There never seems to
be a dull moment in your life or career, so since Happy Ever After was released, what have been the highlights?
Since Happy Ever After,
which was only September last year, the biggest highlight has been … well, there’s
two now since [In Our Backyard] has
been going so great. But singing in America, in New York, on the USS Intrepid in May, a song that I wrote
called ‘100 Year Handshake’, and the guests of honour being [US
President] Donald Trump, [Australian prime minister] Malcolm Turnbull and
surviving Coral Sea Battle veterans. It was just me and my guitar standing on a
stage in a silent room of 800 people, singing a song that I’d written
specifically for the night. So that was kind of validation that, ‘Hey, maybe
I’m okay at this job’ [laughs].
You often play with a
band, but of course you are used to playing on your own with a guitar – was it
really nerve wracking to be out there on your own?
The whole event was just so grand. The President of the United
States was there so the Secret Service was everywhere, security – we obviously
had to get cleared before it to even be able to go to it. Metal detectors, all
that kind of stuff. Very important people in the room – in addition to that
there was Rupert Murdoch, Greg Norman and John Travolta. Endless lists of
people. So I actually didn’t get nervous. Because it was silent and they were
all looking at me, I thought, You cannot
get nervous right now. You cannot stuff this up. Sing it properly! It was
like this reverse psychology: You have no
option now – do it properly. I don’t know if I could bottle that advice or
nerve cure but it kind of worked for me in the moment. Beccy Cole was there too
and she said, ‘Are you nervous?’ I said, ‘No, I’m not.’ And it was weird
because I was nervous in the days leading up to it but when I got there just
the huge momentousness of it made me think, You’ve
just got to be good at this.
Writing a song
specifically for that event, do you find it’s really helpful to have that sort
of targeted project to do – does it help you channel your creativity? Or is it
trickier because you have those constraints?
For me, it was easier. I really loved the challenge of that,
actually, and I’ve been doing a lot of that lately – writing school theme
songs, songs for tourism, songs for Western Sydney campaign, and then this one
came along. I just find it really interesting because this one being a song
about Australia and America’s friendship, I was nervous about writing it
because it’s a big thing to write. The climate – with a new president and the
prime minister and all that – I had to be writing it for the right reasons
otherwise people are going to say, ‘You don’t know what you’re talking about.’
So I did a lot of research, and my partner, he’s a bit of a history buff so he
helped research with me and helped come up with some of the angles for the
song. So we just took it to a personal place. Rather than saying this big,
grand statement about American and Australian friendship, we looked at what are
the things that have shown that. One of them was a man called Leslie Allen, a
26-year-old in 1943, who saved or carried twelve wounded American solders off
Mount Tambu. He just kept running back into battle, dragging them out, and
saved their lives. He got a Silver Star for it. He was Australian and they were
American, and I thought, There’s my first
example of Australian-American friendship. Then I thought about Apollo 11
and how Australia was pretty instrumental in getting the pictures to the rest of
the world, out at Honeysuckle Creek, and Parkes obviously. And then the war
brides were another example. I didn’t delve into really big things like ‘we’ve
stood by each other in war’. That’s not who I am. I don’t make grand political
statements, I make smaller statements that symbolise. It was really fun to
write and send up the chain and get approval for it. [There was] ‘could you
just change this word’ or ‘maybe that thing’, but on the whole the song was
really embraced by the important people in America. It’s recorded now and you
can buy it on iTunes or hard copy. So that’s been the highlight out of
everything, but now this new project with Travis is becoming my new highlight.
You were talking
about not making the big statements and making smaller statements, but I think
it’s also the case that when you make a personal statement, even when it’s
someone else’s story, if you’re telling it authentically and with emotion, that
makes it more likely that everyone will relate than if you were making a big statement.
So leading into the song with Travis and the EP, listening to that song, that’s
cataloguing a whole lot of experiences that people can relate to. You’ve known
Travis for a while, but how did this collaboration start?
We have been good friends for thirteen years now – we met in
2004. When I was deciding last year what to do this year for touring, I planned
the tour with Catherine Britt and then thought, well, there’s going to be some
time left in the year. We revisited the idea of touring with Travis, because we
did it eight years ago. My manager and Travis’s manager are good friends, and
they got on the phone and discussed us touring later this year. And I think
just as a throwaway they said, ‘They should release an album together.’ They
came back to us with the idea and both Travis and I said, ‘Yeah, why not? But
here’s the thing: we’re not singing covers. We’re not singing songs other
people have written. We’re writing the songs.’ So we basically arrived home
from Tamworth in February this year and we had about eight co-writing sessions.
We were both exhausted from a huge festival, and Travis won all those awards.
So it was possible at that point that we’d say, ‘We’re too tired to write this,
let’s not worry about recording.’ But we were both really determined. We wrote
five songs together, and then two of the other songs on the EP are one that I’d
written by myself and one that he’d written by himself. But this song, ‘Our
Backyard’, came about because I went to Silverton in mid-Feb this year to go and
visit Catherine Britt. And, of course, the thing you do is go and visit the
Silverton sunset. We drove to the highest point in Silverton and watched the
sunset, and there is nothing like it, so I wrote that down in my songwriting
book. And then when [Travis and I] sat down together to write the song, I said,
‘What about this idea?’ I live in a beautiful part of the world – I live near
the beach – and every time I go walking, I think, If I was overseas and I saw this, I’d say, ‘This is amazing’, but
because it’s in our own backyard we just neglect to think it’s any good.
Same with the Silverton sunset. We both travel so much in Australia – as well
as overseas – that it was a song that was really easy to identify with. We put
all those experiences overseas in and most of them I’ve done, most of them
Travis has done, so together we’ve done them all, but there’s nothing like
being home.
It’s a really
terrific song, and apart from the lyrics being spot on it’s got a great, catchy
sound
to it. So I’m sure it will do very well – it sounds like it is already. But touring the EP – I do love that you said you looked at the second
half of the year and thought, I could fit
in something there, when a lot of people might have thought they could fit
in a rest. So to tour – when you go to plan something like that, how do you
pick your venues?
We get that question all the time because people say to us,
‘Why don’t you come to our town? I can’t believe you went to the town an hour
up the road when this town was better.’ We don’t really pick them. It’s a
juggling act of time – we might have wanted to go to Albury on the Saturday
night but they had someone else already booked so we had to go to Corowa an
hour down the road. And then we’ll get everyone online saying, ‘Why did you pick
that town?’ It’s because it’s really hard to fit timing, and who wants the
show. It’s not just a matter of us wanting to do a show there but the venue and
the town have to want us as well.
You had the writing
process together and then you had the recording process – was there any
argy-bargy about who got to sing lead on songs?
[Laughs] No, not really. We were both juggling different
touring schedules so we weren’t in the studio the whole time together. I’d say,
‘I’ll leave that for Travis to do and I’ll be back tomorrow. He’ll finish it
tonight.’ So no arguments – we left all the hard decisions up to the producer.
When I saw the announcement
about the EP I thought, That is a great
idea, those two working together. I imagine you’ll have people turning up
to your shows also thinking it’s a great idea.
It’s great because we have really different fans as well, so
it will be great crossing them over. Some of Travis’s fans have never heard of
me and vice versa, and those who know us both can think, Great, two for the price of one!
Will you do a set
each and then some songs together, or will the whole set be together?
I think we’ll do a set each and then the whole EP, seven
tracks of the EP together, and probably finish on ‘Our Backyard’ – it seems
like it’s a bit of a finale song.
And that’s a good
evening’s entertainment, I have to say, to get that much music.
[Laughs] Be prepared to have a late night.
Of course, you are
also heading to the Gympie Muster and I notice that you were put on the bill
first for your normal show and then your kids show was added – what prompted
you to add it?
I suggested it to the Muster a long time ago, that I’d be
happy to do a kids show while I was there. There are families there and I think
in the morning the kids are up – they’ve been up for hours – and what’s to do?
The music’s not starting. Some of the singer-songwriter tents maybe the kids
are a bit bored. So I thought let’s do a kids show. The Kid’s Gone Country is
interactive – they learn to dance, they sing along, we learn their names, get
them up on stage. But adults are allowed to come as well.
Are there any
technical considerations for you in terms of your voice? If you’re used to
singing later in the day, sometimes voices take a while to warm up – so for a
morning show, is there anything you have to do?
Yes, you probably should prepare – not like a hard rocker,
don’t stay up till 2 a.m. drinking whisky if you’re going to do a kids show.
But my voice works pretty well in the morning – it’s fairly match fit, I would
call it. It doesn’t need too much to get fired up.
I imagine you’ve done
a few Gympies now – what are you looking forward to about the Muster?
What I’m looking forward to is always the same: genuine
country fans who just get out in the dust or the mud – whichever one it is, and
it’s always one of them – and they sing along to your songs, and you get to
meet them. And it’s historic for me, too, because it’s one of the first
festivals I ever went to. They had me on back in 2005. I was pretty lucky as a
young artist, just with an EP out, that
they took me on. So it’s always been
one of three or four favourites that I have. I love it. I just love the dust,
the dirt, and it brings out your best performance when you’re out in the
sticks. You’re out in the country and you’re a country singer, so it feels
good.
I guess it’s a
different energy to Tamworth, too, because in Tamworth you have these confined
venues – you’re inside for a lot of it – whereas at Gympie everything’s outside.
I imagine that wave of energy that would come from having a massive outside
crowd would be different.
Definitely. I think I’ve played there maybe five or six
times – every second or third year. I’ve played in the rain. I’ve been
freezing. I’ve been sunburnt. I’ve been muddy. I’ve been rained out. I’ve been
every single option. So every other festival where you’re inside, it’s nice and
comfortable but you don’t get that kind of raw response from the crowd that you
do at Gympie. I really don’t wish for rain, though – I wish for sun and dust.
That’s the best option.
You do other sorts of
work – you work with RSL Defence Care and Special Olympics, and you’re a Fight
Stroke Advocate. My impression of your working life is that you have a lot of
different things going on and you obviously manage your time very well, but
these causes are close to you because you’ve been involved for a while. How did
you get involved with each of those?
Fight Stroke – my dad had a stroke when he was forty. When I
wrote the song ‘Lifesaver’, which is about that, I actually sent it to Stroke
Foundation and said, ‘I have a really good reason to want to help you guys
out.’ If Dad had had, I guess, what they had now – that’s thirty years ago
nearly that he had a stroke – he wouldn’t have been left disabled the way he
was, because they would have been able to get him to hospital and change
things. He would have known to check his blood pressure. But he didn’t know any
of that. So my reason for doing work with the Stroke Foundation is to help
prevent via awareness. I do help raise money at times, but more spread the
word. Get your blood pressure tested – that’s one of the highest-risk signs of
it. One family might benefit from me saying, ‘Going get your blood pressure
tested’, and find out that their dad or their mum was on the verge of having
stroke and avoid what our family went through, which was really tough.
Defence Care asked me after I wrote a song called ‘The Man
Across the Street’ to help spread the word and, again, it’s not so much raising
funds for them as awareness. They do need some money, but they also need
veterans – young veterans. You say the word ‘veteran’ and you’re thinking of
sixty-, seventy-year-old men, but we’re talking about thirty-year-old men here,
and women. For them to know that when they come home from war or the theatre,
that there is someone to help them when they don’t know why they’re not feeling
that great. No physical scars but ‘I can’t really get my life back on track’ or
‘my word has fallen apart’. There are organisations out there to call, and
Defence Care is one of them.
And the Special
Olympics?
I’ve been helping them for a long time, and that is more
about fundraising. Just performing at their events. Those Special Olympics kids
are Down syndrome and autistic young people who just absolutely have the most
vigour and zest for life. I love performing with them – they all get up and
dance with me. It’s awesome.
Looking ahead – you’ve
packed a lot into this year already, and Tamworth will be upon us before we
know it, so what are your Tamworth plans, and I would imagine you’re already
looking to another album.
Yes, you’re right. This year is going to be taken up with
Travis and I, and then I’ll do my show on Australia Day in January. I’m not
sure about touring – I might have been everywhere. I might just have a little
bit of time off [laughs] … Nah, I’m sure I won’t. I think I’ll work on another
kids album as well as another adults album, but it’s still early days for [Happy Ever After] so I’ll probably go
the kids album next, I think.
How do you organise
your time with songwriting? Do you allocate time to write or just do it when
you can?
I have to allocate time. I’m certainly not a ‘oh, inspiration’s
just hit me, drop everything, I’ve got to write a song’. I write a song if I
put it in my diary to write a song.
Amber Lawrence will be performing at Gympie Music Muster which is held 24 to 27 August at Amamoor Creek State Forest. For further info visit www.muster.com.au
Happy Ever After is out now.
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