band leader.

Somebody in the band said to me I seemed very relaxed on the day, so that was nice. And, I guess, the best part about work with them is they know that I like to try and have everything just so, and they agreed to do a rehearsal a couple of weeks prior, I flew down and we went through everything so I felt very confident – they’re great anyway but I felt confident that we were all over it, apart from me and my guitar.

Well, you seemed relaxed, it kind of seemed like it was a natural place for you to be now and I was actually wondering whether – I know you spent a bit of time on the road with the McClymonts, so I was wondering if a lot of that, just that ongoing touring where you’re out night after night, different audiences made you feel more relaxed?

I think it would have to, because I guess from McClymonts tour, playing to a different room every night and in a different space and types of people and everything, you really did get a range of experience. I mean, I’ve been doing gigs before but that was a really sort of intense version of it and a lot of fun and different challenges and things, so I guess it probably did make me a bit more confident eventually.

And I actually saw you on that tour with them - because I like to see the McClymonts whenever I can - and I thought it was pretty brave, actually, because it was you and your guitar, and they had their full band, so I thought it’s quite a big thing to get up just you and a guitar when you know there’s a full band coming after you.

And the funny thing is that people who are there to see them are there to see three absolutely stunning girls who harmonise together and so you’re kind of like, 'Wow, this is nothing to do with me, I’m just lucky to be here.' But for the most part, I was fortunate enough to win people over.

And look, your album – I’ll mention Tailwind in this instance, because I just absolutely loved it from when I heard it and a friend of mine bought it and it’s not the sort of country music she normally loves, and she just said to me, 'I can’t take it off, I just keep playing it.' And it's still the only album that sits in my car permanently, that I will reach for at least once a week. And so, I guess, those songs were so strong that taking them on the road would have won fans for you.

Yeah, yeah – it was a massive year because, I guess, the way I look at it is I did have this strong album, I sort of lucked into having what is considered quite a good album. and I just needed an audience for it, so for someone to hand that to me on a silver platter was such a gift and a great opportunity.

Well, they obviously wanted to as well. But I remember either reading or hearing you talk or something about with Tailwind, I think you financed that yourself and put it all together, and that’s such a huge undertaking, because it really did seem like a big production. It was 16 songs, you had a really slick CD insert - so is that the case. that you did it all yourself?

Absolutely, yes, and, I guess, that’s why I’m not 21 and doing it because I always intended to, if I ever did record, to try and do a good job. I didn’t want to just hand it out to [my] mates at a barbecue. I either wanted to do it properly or not at all, and I had to change a lot of things about my life and get some earning power and saving and borrowing power and really do a good job of it.

So how long was that plan for you, because I’m sure there are a lot of musicians who are thinking, 'I can put a couple of songs on iTunes', and that sort of thing, but you came out with a fully realised album that had been really well produced, you’d obviously researched your producer, you made it a great package and that’s a long time in the planning.

Absolutely, and I was 12 years old when I first realised that I would love to be a country singer. I heard for the first time something that was actually called country music and it had an identity and I loved it and I went, I would love to do that. But at that time I never really believed I could do it because even then I think I knew that that was a big deal and then I loved music and saturated myself in music and kept playing and singing and writing and everything but it took a long time to get to the point where I believed I could or should gamble on myself in that way.

So that was when you were in the Barkly Downs area working, saving money, not doing much else apart from writing music?

Yes, that’s when I finally was in a position to actually go the whole hog and borrow a big wad of money, and initially it was just the four-track EP as a bit of a test fodder, and I put that out and had a really good response, so we turned that into a full album and that’s why the album got so big.

So now that you’ve moved to Warner as a label, I imagine that takes – some people would possibly think, why would you go from having all that control over your own music, to giving some of it to a major? But I would also think they take some of the grunt work away from you.

It’s an interesting process too, I guess, what I’m hoping to do with the label is utilise them to increase my career. So, yeah, they do have a big machine and a whole bunch of stuff to do what I was scraping around doing on my own. But, I guess, it’s just profile-wise I want this to be what I do for a living long term, and I see them as having better power to be able to get me in that position than on my own. Like, I obviously can do it on my own but it’s very hard work and it will take a lot longer, and I’m hoping that their weaponry might give me a year or two shaved off.

And I would think now there’s a process of acceleration, whereby you start to play more gigs, you’re getting more profile, you’re doing more interviews possibly, and does that affect your songwriting? Does it affect the amount of time and space that you have to write new songs?

Yes and no. Being busy means that it’s harder to get the really introspective headspace that I typically use to write, but at the same time I’ve got contacts through all these people now who can put me with other writers, which is something I’m just starting to explore, and I was quite lucky the other day, somebody teed up a co-write session with Tim Ritchie for me, so on one side of the coin I’m busier and it’s harder to find time or headspace to write, but on the other side I’m getting opportunities I wouldn’t have had before.

As a fan of your songwriting, I’m actually quite surprised that you would write with other people because I think your songs are so great, but I guess it’s a different perspective.

Yes, and I’ll be honest with you, the jury’s out as to whether that is something I will do a lot of, but there’s no rule to say that I can’t try it and see how I go, and so far it’s a mixed bag. I’ve had co-write sessions that have kind of been, 'Oh they’re a lovely person, but we didn’t gel'. And there are other ones where I felt like we worked together in a way that it was still my truth and I could feel like I owned and believed the song without compromising too much, which is important to me and the way I write. So I think it’s going to be hit and miss, but at the moment I’m just willing to explore and see if it adds value or if I’m better off on my own.

Do you discard a lot of songs in the process? Because there were a lot on Tailwind and Handfuls of Sky is a good, solid 12 or 13 tracks, from memory. Are there many that don’t make it?

Yeah, yeah. And there’s a couple of songs still bouncing around that missed the cut on Tailwind and they missed the cut on Handfuls of Sky, but I still feel like we’ll probably end up finding a spot for them somewhere. We all like them and then there’s one reason why we decided it doesn’t make the cut this time around - not because it’s not good enough but because there’s another song that’s close enough in subject matter or tempo or whatever it is. Yeah, yeah, there’s quite a lot of songs, and the scary bit as a writer is that every time you write a new song you forget the oldies and then sometimes you go back and you go, 'Oh my God that’s pretty good, isn’t it?' You play it to someone else and hope that they agree with you, but yeah, there’s heaps there.

I’ve noticed on the new songs that there’s at least a couple - with 'Hauling Cane' and 'Great Grey Cloud', there’s a sense of the road less travelled or the road more travelled in the sense of having made choices and how that’s played into current life. Are they reflective of your experiences or are you writing characters in those songs?

The headspace I was in when I was writing parts of Handfuls of Sky, I was kind of reeling to be honest. Since I’ve launched into this whole exercise so much has happened and so much has changed. My entire life has changed and I’ve experienced things that I’d never had to do before, and I’ve learned and I’ve been exposed to embarrassment and fantastic opportunities and everything, and I feel like I’ve probably aged 10 years in 3 or something. So yeah, definitely, the headspace I was in when I was writing a lot of those songs was, I guess, analysing the changes in my life and where I’m at and dealing with it.

In the song 'Home' on Tailwind - that sense of belonging that you managed to get across to the Barkly region, you can almost hear the sense of belonging in the song and the way you sing it - do you still feel like part of you is there in the bush under the stars or is that just not a part of your life any more?

It’s a really bizarre place, because I miss it but I don’t allow myself to miss it too much, because I don’t want to be miserable about a choice I made, because the choice I made was the right choice. I did need to move to the city to be in music and I made that move and it’s paying off and things are great, and I do have to sacrifice that part of my life at the moment for it, so it’s a bizarre thing, because that’s who I was for such a long time. But I’ve adapted pretty well and I don’t get a whole lot of my fix of the bush, so I do feel a bit detached from it as well. Like, the jillaroo who was on Tailwind, I don’t feel like the jillaroo any more. So it’s an odd place. People are like, 'You’ve changed'. And I’m like, 'Well, yes, I probably have.'

And as a functioning human being that’s completely normal.

Exactly. You do what you do.

So you moved to Brisbane, and obviously the next logical step would be to move to Sydney and then to Nashville.

Yeah, yeah, although I was talking to someone the other day about how Brisbane was my little baby steps because I’m too scared for a real big city. I think I can do Sydney now and they said, 'No, honey, don’t do it. Don’t do it.'

Because they don’t think it would be right for you?

I think they were just like, 'Who would want to do that?' So maybe I’ll just skip that and go straight to Nashville.

Well, talking of Nashville, for Australian country performers, I guess, there is a time where a lot of you have a choice, which is, do you keep trying to build your profile in Australia and a lot of performers make a career – Beccy Cole for example, has a career travelling around the country, performing and releasing songs here, but if you’re at all interested in exploring further - maybe exploring co-writing or different audiences - at some point it must become an almost difficult choice, do I stay or do I go?

Yeah. And I feel like I’m not really at the point where I’m pushed to make that choice yet. I feel like I’m in a bit of a situation right now where I’m just emerging and I’m getting opportunities right here, right now, and I feel like I should just sort of give them my best crack and as things build and I start to believe that hey, this really is working, then it’s probably in the next 5- and 10 year-plans we’ll have to include all that sort of thing.

Part II of this interview will be published soon.

Handfuls of Sky is available now through Warner and also on iTunes.

www.harmonyjames.com

Interview: Lachlan Bryan (part III)

This is the third and last part of a multi-part interview with Lachlan Bryan, whose new album, Shadow of the Gun, is really quite fantastic. In this part of the interview we talk about songwriting, storytelling and changing lyrics.

The first two parts are available here, along with a review of Shadow of the Gun.

I noticed that quite a few of the songs on the album are either about women who are getting away or have gotten away but it’s – there’s a wistful tone to them rather than a sense of our narrator being wronged or having an ego being bruised. So, I guess that is more of the confessional nature of it.

Well, I certainly don’t claim that all the songs are of literal stories that have happened to me in any way. I was engaged when I first started writing some songs for the album and by the time I’d finished writing the songs I was no longer engaged, so I was also not married, so – that had all sort of fallen apart and there’s definitely an element of that relationship in the songs but it’s also – I mean, I do write songs from other people’s perspectives and other people’s stories so it may sound like it but I’m not actually harping on about the same girl. I'm not even writing from the same person’s perspective the whole way through that album, but it probably helps the listener to think that I am.

What is clear is that you’re a storyteller, you’re in the storyteller vein of songwriting and any confessional nature is not harping on a theme, for you, it’s actually you using the emotions you’ve felt to tell either your story or someone else’s, but it’s always storytelling.

Yeah, and I think that – I’m interested in storytelling and I also think that it’s not really a surprise that most songs in the world just seem to be – almost in contemporary music, most songs seem to be about some kind of romantic relationship. Because we do tend to define our lives by that a bit. I have friends who are not in relationships and the fact that they’re not in a relationship really seems to define how they feel about themselves - and vice versa, ones that are married – no matter what we do as a job or how we spend that spare time or whatever, we seem to decide whether we’re happy or not based on whether we’re in a good relationship or not, and I don’t necessarily think that’s healthy or right, but it’s certainly something that people find easy to relate to.

But speaking of unhealthy relationships - when you sang 'Ballad of a Young Married Man' in Tamworth, you were telling the story about how you’d come to write that song and I noticed that you actually had a lyric change between when you recorded and when you sang it, which was in the line, 'I bought a gun and married young', and in the recorded one it’s followed by, 'No one but me to blame', but in the live one you sang 'The two are much the same'.

I think it’s simply a case of I wish I’d written it like that in the first place, it’s a better lyric and I think I sang as it as a joke one night and I just liked it better, so I just kept singing it like that.

Well, I actually wrote it down because I thought it was such a great lyric.

I know, I know, I’m like, 'Why didn’t I think of that before I recorded the song'. If I ever record it again for some reason, I’ll use the new lyric.

It’s very effective, it’s like a punch out in the middle of the song. Now I’ll just ask you one more question because I’ve been keeping you talking for a while.

No, that’s okay.

The question is: which old country singer are you the reincarnation of? Because there’s – I really get a sense that you kind of an old soul, not that there's an old-fashionedness but when I was listening to your songs, I thought, man, this is like some old country singer come back to life.

Right, okay. Well, that’s cool, I like that. I guess it would have to be someone that was dead before I was born to be a reincarnation.

You could be Hank.

Oh, well, that would be great but I think there’s a lot – there’s totally a lot of people trying to lay claim to that heritage, not least of all his grandson, who is very much like him and I’m a big fan of Hank III as well. Look, if we’re not being strict about it and – because we did cross over -maybe Townes van Zandt would be the one that I’d be most happy to take a bit of – I don’t know, if he’s left anything here that I can pick up on, then I’d probably like to, because he’s a beautiful songwriter. I suppose if I could be remembered like someone, then I like the fact that he’s not necessarily world famous in many ways but he’s left us with all the great songs.

Yeah, I think that’s a good legacy to emulate.

And if it has to be someone that was dead already, then I’m going to go for Gram [Parsons] because he definitely left a lot of songs out here, he should have lived a lot longer.

Cool. And are you going to tour in support of this album?

Yeah, I am and I don’t really – I can’t really enlighten you much on where or when, I know I’m doing things – like I’m doing the Byron Bay Blues Fest ... I think I’m probably doing Gympie and a few things like that. So, I know a bit about the few festivals that I’m doing but I don’t know what the in-between dates are. I got a rough blueprint sent to me yesterday but I haven’t at all memorised it. So, I am leaving home quite a lot and probably trying to get back to America this year as well. I’m in the kind of happy position and slightly terrified position of [having] actually stopped working now, I’m trying to do this full-time and it’s – yeah, I’m living from month to month a bit, but it’s definitely exciting to think that it kind of has to work otherwise I starve.

I don’t think you’ll starve and it sounds like you’re going to have a lot of fun and – that's a lot of good festivals and the Gympie Muster sounds like it’s getting bigger and better every year.

Yeah, we played there with The Wildes a couple of years ago and it was a pretty intense week actually.

I’m going to let you go now, thank you very much for your time.

My pleasure.

www.lachlanbryan.com

Interview: Lachlan Bryan (part II)

This is the second part of a multi-part interview with Lachlan Bryan, who has made an extraordinarily good album, Shadow of the Gun. In this part of the interview we talk about how Lachlan came to country music and about the album's producer, Rod McCormack, and how he and Lachlan came to work together.

Part I of the interview can be read here.

Now, I’m going to ask you about your country music story, by which I mean how you came to play in the genre, because some people start off in rock 'n' roll, and some people are always country.

Yeah, sort of a bit of both, I’ve always liked country music but I did play in a few bands in my late teens, early twenties which weren’t really country ... I went to England with a band probably about five years ago, and we were just the kind of young indie band that weren’t very good – but we did get to travel around and it was, weirdly, in England that I actually heard a lot of kind of Americana music, a lot of country music. Actually, alternative country is quite big in England and Scotland, and I started getting into country music again through that. When I was a kid I really liked Gram Parsons and probably even older country music like Hank [Williams], I guess. Really I just probably always try to think of someone different to say other than Hank but he really was the first country music I heard. My family are quite into country music and my uncle plays the lap steel and guitar and he was in a lot of country bands before I was born. So, there was a lot of country music around and then I rediscovered it through some of those Americana artists, your – kind of like Ryan Adams and all those people who were big in England when I was over there, and it sort of brought me back to the source, I guess, it brought me back to the country music that I enjoyed when I was younger.

And I did get a bit of a Ryan Adams feeling watching you play, but not in a derivative way, just in that you seemed to have the same family tree of music you were coming from.

Yeah, probably that’s true. I guess – yeah, I think that happens a lot with people that play this kind of [music] – we all inevitably go back to the same sources: Townes van Zandt, Gram Parsons and John Prine and all those really great songwriters. It's pretty hard not to get into one of those guys. Ryan Adams is an interesting one, because I don’t love all of his work but I do like what he does when he goes really country.

I agree completely with you there.

Yeah, like that Jacksonville album – Jacksonville City Nights is probably my favourite.

I don’t know if you’ve got Ashes & Fire, but I think that’s the best thing he’s done in a very long time.

I haven’t actually got it but I have heard a couple of songs off it and it does sound really good.

Well, as Molly Meldrum would say, you could do yourself a favour.

That’s all right; I’ll check it out then.

You’ve written all the songs on this latest album and I’ve only downloaded The Wildes' album from iTunes, so I don’t have the liner notes, but I’m presuming you wrote either a lot or all of the Wildes' songs.

Yeah, I did, yeah.

From a songwriter’s perspective – a songwriter and performer’s perspective – what’s it like to write a song and then have a producer put their interpretation on it?

Well, it’s actually interesting. I think with the Wildes album, the producer probably put a lot more interpretation of his own on the songs than with the solo album. The album that we’ve just recorded with Rod [McCormack, producer of Shadow of the Gun], we were really, really true to the original demos. I did some demos for Rod earlier in the year, just at home, of the songs, I think I demoed fourteen – no, I must have demoed fifteen songs – just with an acoustic guitar and vocal, and we recorded twelve of the fifteen for the album, and Rod was really good in that he didn’t say, 'These are the twelve you should record', or anything – we really just decided that stuff together and I feel like he had a really gentle hand on the recording process. Whereas with the Wildes album, we were a bit less experienced and I think that the producer probably had a firmer hand on that record. We actually worked with the same producer recently again, [the one] who worked on the Wildes record, and we did some recordings with him the year before last and we didn’t end up doing anything with them, and I think that we probably had got to the point where we didn’t want to have someone having such a firm hand on the recording. Which is not to say that I don’t like the Wildes album – I still really like that album, and Jon’s ideas – Jon Burnside produced that album - Jon’s ideas were better than mine were at the time, so I certainly think he did a really good job of it and I have total respect for him. But I did really enjoy working with Rod because he really didn’t try to change me too much; he just made the recordings sound good and made sure that the arrangements around the songs were very much focused on what I was doing, hopefully, what I was doing with the acoustic guitar. I think he added a tremendous amount but he did it without interfering with the songs, which was something that I really appreciated.

And did you just meet him around the traps? Because it seems like Rod and Nash Chambers are everywhere as producers, I’m just presuming you met him somewhere and the relationship came out of that.

We actually met at Tamworth last year. I knew the name but I didn’t know a lot about him and I think he had the Wildes album and he came to see a Wildes gig and then he showed some interest, and my management was keen for us to work – she had a good vision for us working together because she felt like we might need a bit of middle ground between the sort of mainstream stuff that Rod’s done and the fairly un-mainstream stuff that I’ve done. And she was right – Rod and I really hit it off from the first time that we had a proper meeting, like we had a proper meeting about February of this last year [2011] and we just started talking about music and we like so much of the same music and we really appreciated the same things in that music, like the way it was recorded, the lyrical content. We both had an appreciation for the songs that are really, really strong songs. He got me into some music that I haven’t heard before; he really got me into Mickey Newbury, for instance. I was a bit behind with that stuff and I discovered some great singers and players through him, so I got Darrell Scott, who plays in Robert Plant’s band now andis a good singer/songwriter/performer in himself. So we just started talking about a whole lot of music and it was all down the direction of the record that I wanted to make. I felt really confident that he and I wanted to make the same album. This album was so easy to make, from the very first time I talked to Rod, I did have in my mind that I wanted him to produce the album. I didn’t know at that time that he was going to arrange a record deal for me to do it, but that was great, because there was no way I could have afforded to – and so I really did want to work with him from the first time that we talked about music together. I also listened to the album that he’d made with Paul Kelly a few years ago, which I really loved, the Foggy Highway album. So, from then on it was really easy. because I felt like the songs had come reasonably easy, the recording process was easy – we recorded it live with the whole band in, I didn’t overdub any vocals or anything – I played guitar and sang it at once, and the band did it at the same time, and we felt like we would only need to do three or four takes for each song and that was right, we just chose the take that we liked best and we ran with that, or we mixed that, and it was a really easy process. And even in the mixing and the mastering, these are things that I’ve normally interfered with heavily befor,e but I felt really confident that Rod and I were trying to get the same sound and same-sounding album, so it was like that. I was happy just sitting there and enjoying what I was hearing back and it was very low stress, I guess, and I think you can kind of hear that ... When I hear the previous stuff I’ve done, I can hear all the little battles that we had in the studio and stuff like that, but with this, it just felt really right the whole time.

Well, the album does kind of sound like your sitting in a log cabin, if that makes sense, it’s got that – it’s got a kind of cosy – not a rustic feeling but an intimate sound, and certainly what you mentioned about Rod’s decisions about where to put your voice in the mix, it’s really strong, it’s not being overwhelmed by the instruments at all.

Yeah, we decided that right from the start and that was what he pitched to me right from the start.

It’s got quite a warm, close sound, it doesn’t feel like you’re keeping the listener at any kind of arms’ length.

Exactly and I think that the songs needed that too. That was one of the reasons that I really decided to make the solo record rather than a band record, is that these songs really needed to be one-on-one songs – I almost considered doing the solo album just with an acoustic guitar and vocal, because I really felt sick of the songs that I was writing at that time. To be honest, the songs that I continue to write are very much singer/songwriter stuff, very kind of concessional, which I’ve sort of avoided doing before. I think my attempts at that previously have sounded too immature, so I just felt like I was ready to do that now.

The next part of this interview will be published tomorrow.

www.lachlanbryan.com

Interview: Lachlan Bryan (part I)

My latest favourite country music find thus far in 2012 has to be Lachlan Bryan - his album, Shadow of the Gun, is outstanding and he's also a great live performer who understands that audiences need to be entertained (no small feat).

I spoke to Lachlan recently, exactly a week after I saw him play in support of Harmony James during the Tamworth Country Music Festival. In this first instalment (of several) we talk about that gig, and also about his sartorial choices for it ...

I actually saw you – it would have been almost exactly a week ago in Tamworth, walking off stage about this time, I think.

Oh yeah, where was I? I was at Tamworth.

That’s right, and I was actually in the second row, so I had a good view of your suit and I have to say, I think you were the only man on stage in Tamworth in a suit at any stage.

Yeah, I know, it’s shame there’s not more.

Is it common for you to wear a suit on stage?

Yeah, it has been lately. I got that particular suit from the Lost and Found Market in Collingwood in Melbourne. It’s actually a really old suit but it was in really nice condition and it’s wool ... but it’s really hot so I didn’t wear the jacket that day. It’s kind of hard to wear the jacket with a guitar, jackets are more suited to the keyboard, or just sitting without a guitar or maybe to play the piano or something. And if the jacket’s kind of weird when you have a guitar strap around it.

Fair enough!

But, yeah, I have just been trying to clean up my act a bit, I guess. I’ve even been having a shave.

Well, I did notice, seeing some of your older publicity shots, that there was some facial hair that I didn’t notice last week.

Yeah, yeah, like I said, I’m just trying to clean myself up and look a bit more presentable. I’ve never really had a job that I had to wear a suit for, so maybe I’m just making up for it by introducing a suit into my current job.

Well, I think you’re very brave to wear a woollen suit on stage at all, considering how hot the lights can be.

Well, particularly in Tamworth, but I did wear it for album launch up there; I got through the whole gig with the jacket on, so I was pleased with myself.

I think you should be. How was your festival generally speaking?

It was really good. I enjoyed doing that solo spot with Harmony [James], and I did a gig with my band [The Wildes] at the Family [Hotel], which was kind of my record launch on the Tuesday night. Kind of my favourite room in Tamworth is the back room at the Family. I’d never played in there before but I’d seen Shane Nicholson’s gig there last year and I think Kasey and Shane did a gig there a couple of years ago and I – I don’t know, I really like it, it seems a kind of intimate kind of place, so I enjoyed that gig and playing with Harmony, and I played with Bill Chambers for a couple of his gigs and did a duet with Catherine Britt at her gig. So, I did a lot of running around to other people’s shows and that suited me fine.

Tamworth does generally seem to be a bit of a running around festival, because I noticed you had Glen Hannah in your band and you also had – well I know that Jeff McCormack plays bass for a few people ... Oh no, so this is Harmony’s band, sorry, but they played on your record, I think?

Yeah, yeah ... Glen Hannah played guitar on the album and Jeff played bass. But they never play in my live band so I don’t really see those guys all that often, I obviously saw them in Tamworth, but they didn’t play in my live band up there, but they play on the album and they did a really great job.

Yeah, sorry, I was getting confused because they played with Felicity Urquhart the night before and I just – I thought I just was seeing Glen Hannah everywhere, so my brain thought he was playing with you too.

Yeah, Glen Hannah is everywhere, and he does a lot of graphic design stuff as well. So I seem to run into Glen on all sides of the music scene. He even did the front cover of my record.

Now, I was watching you at that gig and thinking you won over the audience, which is a really difficult thing for a support act to do, particularly because it’s not – you never know what you’re going to get, basically, when you’re playing support. Do you take a much deeper breath when you’re doing a support slot? Is it more nerve-wracking?

No, not really. I guess, in a way you have less to lose on a support slot because they’re not necessarily your audience and the worst that can happen is they stay not your audience and the best that can happen is that they become your audience. So, in a way, it’s fun like that, you get a chance, I guess, as you say, to win over new people, whereas when it’s your gig, when it’s your headline show, you have – I guess people have certain expectations of what you’re going to do and I tend to do every gig a bit differently, I don’t ever write a set list – which drives the band mad, by the way.

It would.

I never have a set list and I don’t know what I’m going to talk about before I go on stage, I always – pretty much always talk a fair bit, like I did at Harmony’s gig.

But I think that was part of the winning over, was the talking, because it made it more personal.

Yeah. I guess it’s a good way of introducing – I mean, I kind of think that sometimes when you go and see an act for the first time, you only get a vague idea of the songs. The first time you listen to something, particularly if you’re in a crowded environment, you only really get a bit of an idea of whether you like the songs or not and I guess that when you’re playing to a new audience, you have to excite people enough to want to buy the CD and get to know the songs a bit better. So, part of that sometimes has to be you entertaining them, putting on a bit of a show, and that makes me more comfortable anyway. But then, I guess, I just hope that if people do get the CD then they get that second chance with the songs and actually get into the songs.

Well it works, because I bought your – sorry, go on? You said something at the end, and I cut you off.

Oh, I just said, I guess, what I really want is to ... if you’re doing a support gig like that – or any gig – you just want to give people a bit of an impression of what you’re about and part of that is explaining what you’re about. I don’t necessarily explain what the songs are about all the time but I’ll explain kind of where I’m coming from, and when you do that, you just – you hope the people get the chance to hear the songs out of that – outside of that environment and get to know the songs better.

Well, it did work, because I bought your CD at that gig and when I bought mine, there were already quite a few gone. So hopefully you sold a few.

That’s good. I’d already – I had to leave actually before the end of that gig because I had to go and do an in-store performance up at Target, of all places. But yeah, that’s good, because I didn’t really look whether any CDs had gone or not, so it’s good that they did.

Part II of this interview will be published tomorrow.

www.lachlanbryan.com

Interview: Madison Violet (part II)

This is the second of a two-part interview with Brenley MacEachern of Madison Violet (she's at left in this photo). Madison Violet are currently on tour in Australia and I can't recommend them highly enough, as a live act and also as recording artists.

Part I of this interview can be read here.

Now the name change from Madviolet to Madison Violet, that happened after you left Australia the last time, so I’m just curious as to why it happened?

One of the reasons is because I remember we were playing a festival in Australia – this is one of them, there’s a lot of contributing reasons and I’ll tell you a few, but I remember playing a festival, I think it was the National Folk Festival, and I had at least three different people come up to me after one of the shows, saying that when they read our name in the program, they really weren’t interested in coming and one of them, I remember, said they just kind of walked by the stage and went, 'Oh, that sounds great', and went over and watched it. But the band name really threw them off, they were expecting us to be like this – sort of like – either like a crazy comedy duo or just kind of heavier, like a rock band or something because of the name Madviolet. And it was kind of like, well, that’s really disappointing and then we started doing iTunes search on Madviolet and we kept bringing up the Mad Violets and it’s a psychedelic kind of garage band from the '80s and so ... it became kind of a – certainly it’s frustrating for us and then when we were phoning – like people would call in at retail – I mean, people don’t really call record stores any more, but at that time they were still calling record stores to order records in, and they would just say they didn’t have it because of the name Madviolet being all one word, they couldn’t find it in the system. It was just crazy. We didn’t want to depart too far away from the entire name, so we just decided to extend it to Madison and – I don’t know, I mean, it’s a little bit softer and our music has gotten a little more rootsier, so we decided that it suited us better.

And it works well. On the latest album, which is The Good in Goodbye, the last three songs – am I right in thinking they’re kind of more traditional east coast songs, or – some of them – a couple of them - are traditional, I think?

Well, 'Christy Ellen Francis' is a track about my 100-year-old grandmother, she’s just turned 100, and 'Cindy Cindy' is like a traditional bluegrass tune and I think the third last one – I think it's 'Emily', which is just a little more bluegrass style.

So, is that just you kind of acknowledging your roots in those traditional songs or you just like the songs?

I think it acknowledges kind of where we came from, definitely where our roots are. But also, we just really – I wouldn’t call ourselves bluegrass musicians because we’re certainly not good enough to call ourselves bluegrass – because bluegrass musicians are bluegrass, they’re amazing – so we like to sing and play bluegrass style, so we just started playing a couple of bluegrass songs and people were asking, 'When are you going to put it on a record? I want to hear it on the records.' So we recorded it.

In Australia you usually only hear a fiddle on a country music song, but in Canada I believe the fiddle is a more dominant instrument, so is that true to say, that the fiddle is more popular in Canada?

I think on the east coast of Canada, it certainly is. You hear it everywhere. But not so much in the centre or the – I mean, Toronto is considered east but we don’t consider it east because we’re so much further west than the Maritimes. So you would hear more country fiddle but you don’t hear a lot of Celtic fiddle, like the kind Lisa plays, in Ontario or in the western provinces.

You’re very popular in Europe and this is your second time out here that you’re playing a lot of shows. Do you get to play a lot in Canada or are you mostly overseas these days?

Yeah, we do spend a heck of a lot more time overseas. We keep saying, 'We’re going to tour Canada, we’re going to tour Canada', but there’s only a handful of Canadian dates of this year, we’re going down to the [United] States for probably a month and a half, we’re going back to Europe three times, starting in April and again in July and again in August, again in October. So, yeah, it’s – I think it’s just [that] we’re really augmenting our market over in Europe so if it’s rolling well for us, we might as well keep on – keep at it.

Are you personally nomadic, as in – does it not bother you to travel this much?

I think I was more nomadic before, I think in the last year it’s really started to sort of take its toll. Having said that, I took a couple of weeks off at Christmas, which felt amazing because we had just done fifty performances in sixty days, it was just – I thought I was going to throw in the towel, I was just so exhausted.

That’s a lot of performances.

Yeah, that’s a lot of shows. I mean, there were maybe – I don’t know, forty-five shows and then we had some radio things and we went into the recording studio and recorded a new song, so it was just full on and way too much. So I took a couple of weeks off and then, yeah, sure enough, I was actually really ready to get back out there. But I’m glad that it was only like a couple of weeks' tour, because I wasn’t ready to go out and do another fifty shows. I never want to do that again.

It’s a lot – I would think on a physical level, that’s a lot for a voice to withstand, but also, that thing in performance which is on the energetic level, where basically you’re giving out a lot and you’ve got to be able to get it back, and the thing about performance is, you’re never sure what you’re getting back until you’re actually there. So, I would think that would be hugely draining so you would need long sleeps after that kind of thing!

Yeah, you definitely do. I mean, I can say that I’m thankful that I was – in some regard, I’m really thankful that it was in Europe because the German audiences and the Swiss audiences, they will really give it back to you, like, big time, and that really helped, because if it had been on one of those tours where you have an apathetic audience, I just don’t know what I would have done. I don’t think I could have gotten through it, so I have to thank those European fans because they’re good fans to have.

And has your European audience grown out of your touring or have you – because with social media, there are all sorts of ways to reach an audience but, obviously, the best way is to be there in person, and that’s a lot of work at the start of a career, in particular, to get out there and play to audiences. So is that how you did it in Europe?

Yeah, because our audience is somewhat older - considerably older, actually - we can’t really rely on the social media as much as some other bands with a younger demographic, so it’s just from touring and word of mouth at those shows. If someone comes to a show and then they’re, like, 'Oh, I’ve got to bring all my friends the next time', so it can make it for a slow growth, but they’re certainly loyal, they’re incredibly loyal, and if we can just get a little more social media happening, and as these – I think that people even older fans or people in their fifties and sixties are starting to get on Facebook and get on Twitter, so that’ll be helpful for us, for sure.

Madison Violet are touring Sydney, Melbourne and other places in NSW and Victoria. For information go to www.madisonviolet.com

Twitter: @madisonviolet

Interview: Madison Violet (part I)

Madison Violet are a Canadian singer-songwriter duo who do enough country-esque songs to qualify for inclusion on this site (and it's my site, so I get to decide anyway!). The duo - who are Brenley MacEachern and Lisa MacIsaac - have released four albums and just get better and better all the time, both in songwriting and performance.

I first saw them play in January 2008 and, like everyone else in the small crowd, was entranced by what two guitars and two voices could produce: simply, they're magic. And they're currently on tour in Australia so I urge you to go and see them. Last week, ahead of that tour, it was my great, great pleasure to speak to Brenley MacEachern (at right in this photo). I was especially interested in talking about the very long, firm songwriting partnership she has with Lisa and how they make that work.

Is that Lisa?

Oh, you actually were supposed to get Lisa but she’s actually super under the weather today and is having a hard time even talking. She’s got a nasty cold so I’m taking care of the interview today.

Oh no, that’s quite all right, I’m very happy to talk to you, Brenley.

All right.

I was actually – I was going to say to Lisa, I interviewed her brother Ashley, many years ago when his first album was out and I was living in Vancouver for a year. So when I first heard about you guys, I saw you play in a little church hall in Hornsby in Sydney about four years ago, I think, and I remember thinking that there can’t be too many MacIsaacs who are in music from the Maritime Provinces [of Canada].

Well, there actually are but there’s not that many that play the fiddle, I guess.

That’s true. So you’re both from the Maritimes, is that right?

Well, my roots are there, my father is from the same town that Lisa is from, it’s a community of 330 people. So we kind of – we actually had no idea, when we first met, that our families knew one another but when we found out where she was from, then it was – she had to know all my family, she knows them better than I do.

And I think you told a story when I saw you play – you mentioned that until you met Lisa, you hadn’t met someone else who was from such a large family, because either in your generation or the generation above that there were sixteen children or something.

Yeah, my mum is one of ten, my dad is one of sixteen and then Lisa has fifteen and eighteen on her side. So, yeah, it’s kind of a crazy-sized family.

Is that kind of common on the east coast of Canada amongst those Irish/Scottish communities, or are you two unusual?

Well, I think it is fairly common, although whenever we ask people if anyone has got a bigger family, no one seems to. So, I think maybe it’s not as common as we had first thought that it was.

So, you two – your writing partnership really fascinates me – I actually do think of you as being Lennon/McCartney-esque because you’ve got this long-standing collaboration that just gets stronger and stronger with each album, and so I’m really interested in how you can collaborate for so long and so consistently. How did that start and do you ever write songs without each other?

Well, when we first started writing together, Lisa kind of came from the fiddle sort of Celtic background, so she wasn’t writing songs, and I had already written a couple of records with my old band Zoebliss, so I was sort of – the role I played was writing the songs and then Lisa started playing guitar and then all of a sudden started. I think the first song she ever wrote was a song called 'Prayed', which was on our Caravan record, and then we started this collaborative effort and it just – I think because Lisa and I have some really kind of crazy similarities, in that we both have been able to sort of finish each other’s sentences and it’s almost like we share one brain, it makes it really easy to ... I come up with an idea or she comes up with an idea and the next – and we already know how it’s going to end because the other person is there to do it. This last record, wrote, I think, one song just on her own — it’s called 'Going Away' — and I wrote a couple of songs just on my own, and I think it’s just because we had some more sort of – there was a little more separation between when we wrote on the road, then we weren’t together and I think that that was kind of a new thing for us.

It sounds like you never have any arguments about song writing, but you must find that this is really unusual, that you have this synergy with each other. I can’t imagine you’ve come across too many songwriting partnerships, or even creative partnerships, that are like this?

You kind of just have to leave your ego at the door, I guess, and I’m not saying that it’s always blissful. Sometimes one of us will have an idea and the other person is kind of like, ;Well, I don’t know', butbefore you can get sensitive about it, you just have to realise that we’re trying to create together, and if one of us isn’t loving it, then it’s probably – it’s not going to be a presentation of both of [us] – the story that we’re trying to tell. So it’s better that I just write the song on my own or she does and then that’s the story. But more often than not, we just – if she doesn’t like something that I’ve come up with, quite often, I don’t really like it either, I was just getting lazy, you know what I mean?

Yeah.

So, it’s good to have her to tell me that I’m lazy and vice versa.

When you were out in Australia last time I think you got a hire car and you just drove – I remember you telling a story about where you were driving and I thought you’d probably seen more of Australia than most Australians. It seems like you’re constantly on the road and I was wondering how that amount of performing changes how you perform and write, but also how you relate to each other?

Well, we had to make some serious changes. When we were in Australia first time we bought a car and we drove ourselves from gig to gig, and think we did forty shows the first time we were there. Now, when we go, we still do a lot of shows but we have a tour manager who does all the driving and we also have a bass player that usually comes with us. So the team is a little bit bigger out on the road so you get a little more time to yourself, and I think that that really sort of enables us to keep going. We do get tired, we do get weary, we’re trying to sort of – I mean, even on this tour that we’re going on, we’ve actually taken days off in between that we could have probably played every single day, but we turned down shows so that we could just have some time off in between. So, we’re taking a little vacation while we’re there, because we need it. We do sometimes get at each other. We do get along very, very well, but there are times where we want to scratch each other’s eyeballs out. So we have to take care of that.

It doesn’t surprise me - it must get pretty intense. Your dynamic on stage ... I saw a couple of gigs when you were out here last, and I’ve actually never seen so many people buy CDs at the end of a gig, it was almost like you had this little girlie fan rush but a lot of them were guys — it was quite interesting to watch — and I was one of them, I’ve got to say. But it’s almost an alchemy, I guess, that happens in performance, in any performance, but with you two, that sense of synergy really comes through and I get the sense that for you guys, no two gigs are ever the same but there’s always the sense of it flowing.

Yeah, I mean, if they start to feel like the same, then we quickly change it. We can do the same set list for twenty shows in a row, because that's kind of what you do, but somehow the show is never the same. Like, there may be some stories that we want to share night after night, but the way we share them is always different because of the different energy in the audience, it’s not the same numbers so it never comes out quite the same, and the reaction is always completely different. So I think our show is very much a conversation, and maybe that’s why people – and we do sell – I don’t even say this to brag, it’s kind of like we’ll finish a show and we’ll be settling up with the merchandise people and they’ll be like, 'Wow, we’ve never sold this manyCDs at a show'. And maybe it is that it is a bit of a conversation back and forth between the audience and ourselves and they want to leave with a memory of that, I don’t know. I mean, it’s not really a memory of that because it’s the record, but it’s ... do you know what I mean? Like it’s – sort like they want to leave with a piece of the night.

I went to a show in Canberra as well last time you were here — I loved your gig so much when I saw you in Sydney that I said to a friend in Canberra, 'They’re playing in Canberra, I’m coming down', and I took this friend and another friend who lived down there, they both who had no idea who you were. I think they were kind of partially interested, but at the end of the show, they were rushing over to buy CDs.

[Laughs] Take all your friends. Bring all your friends all the time.

Well, I will! And talking about your records, I thought the first two were great and then I heard your second two and they’re quite different musically, but also there was a real sense, I think, by No Fool for Trying, that your voices were actually coming closer together — not that you couldn’t harmonise before, because you absolutely could, but there was just a sense that they were really together and I don’t know if you felt that, but that’s what I noticed.

Yeah, I think it just kind of happened organically, the more – we kind of had that synergy together when we first met and I think we just started to blend and [our voices] were like very tight right from the get-go, but as we started to play together for years and years, and hundreds and hundreds of shows, it just got incredibly tight, just because of playing. And, actually, it’s funny, because when we went in to make No Fool for Trying, we went in with a different producer this time, Les Cooper, and he wanted us to kind of try to sing not so tight, you know what I mean? Just let it – loosen it up a bit, but it’s impossible for us, it’s not something we try to do, it just is. And to try to not sing what’s coming out naturally, is like – it’s impossible. So, yeah, I think he kind of wanted us to be a little more loosey-goosey and so when we were harmonising, they weren’t like bang on, but they kind of just are.

When you sing together so many times, I don’t know how you would stop being tight together like that because your voices would just be used to each other. It’s probably not even something you can consciously control at all, even if someone sat you down and said, 'Right, you’re going to sing this and you’re going to sing that'. Having seen you two play, I think there is another dynamic at work that’s completely subconscious and that’s what really brings it together.

Yeah.

Part II of this interview will be published tomorrow.

Madison Violet are touring Sydney, Melbourne and other places in NSW and Victoria. For information go to:

www.madisonviolet.com

Twitter: @madisonviolet

The latest Madison Violet album is The Good in Goodbye. But they're all great!