I’d noticed you were
booking quite a few gigs, so I figured there had to be an album coming – and,
of course, now we know there is an album coming on the 28th of July.
Are you excited? Nervous? Calm?
Not nervous. Certainly excited. I’m always excited when
there’s a new album about to come out. It’s always the culmination of a lot of
work, I guess. It’s always exciting to have it come out, not just for other
people to hear it but almost as a cathartic process as well. You purge yourself
and kind of move on. It’s a nice feeling. It’s hard to explain. Almost like a
release. There’s an album release and an emotional release as well. So I’m very
excited. It’s been a little while since Hell
Breaks Loose so it’s about time there was some music out. Although I’ve
been really active in that time. I’ve made a lot of albums – about twelve last
year alone for other people – so I’ve felt like I’ve been really active and
making music every day. But it’s easy for the time to get away and you realise,
wow, it’s been two years since I made a record. So I kind of knuckled down and
made a new one.
I’ve interviewed a
couple of people lately who’ve had you playing on their records, so not only
have you been producing but you’ve been doing a lot of playing too.
Certainly in our little group – sort of country world,
producers – we all play on each other’s projects and help each other out.
There’s been quite a few projects, especially ones that Matt Fell has been
producing, that I’ve come in to play on and vice versa: we’ve had a lot of
people who were just in there, working, when I was in the middle of my record.
Just singing because they were there, so we had them singing on my album. It’s
nice making music with your friends all the time and sharing around the love.
And I’m interested in
the impact of that on the output overall. You and Matt, and Glen Hannah as
well, have experience as musicians, you have experience as producers, you’re
able to play for other people rather than demanding that it’s always you at the
forefront, and I think the quality of work that’s coming out is really
interesting. I don’t know that there’s anything else like it, where there’s
this band of people working on lots of different projects, so I’m see this
really high-quality work across a lot of different artists’ output. This is a
musing more than a question, but I think it’s unique and really interesting.
That’s nice to know – I guess we don’t think of it from the
outside in, especially people like Glen and Matt, myself, Michael Carpenter at
LoveHz [studios]. Josh, who plays drums in the band, he’s a producer and he’s
incredibly talented – he was here yesterday recording an EP for me for somebody
else. I work with him as a drummer on my projects but then also as a drummer on
other projects. So I was producing him yesterday and he’s so good. He’s a
producer himself – it’s weird telling him what to do in the studio. So even
drummers can be producers – it’s crazy!
You mentioned that
catharsis of releasing an album – is there a feeling of a lull for you after
that, or do you feel like the next body of work starts to come in straightaway?
Whatever the next project is takes his place. Obviously
there’s touring that comes after every record and I’ve got quite a few months
of touring lined up, but it’s the next project. I’ve got three or four projects
that are currently under way in the studio – I’m there now. Once these
interviews finish today I’ll be back to making a record with an artist today
and then tonight I’ll be mixing a different one. So other projects just come in
and fill the void, as such, and that’s kind of what I like. It’s different and
you’re always doing something new. There’s not really a lull or a down period –
it always seems to be full-on, go-go-go. I think that’s because I’m really
terrible at scheduling. I’m just hopeless at scheduling. I have my manager who
looks after my Shane Nicholson career but I have someone else who looks after
the studio and that scheduling, and I’m in the middle just telling people,
‘Yeah, we can make a record – no worries!’ Totally screwing everybody up, and
they’re trying to make the schedules work. It’s just a juggling act, but I have
to have things happening, otherwise there would be a lull. Mind you, I’d love to
have a day off – just go out in the boat or something.
Yeah, you say that …
But speaking of the lull, I also read that you went to the Hawkesbury River
area to write a lot of songs, so you obviously had to physically remove
yourself to do it.
Well, I’ve been doing that for quite a few albums now, quite
a few years since having children and not touring as much, I realised I
couldn’t write as much at home – maybe the environment wasn’t conducive with
children. And certainly once I was working as a producer a lot I couldn’t work
in the studio, because I was spending 80 hours a week in the studio. Way back
in Bad Machines days I found that I
had to go out somewhere to write. So every album I’ve been looking for a
different place to centre myself and get away from everything. This really nice
house on the Hawkesbury I found, and it’s only boat access so it felt really
nice and isolated – there was no mobile service or anything like that, so it
was a nice place to go and write. I wrote a lot of this album on the water.
Just anchored a boat, fishing and lying on the floor of the tinny and writing.
A lot of it was written out there, which was completely juxtaposed to the last
album, which was largely written in the red centre, in the desert. So it’s like
the coastal record [laughs].
As you were lying in
that tinny, was your guitar with you?
Yeah, sometimes. But I don’t really write with the guitar a
lot. I like writing without an instrument a lot. But I had the guitar and I’d
play sometimes, have a beer and write songs. It was really nice, and it’s
really removed in a boat because you’re surrounded 360 by water, so you know
there’s not really going to be any interruption. It’s a nice place to write
because your brain shuts down – my phone didn’t work, I was unreachable, so my
brain just completely shut down to the outside world and songs started coming.
It was a really fun process. But I went up there about three or four times, I
had to get the record written in three or four days at a time. So it was
intensive – I’d get up and write all day and night. With the schedules now,
like I said, it’s crazy busy so it’s not like I really get to just write when I
feel like it, like I used to – I don’t really have that luxury, so I’m creating
time to write now. The fear with that is that the inspiration won’t come when
you need it to, but I’ve just learned over the years that you just create the
environment for it to happen and then cross your fingers and hope for the best.
Once you’re in that environment, I can kind of orchestrate it to happen most of
the time. The biggest thing with this record was realising that I hadn’t been
listening to music much – I’d been making so much music last year, a dozen
albums back to back and overlapping. It meant that, without knowing it, I hadn’t
listened to music for enjoyment all of last year. Because after 14 hours in the
studio you don’t really go home and put on a record to listen to. So I realised
that when I started to write I wasn’t really that inspired to go back to being
a lover of music again. I had to remind myself of the twelve-,
thirteen-year-old that I was who was inspired enough by the music I heard to
want to create my own music. So I had to find time, force myself to consciously
listen to music for enjoyment again. I always enjoy it but it’s very different
when you’re making it as it is to just putting a record on that you love. So
that was part of the process of the Hawkesbury – I wasn’t writing every minute,
sometimes I was just listening to music and becoming a music fan again. So it
was an interesting thing to learn, that I’d had a year full of music –
absolutely jam-packed with music – but was then struggling to write because of
that. I’d just forgotten to listen to music and love music. It was a good
lesson to learn.
Were you listening to
new music, or going back to things you loved?
Sometimes. I’d always take my trusty favourite records and
listen to records that I knew had always inspired me over the years. It was
whatever I grabbed – there was no real thought to it. But I always try to
listen to new stuff, and I’m exposed to a lot of new stuff through a lot of
clients I work with – they come in and they’re referencing other artists that
they love to listen to. I’m finding a lot of new acts that I wouldn’t be aware
of because you do live in a bubble, producing and being in the studio. It can
be trap. You need to be aware of what’s happening and what music’s around and what
people are listening to. I larger find out that stuff through other artists I
work with. It’s like they do all the research and hard work.
That’s like paying
tribute to the emperor, I think.
[Laughs] There’s so much music around, too, that we’re in
danger of being swamped by it. Sometimes it’s hard to define something that you
really love because there’s just so much to sift through. So I love taking
recommendations from people who come to work here. And if they’re working here
it generally means they like the same music that I do.
You are taking this
new album on the road and the Broadbeach Country Music Festival seems to
coincide exactly with your release date – so I guess it will effectively be
your launch gig.
Essentially. I consider that every show I do in each city
the first time for each album is a launch for that state. But I think
Broadbeach is extra special because it’s not only the first time that I play
there but it’s Queensland and it’s winter, which means New South Wales is
rubbish right now and cold, so I’m always happy to get back to Queensland in
winter. But I think musically it’s going to be fun. The new album is released
the day before we play there, so it’s essentially the main launch, and I do
have my whole band of producers, which is very rare, that I can get them not
only at the same gig at the same time but certainly a gig in a different state.
That was a scheduling nightmare because these guys don’t really tour anymore,
so to get them all out of the studio, all being producers - everyone in the band
is a producer – it was kind of a challenge but I’m really excited that the
first show of the album tour is going to be with them, the guys who made the
record. I think it’s going to be fun.
Since you’ll be
playing a lot of new songs from the album, obviously a lot of your older songs
will have to be jettisoned from the set list – but is there one song that you
can never get rid of, either because you love it or because people ask for it?
I don’t have any normally, but when the band’s with me the
only song that’s always in the set is ‘Jackson Hole’ because it’s just for the
band – it’s purely self-indulgent, it’s really fun, and massive big, long
extended guitar solos. It’s just the chance for everyone to stretch their legs
a little bit. That one’s never not been in the set when the band’s with me, so
I’m pretty certain that’s going to be in the set – they’re not going to let me
not put it in there. But I don’t really have any favourites. I certainly don’t
ever do a show without playing some songs – ‘Trick Knee Blues’, but obviously
that’s not a festival song so that may not be getting an airing in Broadbeach. There’s
nothing that I really feel compelled to play. Eventually, over the years, the
more singles you have the set list starts to write itself. The trick is to keep
it interesting, I think, and some nights jettison a song and replace it with
something else. A curve ball, now and then. But every record there’s more
singles and more songs that appear in the set list and it does get a little bit
harder. I try to recycle them. I don’t like getting bored. Probably ‘Rattlin’
Bones’, too, a lot of people expect that. But that doesn’t get played every
show either. I’m lucky in that sense that I don’t think I have a defining song –
it’s not like I ever had a huge hit single that I have to play. So I don’t think
anyone comes to a show really expecting or wanting to hear that one specific
song. I’ve certainly never had that impression from my audience. I kind of like
that in a way; I’m really pleased with that. It just means that it’s more about
the song catalogue in its entirety than one or two things in particular.
I have to say that as
a longtime fan of yours I do come to
shows expecting certain tracks and I am often disappointed! But that’s the way
it goes.
[Laughs]
I remember the last
time you did a tour you put it out on social media to your fans to suggest
songs – did you like that method of choosing your set list?
That was fun – and it ended up informing a lot of the set
list. That could have been the tour when I recorded it and made the live album.
So pretty much the track list of that record ended up being from the votes, or
my pick of the songs from the votes. I really enjoyed that because a lot of the
songs that came back weren’t singles – a lot of the songs that were repeatedly
voted for were album tracks that had never been played on the radio or never
had a video clip made for them, they were just hiding down at track 8 or 9 on
an album. I loved seeing what songs connected to people – I thought that was
really quite interesting and sometimes surprising. But always good. I really loved
it. And we do it live, too, a lot. I do this ‘Song Bingo’ thing where people
can request songs in the moment, and sometimes it’s really interesting what
people will come up with. Sometimes they’re just trying to stump me, picking
things that are really obscure, and sometimes I try them and it’s a trainwreck –
but that’s the point of Song Bingo. Sometimes the song that gets called out I
think, Wow, I would never in a million
years have thought to put that song in the set list tonight. It’s always
interesting, what people connect with.
And also what they
connect with over time. If someone
has all your albums and they can go back to them – I’ve certainly done this
with your albums, and there might be a song that I perhaps didn’t love as much
as others at the time but somehow now I do. When you’re very good at what you
do, writing songs that can stand the test of time literally, your audience will
have that flexible relationship with them.
That’s nice to contemplate, that idea. It’s something you
don’t think about very often, you know – you take cues from the audience and you
know what floats and what doesn’t at a show. But I don’t often think about the idea
of somebody living with the music over time. I always think of my records as a
point in time – it’s like taking a photograph of you in 2006, that’s that
album, that’s you then. But I guess you’re right – there’s records that I love
that I’ve lived with my whole life. Harvest
– I’ve lived with that record forever, and you’re right, it evolves over time,
different songs speak to you at different times. I guess I’ve just never
considered myself in that – I’ve never thought of it. You don’t really see the
forest for the trees when you’re the artist.
Broadbeach Country Music Festival: 28-30 July in Broadbeach, Queensland. For all information, visit broadbeachcountry.com
Shane Nicholson is touring in support of his new album. For tour dates, visit shanenicholson.com
Shane Nicholson is touring in support of his new album. For tour dates, visit shanenicholson.com
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