Interview: Chad Shuttleworth (part II)

This is the second of a multi-part interview with Toyota Star Maker finalist Chad Shuttleworth. The first part is here.

In this instalment Chad talks about the Gympie Muster and how the show must always go on, and we discuss the idea of being a 'gateway drug' to country music ...

So what’s the country music scene like in Queensland?

I think it’s growing all the time. Obviously there’s the Gympie Muster, and the Urban Country Music Festival at Caboolture. There’s Charters Towers. There’s so much country music stuff up here.

Since you’ve mentioned the Gympie Muster – it seems in recent years that it’s become a lot more organised and a lot more music focused – do you think that’s true to say? Have you performed there?

I’ve performed there a couple of times, mainly at the town square on the talent stage. But I have had some great opportunities – not so great for everyone else, but great opportunities for myself. I don’t know if you remember about three years ago, everyone got washed out. A lot of bands couldn’t come in.

But you happened to be living on the Sunshine Coast.

And I happened to actually be at the Gympie Muster at that time. Because they all got washed out outside the Gympie Muster grounds – there was massive water over the road and nobody could drive through it – and I just happened to be there selling CDs and I went to the mixing guy and said, ‘There’s no one on the stage – what’s going on?’ And he said, ‘Oh, there’s no one who’s turned up’. And he just jokingly said, ‘Do you play guitar?’ and I said, ‘Of course, yeah!’ And he goes, ‘Can you sing?’ and I said, ‘Yeah’. And he said, ‘So why don’t you get up there and have a play?’ I went, ‘Ohhhh – well – absolutely.’ So I went and found a guitar because I didn’t have a guitar, and I was selling CDs so I couldn’t leave the venue. But I got up there and played, and about five songs later Jay from Jonah’s Road came walking across, winked at me and said, ‘Thanks, mate, for filling in our spot while we were coming through’. Because Sinead Burgess’s backing band couldn’t come – they were stuck on the other side – so Jonah’s Road played for her. So those guys got up afterwards and that’s how I became great friends with Jay and Jasper, his brother, and I do a lot of songwriting with them now, just because of that coincidence, or that opportunity.

And it’s almost making the most of your opportunities, because some people might have thought, ‘Oh no, I don’t have my guitar. Oh no, it’s too scary.’

Yeah, and that’s the biggest thing about what we do - from my parents… My old man’s a chef, my mum’s a food and beverage trainer, my brother’s a business trainer and stuff. I’m from the hospitality background, where they know exactly that, well, you can’t stop the show now, and that’s the same thing with entertainment. The show must go on. It doesn’t matter what happens. When I was in Seussical Musical the lead girl – who had most of the lines in the play – pulled a hamstring, and she was side of stage crying her eyes out and then it was her turn to go on and she would just snap out of it, she’d go and do her character, she didn’t feel any of the pain – well, she made as if she didn’t – came back off and cried her eyes out.

Well, that’s professionalism.

That’s professionalism. And that’s the thing – things go awry, you just going to have to fix them on the fly and it’s going to be fine. And it’s funny – a lot of people don’t even notice that things are wrong. So I come from that sort of background.

You recently travelled to some schools and talked about music and the industry to kids. So did anything go awry there, that you had to react to?

Really, no – it was all fairly well organised. Scripture Union Queensland representative up there was Bille and she was amazing, and when we were up there it was just phenomenal. The only thing that was kind of awry was the fact that we had three gigs a day - and this is not a problem, it’s just part of what you do – but we had three presentations a day and the presentations go for an hour and a half, and school’s between eight o’clock and three o’clock, and a lot of these towns were … There’s a place called Anakie, like an hour and a half away from Capella, where we were staying, so we had to drive crazily to them and then crazy back to Emerald, so nothing went awry, it was just a lot of driving. But it was well worth it – well worth it.

So were you playing, as well as talking?

Yeah, absolutely. I had my manager, Karen Andrews, up there with us, and we’d just prompt one another with the outline and with the presentation, and then I’d play a song in between.

I would think it was also a good opportunity to introduce some kids to your music early on.

It was a great opportunity for that!

Well you can never start them too early on country music.

[laughs] No, exactly. See, that’s the thing – it’s much easier to convert people over to country music than it is to any other thing. It’s hard at first but when we go, ‘Well, this is country music?’ and they say, ‘Really? Keith Urban is country music?’ – ‘Yes, yes he is’. Then they come and listen and they say, ‘Wow, I love country music and I’ve been denying it all this time because everybody said I shouldn’t be listening to it.’

I’ve also heard it said that Ryan Adams is considered to be a ‘gateway drug’ for country music.

[laughs] ‘Gateway drug’ – that’s brilliant. I think that would be the best title ever. ‘He’s a gateway drug to country music’.

Maybe you were a gateway drug to those kids!

Yeah, well, hopefully! Hopefully one day they’ll go, ‘You know about those things? Well, that show was a gateway drug …’

If they all take up banjo and ukulele, it’s your fault.

It is my fault, and I apologise – well, no, I don’t apologise – I’m kinda glad. [laughs]

Part III of this multi-part interview will be published soon.

Chad's website: www.chadshuttleworth.com

Twitter: @chadshuttlemuso

Interview: Chad Shuttleworth (part I)

Sunshine Coast performer Chad Shuttleworth has just been announced as a finalist in the 2012 Toyota Star Maker, but he's been a star in the making for a few years now. He's done his time busking on Peel Street and attended the CMAA College of Country Music in Tamworth, so if anyone's ready for the final on 22 January, it's him. Chad - whom I described as having 'cheeky charm' in a 2008 post - gave me quite a bit of his time recently and we had a wide-ranging chat which will appear in several parts. The first is below.

I’ve only seen you play once, on Peel Street, in 2008, and I remember thinking, ‘This guy’s got something’, because you were really good at working the crowd – but not in a manipulative way. It looked like you were just enjoying yourself.

Yeah, I always do, and that’s one of my main keys of being onstage. If you don’t enjoy yourself, no one enjoys themselves.

Were you a kid who liked to get up and perform?

If you talk to my parents, yeah – they will confirm that I was the kid doing magic tricks; if there was a microphone I’d be grabbing it, and I’d be singing even if there were no backing tracks. I was always trying to obviously be the star. I don’t remember any of this, but I was told.

I guess you’re doing the right thing, then, aren’t you?

Yes! Exactly. It was kind of the right thing to do, absolutely. It was either this or, at one stage, my parents wanted me to be a lawyer! Well, no, they said, ‘Lawyer’s a good job, lots of money, and you can act and debate really well’, and I said, ‘Well, I don’t know if that’s true’. [Laughs]

Well, it’s never too late, of course – if you change your mind about the whole country music caper.

Yeah, well, maybe – it’s still an option …

Did you do musicals and things like that in high school?

Yes, I did it all throughout high school. Have you ever heard of a thing called Seussical the Musical?

No.

It’s Dr Seuss books put to music, and it’s the most colourful play you could ever watch. I did that at school and then that kind of spurred me on to do a lot more things. I was always in choir at school, but from that I moved towards musical theatre, and I was at a place called the Independent Theatre in Eumundi [on Queensland’s Sunshine Coast] for about two and a half years as a kind of trainee. Then that’s when the country music kind of kicked off. That was my passion, undoubtedly. And the rest is history, I guess.

As a teenager doing musicals did you find that you had a voice you could sing with, or did you have to work at it?

I would always say that I had the voice, but I think it evolves – it always evolves. I was a very high boy singer and then when my voice dropped it was sort of mid range. And now I’m what they class in classical music as a high baritone. So it kind of develops over time. That’s the thing about gigs. I think if you work hard – if you’re [singing] for four hours a night, three or four nights a week – you start really developing strength in your voice, and also being able to pick things, being able to play with stuff. So it’s a process.

A lot of people who don’t sing don’t realise the lengths a singer has to go to in order to protect their voice. Do you take certain measures – like, you don’t eat certain things?

It’s mostly been a trial-and-error kind of thing. Before gigs, or during gigs, I don’t ever eat potatoes. It’s really strange but potato – it must be the starch in it or something – dries my throat out and I start coughing. I heard that Carrie Underwood always has a shot of olive oil before she gets onstage. It’s kind of gross, when you think about it, but it allows your vocal cords to move a bit better, it loosens them up. I do a lot of warm-ups and stuff before gigs. But I don’t know … Milk. All that usual stuff. Milk’s probably not a good thing because you get all mucusy.

On the subject of drinking stuff before gigs, I remember reading an interview with Katie Noonan years ago in which she said she had a shot of cream sherry before gigs. So maybe you could try that – it would put you in a relaxed frame of mind, at least …

I’m always happy to try things at least once!

So just back to the subject of performing – it seems like you connect quite easily to the audience. Do you see that as part of your job – as in, it’s something that you have to maintain – or is it something that you just do naturally?

A lot of people would probably say it’s part of your job, but for me it’s always been something that’s just natural. My biggest thing as an entertainer is that I always want everyone else to have a good time. So if I’m even at a party – not working – I’d prefer for me to put my hand in my pocket and make sure that people who can’t afford it have a good time, because that to me means that when they have a good time, I have a great time. But when it comes to music, I want them to have a good time and the only way I best to do that is for me to give it 110 per cent and also enjoy it myself. One guy who was my manager at one stage said, ‘You can be 110 per cent but the audience may only ever be 90 per cent, so you’ve got to be 150 per cent for them to come up to your 110. You’ve got to be bigger than life and the most energetic person in the room for them to really lift up to what you’re doing, and you encourage them. Also, I think as Australians we’re pretty reserved, you know.

One of the great things about country music is that in rock music, say, a lot of people might be self-conscious about connecting to the audience but in country music I don’t think it’s necessarily expected, but everyone seems to be happy and having a good time – there’s not that self-consciousness that happens in inner-city pubs, I guess.

Yeah, exactly. I think the self-conscious thing is a big part of why I like playing country music – because, as you said, these people are out to have a good time. They’re not out to see someone who’s arrogant, they’re out there to see someone who’s enjoying themselves and from that they also enjoy themselves. And that’s a big thing about country music – the fact that we just know how to have a good time. That’s what a lot of the songs are about – only country people kind of know how to have a really great time. You don’t need much: a guitar, a campfire and a couple of beers, and that’s the night set out for you.

Part II of this multi-part interview will be published later in the week.

Chad's website: www.chadshuttleworth.com

Twitter: @chadshuttlemuso

That time of year

Well, the best-laid plans of writing some material for the blog have come unstuck because it's that time of year and, well, my day job is keeping me fairly busy!

But I did an interview yesterday with Chad Shuttleworth, who I saw busking on Peel Street in 2008 and was greatly impressed by then. We had a very interesting conversation and I'm more convinced than ever that he's a star in the making. So that interview will go up, likely in three parts, next week.

Interview: Jasmine Rae

Since winning the Telstra Road to Tamworth in 2008, Jasmine Rae has become one of Australia's most popular country music artists. Her debut album, Look it Up, was #3 on the ARIA Australian Artists Country Album chart and #20 in the overall ARIA charts, as well as being nominated for Best Country Albums at the ARIAs in 2009. Her latest album, Listen Here, has reached #1 on the ARIA Country chart and #5 in the overall chart. It has spawned the popular singles 'I'll Try Anything' (with Joe Nichols), 'I Faked It' and 'Hunky Country Boys'. The latest single is 'Let it Be Me' - to mark its release and on the eve of the 2011 ARIA Awards, for which she's received another album nomination, we spoke to Jasmine and found an intelligent and grounded young woman who doesn't take any of her success - or her fans - for granted.

One of the reasons for this interview is your single ‘Let it Be Me’ so can you tell us about the song and why you chose it for the album?

For this particular album I made a point of writing a whole lot more of the material on there. I had lots more songs to put on there and this particular song was written by Molly Reed and Nicolle Galyon but I fell in love with it. I loved it so much I pushed out songs that I wrote for the album just to put this one on there because it just says it so simply but it says it so beautifully. And it’s a little bit different from what I would normally perform, because normally I would write and perform songs that are edgy and more uptempo, and even if it’s a ballad then it might be a little bit sad, but this song is just very lovely and hopeful and I just wanted to put something out there that’s a little bit different and quite vulnerable.

It is a bit sadder sounding than other songs on the album but you have that kind of deep voice – and by that I don’t mean in a lower register, but that your voice sounds like it’s coming from a place deep within you, so there’s that ability to be sad or to sound a little bit melancholy or wistful but also be a bit more raucous. Has that voice always been there or is it a recent thing?

I’ve been writing poetry and songs since I was a little girl so I started off writing more poetic and, I suppose, metaphorical songs – I didn’t usually write songs that were so straight to the point. It’s since I’ve been touring around and performing that I’ve learned to love and learned to write songs that are more uptempo and really fun to do live with the band. But it was first that I was singing ballads and really strong lyrical songs, so it’s really nice to put that back in with what I’m doing and have it all kind of connect together, so you don’t have to just be a singer who sings just really party songs, you can be both, and I like that a lot.

Well, maybe you could do more ballads on your next album, because they’re very nice!

Oh, thank you. There were some extra tracks – a track called ‘Already Broken’ that I wrote with Sheree Austin that ended up being a bonus track for this album, and whenever you bought the ‘Hunky Country Boys’ single, it came with that. So there’s been quite a few ballads for this album that were ready to go and they were great, but I had to pick between them and I picked ‘Let it Be Me’ because it’s just such a beautiful song.

What happens to those other songs that don’t get chosen? Do they see the light of day on the next album or the album after that, or are they just gone?

It just really depends, and that’s kind of the hard thing about it. When you’re writing you hope that it’s going to get onto the album. There’s a secret track on this album that I actually wrote a very long time ago, called ‘Love is No Cure’, and I didn’t even sing it with music, I just wanted to tie it in with this album. But sometimes your songs can be sung by other people, or you can sing them a few years down the track, or it can just be a song that you sing live at your shows. But when they’re songs that you love you try to work them in with your other pieces of work, because you don’t want it to just be wasted.

A lot of people who go to see music live regularly probably wonder how singers like you who have songs that you have to put in every set list don’t get bored singing the same thing. So do you ever think, ‘Oh no, not that again’?

I got a little bit like that with ‘Country Singer’, but now the audience sings along with me, and I wrote that song on my own many years ago and then you can never really get bored, when they’re singing along and it’s something that you wrote, it’s actually like ‘I really love singing this song now’. It takes it to a different level. And every time you work with a new band or a new player, you kind of just mix up a different song in there. So I don’t really get bored too easily because I just find something else that’s really cool about the situation.

You’re nominated for an ARIA in the Country Music category for Listen Here and you were also nominated for your first album, so I was wondering if that means you’re less nervous this time around.

It does. Last year, to be honest, I was so scared, because it was very quick – I’d only just released the first album, and it was the next year but we had just finished touring it and it seemed like I wasn’t ready to make the new one, and [I was thinking] ‘Does this mean this is the closing chapter of the first album?’ and then ‘Oh my god, what if I win? I’m going to have to talk on TV!’ and all this stuff, and ‘Now I have to find a dress!’ And it was just so very scary, and I loved it but I was so scared. This time around, because this Listen Here album has been a long time coming – it’s been two years that I’ve been working on it – sifting through [songs] and only the cream of the crop got onto this album song-wise, and working with Mark Moffatt, and it’s one I’m really proud of, so when I found out I was nominated I wasn’t expecting it at all but I’m more excited this time, to celebrate something – just to be nominated is really good. And I’ve got the dress beforehand!

Are you performing on the night?

No, not this time – I would have loved to, but no. The only time I’ll be seen is on the red carpet, so hopefully I won’t fall over – fingers crossed – and if I win.

It’s a competitive category – you have some stiff competition – but it’s a worthy nomination.

Oh, thank you. Kasey Chambers is also nominated and she’s someone I’ve been listening to since grade six. I’ve loved Kasey Chambers from The Captain, so to be nominated alongside her … She wasn’t nominated last year because she didn’t have an album out, so it’s very, very exciting for me. I’m going to write a speech anyway, just in case, and someone said to write something ridiculous so it’s then kind of good luck, because then, when you write something ridiculous that you’d be too embarrassed to say, you always then end up having to say it. You know, ‘Bippity boppity boo, I won an ARIA – woo!’

I’m intrigued that you were listening to Kasey Chambers in sixth grade, because country music is usually not what a lot of primary school kids listen to, so have you been listening to it for a while?

Yeah, I have. I live in the suburbs of Melbourne – I don’t live in the country at all –so I was the only kid, really, who listened to country music in primary school – and high school. So it’s always been something that I just love. I’ve listened to Dolly Parton since I was a little girl. I’m actually going to see her tonight. I’m so excited. I’ve never seen her live in concert. I know almost every song she’s ever put out. Even to people who aren’t musicians she’s just an awesome inspiration, just in her strength.

And she’s hilarious.

I know! And she’s little. And I love that, because I’m little.

I read some interviews making a bit of the fact that you’re little, and now you’ve mentioned it – is it something you’re conscious of? Well, Joe Nichols is massively tall by the look of him in your video [for ‘I’ll Try Anything’].

He’s actually not super, super tall – just really, really tall next to me! Growing up I was never really conscious of it. I’m more conscious of it now because so many country music artists are really tall. Brooks & Dunn are six-foot-four or something, and McAlister Kemp I perform with often and they’re the same – they’re so tall. So I notice it more now – I love it, it’s good. Finding clothes, you have to hack off the bottom so you make a headband that’s the same as the dress. I trip over less, because I have a lower centre of gravity. It’s good, I enjoy it – you can’t change it so you’d better like it, hey?

Looking back over the sales of your albums and where you’ve charted, and you’ve done a lot of touring – from your perspective have you seen the sales and the sizes of your audiences growing the more you’re out on the road and connecting with people?

Yes, I have. When I started – and I still feel like my audience could grow, that would be amazing – but when I first started I thought, ‘I’m not from the country, maybe these audiences are not going to like me’. And when I find them pouring in – you know, when I’m at the Gympie Muster and they’re just pouring in to watch me sing my songs and to sing along with me … Country music audiences are just amazing. They really do make you feel like you’re a success. I have no idea whether that means I actually am, but I feel like a success when they’re singing my stuff with me. It’s just so cool.

Country music artists seem to really appreciate the connection with the audience – it is part of the show almost – you stay behind afterwards, you sign things, you talk to people.

And when I get home I jump on Facebook to see what everyone thought of the show and before I go I jump on see if there are any last-minute requests before I go on stage. So it is very much a community and it makes you feel like you belong. It sounds a bit cheesy, doesn’t it? But I love it.

Not at all – I think that’s part of its strength. Given the nature of country music and how big Australia is and how many places you go to, what is the most isolated place you’ve ever played?

In Australia?

Yes.

Because I’ve been over to East Timor …

You can talk about that too!

Hmmm … There have been a few places. I’ve been to Bunyip in WA, which is quite out of the way. My favourite venue is in Kuranda in Queensland, near Cairns, and it is kind of out of the way because you have to go up into a rainforest and it’s an outdoor amphitheatre in a rainforest. It is the coolest venue. But I’d like to get more remote. I’d like to go to the middle of Australia. Lee Kernaghan – I’ve travelled with him, and he did a lot of rural areas, but I’d like to do a whole lot more.

I think Troy Cassar-Daley gets out into a lot of remote communities, so maybe the three of you should do a tour …

That would be really awesome, to do that.

You live in Melbourne, so what’s the country music scene like there?

It’s growing slowly – or maybe my eyes are now more open to other people who like it, instead of just feeling like I was the only one. But it’s harder in Melbourne, to play country music – they’re slowly converting to it, but it takes a little while. The music industry’s really strong here – it’s got hip-hop and rock and funk, and country music is slowly growing, but it has been a bit of a struggle.

A lot of people in cities watch CMC, so there are people who like it – hopefully there will be more gigs for them.

This year we played Rod Laver Arena with Alan Jackson and the Forum with Joe Nichols and it was packed out, but it’s not as many gigs as I’d like.

Jasmine, thanks so much for your time – and good luck at the ARIAs on the weekend.

Thank you so much.

Jasmine's official website is www.jasminerae.com.au

Facebook: www.facebook.com/jasminerae

Twitter: @jasminerae

Youtube: jasminerae1

Harmony James - new CD now in 2012

The follow-up to Harmony James's debut album, Tailwind, will now be released in early 2012. Handfuls of Sky will make its first appearance on 20 January, during the Tamworth Country Music Festival. This follows Harmony's music publishing and record label deals, with Alberts and Warners respectively. Harmony is also joining Troy Cassar-Daley for a series of shows in March 2012 - visit Troy's site for details. So it's a big year ahead for one of country music's brightest stars - I can't wait to get my hands on the CD!

www.harmonyjames.com

Interview: Timothy Carroll (part III)

This is the third of a multi-part interview with an amazing Brisbane singer-songwriter named Timothy Carroll. In this part Timothy talks about some of his songs and about the upcoming studio recording of the songs featured on The Swedish Tapes.

Part I can be read here and Part II here.

Brisbane residents can see Timothy play at the Joynt on Wednesday 23 November.

***

Does Brisbane have increasingly more venues for people to play?

There was a real crisis, from my point of view, about the time of the floods. There was a real crisis with the Troubadour closing down and The Hangar stopping doing gigs in the space that they were doing them in Red Hill. Because those venues were medium-sized venues that were really beautiful and well run and had good sound, and when they fell apart I felt like there was a bit of a hole in Brisbane’s heart in terms of bands of about that size being able to perform. If you move up a bit higher there’s The Zoo and The Hi Fi and the Tivoli but that’s beyond a lot of people’s reach, really, because you need to get so many people through the door in order to make it pay. But now the Black Bear Lodge has opened and they’re doing some music. There are a few other places around town. There’s a new bar in West End called The End that I saw some bands at the other day. I’m doing some shows myself at the Joynt. I’ve formed a bit of a new band with some people to work out how we’re going to perform The Swedish Tapes.

Will you then record with them?

I was recording quite a bit of The Swedish Tapes with a guy by the name of Oscar Dawson, who is from Melbourne and an old friend of mine and a very talented musician and a really good guy. So he’s living in Berlin and performing and writing with his band, and he’s coming back to Australia in late November for a couple of months, so I’m going to get him in a studio and a few other friends and go from there. So it’s a bit of a mix of some of the people I’ve performed with and some of the people I recorded with overseas. And sometimes we might have both. It’s nice to have players that are performing the stuff come and be involved as well. We’ll just have to see how it pans out.

Now to ask you some questions about songwriting … You’re good at evoking place in your songs. In ‘To Frozen Lakes’, for example, I can almost feel the cold around the lakes and in ‘Where the Catholics Ruled’ I can get a sense of the city that the song is set in. Is that a conscious evocation of place and, if so, how do you do it? Or is it just something that comes through?

It’s certainly not conscious. And it’s funny that you should choose those two titles because those are two songs that were written in a really, really short amount of time. ‘Where the Catholics Ruled’ I wrote in about twenty minutes. It’s really simple in terms of the chord progression. I just sort of spat out a whole heap of verses and then chucked a few of them away. And ‘To Frozen Lakes’ – I was at a festival in Tasmania and there was a piano in a tent and the festival was either over or hadn’t started – there was nobody around – and I just had some candles on top of the piano and was just mucking around, because I don’t really play piano that well, and just sort of wrote that one really quickly – the story of a friend of mine. So I don’t know – I guess it just happens sometimes!

On the first album the song that haunted me, for lack of a better term, was ‘Alicia’s Song’ and I was wondering if you could tell me the story behind that.

It’s interesting that that’s a song that you like, because that’s a song that I struggle with. I never play it live. I don’t even know if I could play it. I’d started working at the Troubadour at that time and there was a friend of mine, Alicia, who was working there as well and she fell pregnant, with her partner, and was thrilled about it, and it was probably the first time that someone in my world was going to have a baby and I was just kind of thinking about the wonder of that phenomenon, of a human being forming, becoming a mother and all the different sort of relationships that that entails, like the protective father and the relationship with the mother. And so that’s what that’s about.

At the moment ‘Catholics’ is the one I can’t get out of my head.

That one’s about my parents leaving Dublin. My parents are both from Dublin and they left in ’82, and so that song’s a kind of study on what was going on in Ireland at that time. I get the impression it was quite a repressive society with Catholic values of getting married and it was that important, having children out of wedlock was frowned upon. And my parents were in that situation, having my sister without being married and they all moved down to Australia, and that’s what [the song’s] about.

It seems that you’re very much a storyteller rather than a confessional songwriter – you’re telling stories about the people around you, and perhaps about yourself as well. It’s quite common in country music but not so much in pop and rock, where it tends to be more the – to paraphrase something Tim Rogers said once – ‘I’m so miserable, that girl left me’. Is that accurate to say of you?

It does seem to be the case but again it’s not really a conscious thing. I guess I listened to a lot of storytellers growing up – I used to listen to a lot of Neil Young and Emmylou Harris and Bob Dylan. Perhaps some of that seeped in, in some way.

On the first album in particular there’s a certain wistfulness to the songs, or to your voice. Does that come through when you’re playing? Or maybe that’s the wrong question to ask as you may not hear it, as you’re the performer!

I do think that recording a take with the right emotion in it is the most important thing for recording – it’s not so much about how well you perform or how perfectly you sing a song, it’s about getting the take where it feels right and you’re able to perform the song ending up in a way that’s true. And when we recorded the first album it was a really beautiful studio. It was with Jamie Trevaskis who used to own the Troubadour and now owns the Junk Bar in Ashgrove [in Brisbane]. And it was late at night in his old Queenslander in Bardon and we were really close friends - I don’t see a lot of him now because he works a lot and I work a lot – but it was really relaxed and kind of wonderful. So perhaps that comes through. And also, I guess, maybe because I hadn’t recorded anything before, really, apart from a little home recording, so it was all fresh and new and exciting, and we did a lot of takes, like, first take or second take – it’s not like we were doing lots and lots of tracking. That’s something to remember – maybe I should do that on the next record.

There are some epic-sounding songs on The Swedish Tapes so it will be interesting to hear what becomes of them in the studio, in terms of many instruments and multiple tracks, but I guess you won’t know until you try.

I think we won’t have too many instruments – I don’t want it to be crowded and overdone. Another friend who’s a producer said when he wants something to sound big he puts less in it – he just has four tracks handled a certain way and that’s when you get a big-sounding moment, is when it’s simple, well recorded and well written ... I’m excited to be recording the next album live, so we’ll be in the room with drums, electric [guitar], bass and me, and that will be really nice for the ebb and flow of the songs, so we can hear each other and bond, to a degree.

Because your voice is so strong as an instrument, really, you don’t really want to drown it out, and when you take a lot of care with your lyrics – which you seem to – they need to come through. And there is the danger with a lot of instruments that the voice gets lost.

Yeah, that’s true. And the guy who I’m most likely going to be recording with, Matt Redlich, he has some wonderful mikes that are like some of the older mikes that [Roy] Orbison and the Beatles at Abbey Road used to use, and we’ll be recording to tape, so it will be nice for him to be capturing what we’re doing while we play.

Timothy's first two releases, For Bread & Circuses and The Deepest Dive, are available from timothycarroll.bandcamp.com and also from iTunes.

CD review: Ashes & Fire by Ryan Adams

It's taken me a while to get to this review, not because I was reluctant to write it but because I wanted to give this album more time, as each time I listened to it there was something deeper and richer about it, and there was a good chance that with even more listening, more textures were going to emerge. And so it has proved.

I am a long-time Ryan Adams fan and, as his fans know, Ryan is brilliant but inconsistent. His last consistent album was either Gold, a decade ago, or Jacksonville City Nights, and the answer is dependent on which version of Ryan you like (rock or country). In and around those albums were many, many other releases that contained some astoundingly beautiful songs that I listen to over and over and over - Cold Roses and Easy Tiger deserve particular mention as being good-song-laden - but they also featured songs that I will not listen to. Ever. Ryan Adams is the only songwriter I know of who can veer so wildly between greatness and mediocrity, seemingly without awareness of same - indeed, one of his former bandmates in the Cardinals (I want to say Neal Casals, but may be wrong) said that Ryan actually can't tell the difference between a good and a bad song, which explains 'Halloweenhead' but doesn't really tell us how he can get it so right so often. Perhaps he's just capricious.

But now to Ashes & Fire, which was released a few weeks ago ... I'm going way out on my Ryan fan limb and saying it's the best album he's ever released. It is certainly his most consistent, and that solid structure gives us the opportunity to really hear what's going on. There are eleven songs of outstanding quality and, yes, they are in the country genre. Each one is worth listening to for years to come, and many times over. They are well constructed without being heavy; delicately drawn without being fluffy; and - for me, at least - they are beautiful and moving. I couldn't pick a favourite because I love them all, but I will say that 'I Love You but I Don't Know What to Say' has to be one of the greatest love songs of all time, because it's not sappy and it's not affected and it captures just what it's like to love someone - not necessarily romantically - over the course of years.

By getting out of his own way Ryan has also, finally, given us the chance to appreciate his voice. It has always surprised me that more is not made of his vocal range, which is usually well displayed in performance but not really on record, because he tends to not move up and down the octaves. He's not doing vocal acrobatics on this album either, but his control of his voice and its sensitivity as an instrument are clearly captured. It's a voice that sounds intimate - like he's right there with you - like the song is coming through him and not just out of his mouth. And if that sounds corny, too bad - because only the best singers can actually become the song.

The reasons behind this 'new, improved' Ryan Adams have been speculated on: he's stopped drinking alcohol and has now been married (to singer Mandy Moore) for a handful of years. Perhaps these things have given him the solid foundations that can be heard behind the songs; perhaps he's just grown up. Whatever it is, it's working.

Ashes & Fire by Ryan Adams is out now through Pax-Am/Sony/Columbia.

Ryan Adams is touring Australia in February and March 2012. For details go to his website at paxamrecords.com.