Interview: Sara Storer

Sara Storer is one of our most beloved country music artists - a multiple Golden Guitar award winner and perennial fan favourite, she has written and performed some amazing songs. Sara took a break, though, as her children started to arrive. She is now the mother of three boys and she lives in Darwin. Just before the birth of her youngest son, Sara wrote and her recorded her new album, Lovegrass, which she launched at the Gympie Muster this past weekend. Ahead of the launch, and her appearance at the muster, I spoke to this delightful country music icon.

I started by asking Sara how she would prepare to play at the Muster when she's in Darwin and, presumably, her band are not.

'It’s always a tricky thing,' she said, 'but I’m getting there early and we’re all going to catch up prior to the Muster for a rehearsal, which is a must especially when I’m releasing a new album and playing the songs with the band for the first time, really. We need a little practice run otherwise we could end up a train smash.'

At the time of speaking to Sara I had not heard the album, so I asked her to describe it for someone who had never heard it, using any terms she liked - not just descriptive terms for the music.

'There’s a lot of energy,' she said, 'and it’s quite uplifting. And I always knew that this album would be a happy album because of how I feel where I'm at in this stage of my life. I’ve met Dave, we’ve had three children within five years and we’ve settled in Darwin, and just really happy. And I knew that there’s not too much to complain about. As in, sometimes when you’re in a bad relationship you tend to write sad songs and they can be great songs, but my album of course has happy love songs. 

'I knew that I’d have to go searching for other things to write about,' she continued. Other people’s stories. There are a few stories on the album, there’s a few theme songs back to my roots, which is rural life and farming; so there’s a harvest song, there’s a rain song, there’s another farmer song, which I’m very passionate about because that’s my upbringing and that’s what my family still do. I find people on the land are very strong and hard-working people, so I love to write about them. I’m really excited about this album - there’s such a lovely energy to [the songs] I can’t wait to get out and sing them on stage.

The conundrum that a lot of singer-songwriters face when they're happy is that they feel like they have to draw on the darker side of life to write songs. I asked Sara if she found that happiness in her home life has pushed her to write differently, given that she can't really draw on darkness any more.

'I think that happier songs are harder to write but I  think just writing the songs – it had been such a long gap for me, such a long spell between my last album and this – that I was just happy that the songs were coming again and coming to me in a relatively short time, which was great. Once I got that first song, the excitement and the relief that I still had that in me sparked off the next song. 

'I wouldn’t say that being happy makes you write differently – I still write those stories, I’ve still got to hear or see or feel something myself, and if it doesn’t come from me, it’s got to come from someone else and it’s got to be a true story, because I just find that that’s what makes a song stand out compared to other songs. As soon as you try to make up a song it gets a bit clichéd and it’s just not right. 

'So I love writing other people’s stories as well. I just have my ears wide open, basically, and every time I heard something that moved me and that I could turn inot a song, I did. And it was a great seven months. It was just like one [song] after another.

'I always do it – after every album I always say, "That’s it – there’ll be no more songs. I can’t do that again." And then all of a sudden they’re there, on paper, and you’re, like, "Oh right! I can go and record now."'

Sara had, of course, produced several albums in a row before she took a break, and I wondered if it wasn't that after that peak of creative activity that she must have when she's writing songs and then recording them and then performing them, there’s a necessary fallow period. She has also had the big energetic peaks having children.

'That’s very true,' she said. 'You do – you have these humongous peaks of things going on in your life – it doesn’t necessarily have to do with music, it’s about having family and all those things, and you tend to write – once those highs are over, whether you release an album or singing all the songs for the first time, and then they go through the awards of whatever, and then there’s that clearing process, and that’s when you should be writing again for the next album. So you sort of go into that lull and if the songs don’t come in that time, that’s when you start to panic and to worry. 

'But I didn’t have time to panic and worry – I was pregnant and having another baby, so I was still on a high with the family, because my personal life was running at a crazy mile an hour and still is. I had Billy six months ago, so I got that album out just before he was born. But I think in the back of my mind, even though my family life was wonderful and it was all going great, it had been just that bit too long musically between albums and it was really starting to eat away at me and I had to get in and be serious and say, "You either  get this done or you somehow have to put it behind you – you just can’t keep thinking about it every day and doing your head in." 

'It took a little trip to Tamworth and I just came back really inspired – 2012 after Tamworth, came home and wrote a song straightaway and that’s pretty much set up the flow of songs. It tumbled out then, which is great.'

In terms of which songs - which stories - she chooses for an album, I asked if her selection process was a matter of instinct.

'It’s hearing a story that you know probably hasn’t been said before ... It's like you can have – this is a really stupid way of looking at it it, but you can have apple pie every night but every now and then apple pie is really, really good. It’s the same with songs: you’ll just know a story hasn’t been said that way before, or you haven’t heard it said the way it is, and it can even be someone saying it from their own words and it’s really just a simple line that has never been put into song before. You hear lots of lots and stories – I think it comes down to knowing, to a personal vibe that you know that’s going to make a beautiful song.'

In her songwriting Sara has tackled big themes and issues - for example, in the song 'Tears'. When asked if she feels she has a responsibility,  almost, to address those sorts of subjects in her work, Sara said, '"Tears" was just – I was moved on the day and thought, "I’ve just got to write a song about that". It wasn’t for any purpose; I hadn’t been thinking about it for ages. I was actually watching TV and saw her on TV and was really affected. Most of the songs will come like that – just moved at the moment.

Sara is known as a singer-songwriter but it seems as though she also naturally inhabits the mantle of 'storyteller'. When asked which occupation she'd put on her passport – storyteller, performer, singer-songwriter – she said, 'I find I’m a bit of all of those. "Singer-songwriter" has that nice individual sort of sound. It sort of keeps you separated from everyone else – it gives you your own identity, saying that. Once you start putting yourself into a genre you then become like everyone else. 

'I love "storyteller" because I do love writing a song that tells a story as well. 

'The other one you mentioned was "performer" – some people can write great songs and they can really go unnoticed if you can’t get up there and perform it as well. You’ve got to have a bit of stage presence and I’m always working at that. And I’ll tell you who’s brilliant at it – Beccy Cole, she’s an amazing performer. And it’s always something I worry about – I get up on stage and think I sound boring. But it’s true – you’ve got to have a bit of the X factor otherwise you can lose a crowd. So it’s always very important. Little bit of that on top, like salt and pepper, is good in the mix.

'I think the storytelling is one of my strengths and I do like a little yarn in between songs. Sometimes I think anything can happen with my show – I forget lines, so there’s always that unexpected thing – maybe that’s what keeps people listening. That’s how I got through it when I first started – I was so nervous, and I didn’t know what to say, what was the right thing to say, so I just had to be me and sometimes I think that really worked.' 

By any measure, it is safe to say that is has definitely worked, and country music fans will welcome Sara back with wide open arms as she releases her first new album in over three years and her first original album since 2007.

Lovegrass is out now from ABC Music/Universal.

Album review: Same Trailer Different Park by Kacey Musgraves

Although mainstream American country music has plenty of 'young people' it wasn't until listening to Kacey Musgrave's debut album, Same Trailer Different Park, that I realised there aren't that many 'young voices' – by which I obviously mean young songwriters. Those songwriters would exist, of course, but they're not necessarily appearing in the mainstream (yet).

Musgrave is clearly in the mainstream - she has already been the subject of a profile in The New York Times Magazine, her album is on the Mercury Nashville label, a division of Universal, and she has a publishing deal with Warner/Chappell – and thus her cultural context is more Carrie Underwood than Gillian Welch. Accordingly, her album has to be somewhat listened to in that context. And in that context it is remarkable. 

Same Trailer Different Park is a collection of well-constructed songs that tell stories of small towns and small dreams, of disappointments and heartbreaks that perhaps don't break as hard as they should if they'd actually meant something. It is, in its way, a manifesto of a young thinking woman's life - these are her experiences, this is what she has learned, this is what she plans to do again and what she plans never to do again.   

If we pitch this album next to two other releases that have come from young women this year – Melody Pool's The Hurting Scene and Katie Brianna's Dark Side of the Morning – then it is not as intriguing, not as dark nor as joyful, not as lyrically complex, not as interesting. But in Australia, 'mainstream country music' arguably encompasses a much broader range of voices, both melodic and lyrical. In Australia, Kacey Musgraves would not be remarkable. Which, to reiterate, is why context is important.

That isn't to say that there's not a lot for Australian country music fans to like about Same Trailer Different Park – Musgraves's voice is endearingly sincere yet knowing, and her songs have the dismayed wistfulness that can be often be found in young adults who are finally realising that life isn't perhaps all they were led to expect it would be. 

It is also a very accomplished first album. No doubt Musgraves had all the assistance that a big label can offer, but there are plenty of artists who have that and don't produce an album of this standard. It makes me excited to see what she comes up with next, and I'm certainly playing this album regularly. 

This album – along with the others mentioned above, and more still, like Catherine Britt's Always Never Enough – is also a sign that country music as a genre is in the hands of very talented, steady, clear-eyed singer-songwriters who have stories to tell, a conviction that there's an audience for them and the ability to bridge the two. Fans of the genre could honestly not ask for anything more. 

Same Trailer Different Park is out now through Mercury/Universal. It is also available on iTunes.

http://www.kaceymusgraves.com

Album review: The Great Country Song Book by Troy Cassar-Daley and Adam Harvey

This album had its genesis in a tour undertaken by Troy Cassar-Daley and Adam Harvey about two or three years ago. I saw one of the shows on that tour and it was one of the best gigs I'd ever seen. Troy and Adam were having so much fun - it seemed as though, in covering other people's songs instead of playing their own, the pressure was off and they could be two musicians - and friends - together.

The idea for the tour was genius: two of Australian country music's biggest names playing the mainly American country music songs they loved. Some of the songs were obscure - in fact, many of them would only have been known to people who had the same extensive knowledge of the genre as Troy and Adam. But that didn't matter, because the two men revealed themselves to be great performers no matter whose songs they were singing and the music flowed easily all night.

That same spirit of collaboration and pure joy in music is evident on The Great Country Song Book, which now stands as a record of that genius tour idea. There is a great range of songs to satisfy anyone who loves any kind of country music - there is Slim Dusty's 'Lights on the Hill', Johnny Cash's 'I Walk the Line' and Glen Campbell's 'Rhinestone Cowboy' mixed in with some Lefty Frizell, Merle Haggard and Hank Williams songs, amongst others.

This is undoubtedly an album that many Australian country music fans will buy simply because of the two names attached to it, but it's also worth buying for what's on the album itself: the sound of two of our greatest singer-songwriters relishing the chance to sing classic songs written by others and the opportunity to let themselves just be singers and fans. There is a lot of joy on this album just as there was in the show that night - and, no doubt, it won't the last such collaboration from Troy Cassar-Daley and Adam Harvey. After all, when you're onto a good thing ...

The Great Country Song Book is out now through Liberation/Sony Music.

Troy and Adam are touring together - for dates visit:

www.troycassardaley.com.au
www.adamharvey.com.au

Interview: Jasmine Rae

Melbourne performer Jasmine Rae has released the first single from her forthcoming album – and the single, 'If I Want To', shares its name with the album.

'We chose the title of the album after we knew it was the single,' Jasmine said when I spoke to her recently. '"If I Want To" is one I’m very proud of. I wrote it with Bob DiPiero, who is a hit songwriter and I can’t believe he wanted to write with me, it was just fantastic. So it’s a song that’s quite different to what I’ve done before and this album is something that I’ve always wanted to do, just the sound of it. I’ve always wanted to write most of my material and that’s why I thought [the album] should be called If I Want To, and the track is one that I’m very proud of as well.'

I asked Jasmine about making the video clip for the song and whether or not it was strange to do something to different to writing and performing.

'Videos are the best,' she said. 'Everyone else on the video would totally get a headache from playing the same song over and over again' – and apparently this song was played about 20 times during the shoot – 'whereas I’m, like, "This is my song, I dig this" ... It’s actually photo shoots that are the most awkward: "This is not musical at all, what am I doing?" So the video flows very well. The guy in the video was actually 6’4” so that was a little bit different because I'm 4’6” … Actually, I’m 4’9”,' she said, laughing. 'I was standing on a box for the whole day so that was the awkward part but the music part and the acting part was all good.' 

Jasmine travelled to Nashville to write not only the single but other songs for this album.

'I wrote half of the album in Nashville,' she said. 'Writers over there, they do it like a 9 to 5 job. They’re so efficient and passionate; you can bring an idea that’s a little bit jumbled in your head and they say, "I know what you mean", and they help you sort it out. It’s not like they try to write the song in front of you – it’s very much a collaboration, bouncing ideas off each other. I kind of was scared when I started co-writing over there, thinking that they’d just write the song and say, "There you go", but that’s not how it is – it’s very open, you can talk about ideas.'

When I asked what she thought of the pace of writing in Nashville, Jasmine said that her ideas 'come to me at very much not 9 to 5 times. They come to me in the shower or when I’m driving. When I don’t have a pen and paper – that’s when they come. So finishing off [a song] in a 9 to 5 way is totally fine. Whenever people are able to get together with me and finish them off, that’s great – I just like the idea that it’s finishing off an idea that’s been in my head for a while, so it’s good working like that.'

Not only do the songs come at different times and in different places, but they also come in different ways. When I asked if it's lyrics or melody that usually comes through, Jasmine said, 'Sometimes it’s just lyrical. It’s different every time, which is why this question’s hard! Sometimes I’ll get a pre-chorus or just the first line of a chorus. I wrote most of the lyrics for a song called "Just Don’t Ask Me How I Am" but in a poem form that I’d been chipping away at for months. So it happens differently every time, which I think is why I love it so much, and sometimes ideas that I think, "This is gold, this is it", end up being completely nothing and an idea that I think, "I’ll just scribble that down even though it’s not the best", ends up being the main song.

If I Want To is Jasmine's third album and it sounds as though the experiences for each of those albums have been quite different.

'The first album – I’d won a competition called Telstra Road to Tamworth at the time, now called the Telstra Road to Discovery, and the date that my album was going to be released we already knew by the time I won the competition. So it was nine months of "We have to get this album out". So there were a lot of songs that were picked for me that I didn’t get to write – they were great songs, but I didn’t get to write the whole album … and it was very much taking the advice of people because I was very green and we had a deadline. 

'The second album we got to take a lot more time. I wrote half of the record. And then this third time around I had a little bit of time to spend with my family and then I knew exactly what I wanted to do with this record, and I wanted to write the majority of it, and so I spent a year and a half writing it, and have been across all of it. So it’s been the same team but very much a different way [of doing it] and I worked with a different producer.'

In between albums two and three, however, Jasmine's life changed in a profound way: she took time off to care for her father, who had cancer, and he subsequently died.

'Music was the only way I was able to deal with it,' said Jasmine. 'It was just very natural for me to just write it all out. So making this album and writing and being across this album was something I felt I had to do – it was very much a calling. It was the only thing I knew how to do at the time. Everything else is very blurry at a time like that. So have it finished [feels like] a big achievement.'

The album features a very moving track called 'First Song' and I took the opportunity to ask Jasmine about it, as it suddenly seemed as though it may well be about her father.

'It’s about my dad,' she confirmed. 'My dad and I were very close and great friends and did everything together. I’d never, ever written a song that he hadn’t heard. He’d heard every line that had ever come to me. I’d sing it to him and say, "What do you reckon of this?" To actually think that I would start and finish a song without him ever hearing it, I was devastated – I thought, "I don’t ever want to write because I don't want him to not hear it". That lasted for a whole week and then the week after I thought, "He would have wanted me to write because this is my calling. So I have to write this first song." And so that was the hardest. Then after that the rest of the album just flowed. I knew exactly where it was going after that.'

Jasmine's voice sounds different on this new album – not necessarily more mature, but there is a different tone to it. Given what happened in her life around the time of making the album, it seemed as though those experiences might be reflected in her voice.

'The voice is an amazing thing,' she said. 'It is very much connected to all of your emotions and that’s why I find it so fascinating. So, yes, I’m a different person to who I was before any of that happened. I stopped everything so I could care for him and he wanted to be at home. It just puts everything in perspective. I know what’s important now and I didn’t really know that before – I was stressing about whether my arse looked big in jeans and stuff. None of that stuff matters. When something like this happens you think, "Now I know what’s important". I’ve also used a different producer on this album as well so he would have been looking for different parts of my voice to bring out, so that’s why the album sounds a bit different as well.'

Jasmine also said that as she has written all of tracks bar one, 'they sit in a different place for your voice when you actually write it for your voice.'

When asked whether she had been performing recently – and whether or not that might have acted as some kind of solace for her in the wake of her father's death, Jasmine said, 'It has been really difficult not performing for a little while because I love it and it keeps you kind of in check. You know what you’re doing – "I’m a musician, I perform". Whereas when you’re not performing every week you wonder, "What am I doing? I’m sitting at home writing songs all day." Everyone else goes to work and it doesn't feel right. So I can’t wait to get back into performing, but you definitely need to take time off between albums for the band to learn the new stuff and just step it up a little.'

Jasmine and the band will have their next big outing at the album launch on 3 August at Rooty Hill RSL in Sydney, where she will be supported by Buddy Goode. In the meantime she has been listening to new American singer-songwriter Kacey Musgraves – but, by the sounds of it, not to too many other new American acts: when in Nashville, 'you talk to everyone and they’ll tell you who the hot artists [are],' she said, 'then you go on iTunes and you can’t buy it because you have Australian iTunes!' 

One performer whose albums she definitely has is Dolly Parton. The last time I spoke to Jasmine she was about to go to Dolly's concert in Melbourne; it turns out she not only went – to three shows – but met Dolly. 'I got my photo taken with her,' said Jasmine. 'And I went there with my dad, so that was awesome.' 

Jasmine's single 'If I Want To' is out now and the album of the same name will be released on 2 August from ABC Music/Universal. The album launch is on 3 August at Rooty Hill RSL and then Jasmine will appear at the Gympie Muster and other festivals. For full details visit:

www.jasminerae.com.au 

Album review: Dark Side of the Morning by Katie Brianna

There is always something incredibly touching about the sound of someone laying bare their heart in a song or on an album. From the first verse of 'What it Means', the first song on Katie Brianna's new album, Dark Side of the Morning, that is what we hear: her heart, plaintive and yearning. What that immediately signifies is a brave performer - a brave songwriter, too - who is prepared to show all of her cards right from the start.

It's a dangerous gamble: the performer can't control the listener's reaction. Being so exposed to the listener may go wrong, especially when we venture into the second, title, track and there is that heart again, coming through the arc of Katie's voice. But it doesn't go wrong. The vulnerability that is on display from the start of this album is also its strength - and the strength of its creator. When an artist makes such a gamble - to show her entire hand - she shows us that she has nothing to hide and also, perhaps, that part of her knows that we will like what we hear. So there's an audaciousness there, too, and it starts to emerge by the third track, 'Oh Night', and by then we are definitely on the ride and there until the end.

The musical influences on Dark Side of the Morning are strongly alt-country and Americana but there are some traditional Irish sounds there too. Country music is a genre steeped in traditions; to acknowledge them in a substantial way - within the structure of a song rather than throwing out a random sound or bar here and there - is a mark of respect to the artists who have come before. 

This album seems like a work of respect and tradition and of a young woman who is finding her own musical path through them. By understanding where she's come from, Katie can better chart where she's going. Leading her through is her distinctive voice, which is full bodied and sure. It is a voice that could have found its way to jazz, yet it sounds perfectly at home in country music. 

Dark Side of the Morning is an accomplished piece of work. It is hugely interesting - to me, at least - that in a short space of time we've had Melody Pool and now Katie Brianna, both women in their early twenties, releasing very sophisticated albums, both as independent releases. I don't know whether they have both chosen to be independent artists or if events just turned out that way, but if anything independence has allowed them both to choose the best people to work on their albums, with the attendant outstanding results. 

Dark Side of the Morning is a debut album that promises much about its creator - and because she has taken her time to craft it and release it, I have every confidence that it is the first step in a long career. I genuinely cannot wait to see what she comes up with next.

Dark Side of the Morning is out now.

www.katiebrianna.com 

Interview: Tori Darke

Tori Darke has been busy writing a new album in Nashville, but her first album, Dreams & Chances, isn’t quite over yet … To celebrate the release of her new – and last – single from that album, ‘No You No Me’, I spoke to her recently and started off by asking about her trip to Nashville, where she recorded the new album.

‘Nashville was amazing,’ she said. ‘I got so many great songs written while I was over there.  I came home with fifteen new songs, which I am so excited about and I’ve been playing them heaps. I’m just re-listening to them and trying to learn them and it’s just really kind of I guess given me that motivation and inspiration to get back into the studio.’

So will she be able to record all fifteen songs, or will she have to axe some of them?

‘I’ll definitely have to axe some of them because there were some that I wrote that [I thought] that’s an absolutely great song, some that were a good song, and some that were just, “Oh, why did I intend to write that”,’ she said, laughing. ‘It’s all part and parcel. You’ve got to sometimes get through I guess what you would call the crappy songs to get the smash-hit kind of songs. So you really just are weaselling your way through to go, yep, well that idea didn’t work but then this one might, so I’m really excited about these ones.’

I was curious about whether or not Tori had a sense about how the songs would turn out as she was writing them – was there a little tingle up the spine or something like that to tell her that a song was really going to work? Or does it take a few drafts to really get an idea of it?

‘I think once you get a verse and a chorus, you kind of know,’ Tori said, ‘and you even know that it’s not going to be something that you’re going to love or you know that it’s something that you already love, and I guess you kind of know from that get-go of just going, “Yep, we’ve got a verse down and this is really cool, it’s going somewhere”. And then you get to the chorus and you get the chorus out and you just go, “Yep, that’s what it’s about”. And that happened for me several times in Nashville with some of the writers that I wrote with in mainly the last week I was there.  We wrote this one song called “Rain on a Rusted Tin Roof”, and it was an idea that I came up with in the car and we were just driving – I was just going to put some vocals down on a demo that we’d written for a song a few days before, and we were just talking about it and I came up with this idea.  And from just talking about the idea we all knew it was going to be a really special song, and it was one of the quickest songs that I’d written in my whole life.  We wrote it in about an hour and a half, and just listening back to it now and playing it to anybody and they go, “Wow, that is a great song. It gives you tingles, and that song really did it for me. I had the same reaction with a few other song as well while I was there.’

Performance is a huge part of Tori’s career, so I wondered if, as she’s writing songs, she’s partly wondering what the song is going to be like for her to sing.

‘You’re always thinking at the back of your mind what it’s going to be like to perform to an audience and how would people take this and how it would come across,’ she said, ‘and you’ve really always got to be really careful to look at it and go, “This is part of my image”. Because even if you do write a song that isn’t necessarily you, that’s the song that somebody else could record if they wanted to.

‘There’s always a chance to pitch an original song to someone else, and so for me, when writing a song for myself, I always try to make sure that the lyric content is something that I would actually say, because I have been in writing sessions before where you do have some writers that take a little bit too much control and it’s like but hang on a second, I wouldn’t actually say that phrase, it’s not something that it’s in my vocabulary, so even to sing it, it’s not being true to yourself. So I always try to be true to myself with everything that I write and with everything that I do because if it’s not, it’s very transparent and you can see straight through it.’

Tori started her country music career very young, as a teenager; as she’s growing older and now moving onto her next album, is she feeling more confident about saying things like that to people?

‘Yes, definitely,’ she said firmly. ‘I feel as though your opinion matters a little more the older you get … people will stand up and listen and hear what you’re trying to say through your songs. And the older you get, the more experience that you have in life, and three years ago when I recorded Dreams & Chances to now, even now there’s some things that I wouldn’t have recorded on that album, which I didn’t because there were songs that I’d written that I went, well at the age of twenty it just seemed like it wasn’t me and it seemed like I hadn’t been heartbroken, or I hadn’t gone through some really tough times. Whereas now I have been heartbroken and I’ve gone through some tough times but dealt with some hard things that I’ve really struggled through that – just thinking about them now it would totally make sense and I would everyone would totally get it, whereas it may not have been as believable three years ago.’

Part of the mystery of the process for a performer – or maybe a mystery for the audience but not necessarily for the artist – is accessing that emotion not only when a song is recorded but later when it’s being performed, and if the artist has to perform it a lot of times it seems as though it would be difficult to always access the emotion needed for a song.

‘We all have our good days and our bad days,’ said Tori, ‘and some days it may not even be an emotional connection. You may have something else going on in your head or in your life that’s really distracting you and that’s one of the things as an artist that you really have to try and just put aside and [say], “I’m here to do a job, this is my time to show people what I’m about, and what my music is about.” So you really have to try and do your best to just put it aside and just go, no, I’m going to show you the same emotion that I would to any other song.’

It seems like it would be hard to do that, though, and doing it more and more makes it wouldn’t necessarily make it easier because the artist is still a human being, so some days it must be quite hard to go out on stage and actually effectively cut off Tori, the person, and become Tori the performer.

‘You’re completely right,’ Tori agreed. ‘And one thing that I did tell a lot of people, being an artist you are also just a normal person like everybody else in this world, and some people see past that sometimes and just go, no, you’re a singer, you’re [famous] – and it’s just like, “Give me one second – before I was even a singer, I was a human being.” I’m just a normal average person and some people don’t necessarily see through that. They just say, no, you’re a singer, we want to know everything about you and we deserve to know everything about you, and that’s why, when it comes to social media especially and any kind of media, some people get really overwhelmed. And in the country music industry, we don’t really get too much of that because it’s such a family-based industry that everybody really respects here and respects everything about you, that it’s actually a really great industry to be a part of.’

            That industry has its counterpart in Nashville, of course, and Tori’s recent trip there wasn’t her first. I asked here if there is a community of Australians there now that she can loop into and she said, ‘There are so many Australians there now … there is a really great community of Australian artists that are over in Nashville. So it’s really wonderful to be able to learn from those people that are over there and learn how they’ve done it and learn how they’re coping in a city like Nashville.’

Some Australian artists relocate to Nashville for a time – or permanently – as opposed to going there to record and coming back; I asked Tori if that’s something she’s thought about, and she said, ‘Oh, it’s definitely something that I’ve thought of, but as I have said to a lot of people, I absolutely love the town of Nashville and I love how inspired I am when I’m there, but I don’t necessarily know that I could move there full time, but I could definitely do the commute backwards and forwards.’ So it sounds like we’re not about to lose her any time soon … especially as Australian artists do travel to Nashville quite regularly and have experiences, write songs and come back.

            ‘To be able to have that opportunity to do that, to just go there and to come back, that’s so special to us … it’s wonderful being Australian because everyone is so welcoming when they hear that accent of yours.’

And now Nashville has become a sister city to Tamworth so that’s consolidated the relationship even more.

‘It’s really wonderful that that has happened and that they’ve done sister city relationship there,’ Tori said, ‘because it’s really just opened up a lot of doors, I guess too – a lot of people previously have said, “No, you’ve got to do it all in Australia and you can’t go to Nashville to do it”, but it’s really proving now that that relationship being joint that you can do it in Nashville and you can still have a really successful career in Australia.

Of course, the official reason for my chat with Tori was ‘No You No Me’, the fifth and final single from Dreams & Chances. The album actually came out a couple of years ago, so I asked if it felt a bit weird for Tori as an artist to have the last single coming out only now.

‘It is really weird,’ she admitted, ‘because it seems like it was so long ago that I released the first one, but a lot of people in this industry said to me they really believed in the album and said that they think that it was worthy of this life and to be released. [It’s] kind of giving a little bit of closure on the album and I’m really excited to see how this one goes and to see how it’s received, because I really believe in this song, and it’s just one of my favourite songs.

            When it comes to releasing a single, for Australian country music artists there is not the same kind of chance for the song to be played on mainstream radio as a pop or rock artist would have, and Tori said ‘it is harder in the country industry because a lot of our radio stations are community-based radio stations, so they don’t have a lot of resources that a commercial pop station would have. So it can be a little more difficult but to have, still, that support of those radio stations behind you is really beneficial for all Australian country artists.

‘There’s so many supportive radio stations throughout Australia,’ Tori continued, ‘whether they be community or whether they be commercial.  So it is a little bit easier to be heard, I guess, through the commercial country station because they have a lot more accessibility to bigger areas and wider spectrums. But there are so many community stations that you can pretty much every turn you go to find a community country station which is wonderful.’

Tori will now move into recording the next album and go through the process of selecting songs; I asked how long the process would take from selecting the songs to getting the final mix, because a lot of people (me included) wouldn’t know.

‘A lot of people do expect that it just happens overnight ... And it may only take a week or two to record but all the preparation and all the preparing for it can take something like a year to six months, especially for me – last year I went and did a writing trip in Nashville; this year I went and did a writing trip in Nashville. Now, none of the songs I wrote I’ve recorded yet, so you look at that and that’s a year in itself of just writing songs and preparing for new songs for an album. So it really can take a long time and it sadly doesn’t happen overnight. 

‘A lot of people say, “Oh, well, you just released now, so when’s the next one coming out?”  So you really want to say, “No, I just released one!” It does take a lot of time and a lot of effort, a lot of money, a lot of blood, sweat and tears really goes into album and I’m really looking forward to getting back in the studio and recording some of these new tunes and seeing the reception of them and how people will enjoy them.’

Tori said she’s ‘in no rush’ to release the new album – she is not planning to have it out for Tamworth 2014, although she does want to have a single out before the end of the year and then maybe release the album early to middle of next year. ‘Who knows what the next six months to a year is going to hold?’ she said. ‘I’m just looking forward to seeing how it all kind of pans out.’

            In amongst that recording process, she’ll also play some lives dates in September, hitting the road with Kate Cooke, who was on Australian Idol a few years ago. ‘I’m really looking forward to getting out on the road with Kate and doing some stuff there,’ said Tori, ‘because she’s really wonderful and her EP is absolutely killer, so I can’t wait to get on the road and really showcase both our different styles in music and yet very similar at the same time.’

            Tori has a lot ahead of her, but she’s also been doing a lot – so I asked her what her highlight or highlights from the last twelve months would be.

            ‘Well, one of my highlights from last year would be going to Solomon Islands and playing for the troops over there and also another one was playing at the CMC this year. I had an absolute ball at that festival … [you] see some of the most amazing acts that have really inspired you throughout your career.’

            Tori is a young artist clearly making the most of the opportunities that come her way; with the release of ‘No You No Me’ she is marking the end of one phase of her career – her debut album – and paving the way for the next.

To keep track of everything she’s up to, including her live dates, visit www.toridarke.com.au.

Interview: Ben Ransom

Ben Ransom is a city slicker with his heart in the country – as his new single, ‘Big Country Sky’, demonstrates. I spoke with Ben recently on the occasion of his single release and started off by asking him about his musical background, which has influences from Irish folk music as well as traditional country music. I asked Ben where his interested in music started, what he’s listened to over the years and how he’s formed his sound now.

Like most people, I think, the earliest influences come from your parents,’ Ben said, ‘and it’s usually the music that they’re listening to, and in our household we did listen to a broad range of music.  My dad was right into the Irish folk music, so we got exposed to a lot of that style of music early on, but there was also country that we listened to. It also went through to modern pop and rock, and that’s kind of where I got an interest in music. 

‘But it wasn’t until my cousin actually picked up a guitar and started playing twelve-bar blues that I thought, yeah, wow, this is something that I really want to do myself. When I was growing up and going to school and sort of listening to the music that was around at that time, it was a lot of Australian pub rock, and I guess the way I write and the songs that I come up with at the moment, you can hear some of the influences in them.

‘So I kind of got a mixed bag – it’s a bit from here, a bit from there, and sort of chuck it in and see what you come out with.’

Given the Irish folk music in his past, I asked Ben if he’d been tempted to take up the fiddle as an instrument.

‘I don’t mind the fiddle,’ he admitted, but you know what I like? I like the tin whistle. My dad has played the tin whistle. He actually played the bagpipes as well. He was in a pipe band, but I love all that jig sort of stuff, it’s really cool, and some of those songs, they’re great songs, if you listen to them, they’re really, really great songs, they’re good fun to sing.’

Given that range of influences and instruments, Ben obviously has a strong background in musicality and also in different types of songwriting. As he’s a songwriter, that must help him understand song structure and storytelling.

‘Yeah,’ he agreed, ‘and sometimes it comes naturally, but then also I went to the academy – to the CMAA Academy of Country Music.  It was around about this time last year, it was all over June and July, and during that period you study a lot about songwriting and how to write songs, and structure and wording, that kind of thing.

‘I had a couple of sessions with Tamara Stewart and she said to me that she was watching the way I write, et cetera, and said that it’s something that actually comes naturally to me. 

‘So I started writing songs from an early age, but I don’t know what it is about sitting down and actually doing it from a literary point of view or a structured point of view.  It these things sort of come to me a bit. It’s hard to explain. It’s not like an exact science; it’s just that for me, it’s one of those things that just comes to you … there’s always different ways of writing songs and learning how to write songs, and there’s many different styles and methods, but you get these sort of little snippets of inspiration from all walks of life, and that’s where I usually get my songs from.’

We discussed the idea that for most people who can write successfully, whether it’s songwriting or another form of writing, there is a spark there and that ability and willingness to follow ‘the muse’. But what is learnt through studying, studying other people’s songs or studying songwriting is that the writer learns how to put some structure around what comes naturally.  So it’s not about following. It’s not about being taught how to be able to write songs, it’s more just corralling what is known by instinct.

Ben is writing songs – not to mention recording and performing them – around work and his young family in Sydney, and that’s a lot of distractions.  I asked him if he has to structure time for himself to write songs, or does he tend to do it when it comes to him?

‘I have so much going on,’ he said, ‘but also … I’ve got to organise my own marketing, managing, bookings, all those kind of things that usually people that are signed to record labels or have people take care of that, and it leaves little time to sit down and think about songs and writing songs. I do find it hard to get a moment to sit and think about things.  But, you know, sometimes when I get my most inspiration is when I’m doing a hundred other different things and you’ve got your brain, you know, firing all two cylinders and you get these ideas springing into your head, and then I’ll just write something down on a bit of paper, and then, you know, when I get a second to come back to it, I’ll come back to it. 

‘But what I want to invest in is a Dictaphone,’ he said, laughing. ‘That’d be an awesome tool.’

For his debut album, Slow Burn, Ben enlisted heavyweight talent: Matt Fell and Glen Hannah. Matt produces a lot of albums, and Glen plays on a lot of albums and a lot of shows, so they’re both busy men. I asked Ben how he came to work with them.

‘I love those guys,’ Ben said effusively. ‘I was put in contact with Glen Hannah, actually; I needed to get a photo shoot done, and that’s how I came into the fold. I’d done my photo shoot with Glen, and then found out all these other things about him, that he’s one of the best guitarists in Australia for this type of music, and so he said, “You can use my services any time.”  Which I did, I had to record a single, and he said, “I’ll tell you what, I reckon you’d go well with this fellow Matt Fell”, and that’s how I actually met Matt.  We went into the studio together, me, Glen and Matt, and also Josh Hubert on drums, and we knocked out the second single that we released, which is actually on the album, the single is called “Long Hot Days”, and that’s how the relationship started, and when I wanted to record the album, I said, “I want to go back, I want to capture that sound and energy again,” and that’s how we found ourselves back in the studio together and working on the album.’

Matt has a huge amount of experience producing Australian country music albums, and a good producer can make all the difference to an album, so I asked Ben what he thought Matt brought to the process of making his album.

‘It’s a good question, because for a long time, I didn’t really know the role of a producer. But they kind of breathe life into the whole thing, they can take any song and – it’s like they’re bringing interpretation of it, and they actually create the song.

‘When you go and demo a lot of songs, you are taken to these producers and they’ll say, “We don’t want to hear, you know, anything, we just want to hear the vocals and guitar or piano”, or whatever you like to do it on, “I just want to hear the most basic, basic version of it”, so that they can envisage what it is that they want to bring to it and how they will bring it to life and then coming up with the end result.  So to have a great producer is essential, I think, in any recording project. 

‘I recorded a CD twelve months before without a producer – we just went into the studio and knocked it out. It turned out okay, but you compare that to the official debut album and the difference in the quality and the sound and ideas and everything is out of this world. Matt did an awesome job; he’s one of those people who work on a different level, and it’s good, actually, to have an outsider’s perspective of your material as well, because they look at things a different way to what you would.’

            As a singer, I wondered, did Ben change through that recording process as well?

‘Yes, and that’s the thing, it’s a two-way street, and it’s a bit of give and take, and you listen to their advice and their suggestions, and then you’re sort of backwards and forwards a bit, and you develop as an artist as well. I think it’s all part of that development process, that you learn from people like this, and he’s had a world of experience, so it’d be remiss of me to just go in there and say, “No, this is how I want it done and this is it”,’ he said, laughing.

            When I remarked to Ben that his voice reminded me a bit of Keith Urban’s, he didn’t mind at all, and actually said that some people tell him that he reminds them of Bon Jovi, ‘which is cool’, he said. His sound is country rock, and that’s ‘the style of what I like to do, particularly performing live – I want to be out there and energetic and entertaining and upbeat, and I think if I tried to do something else, I wouldn’t quite pull it off. 

‘I think you have to be yourself,’ he continued, ‘or be true to the artist that you want to be. I do a lot of acoustic stuff, and I have done a lot of solo acoustic stuff, you know, a lot of quieter stuff, but it’s not really where my strengths lie, I think as an artist, I like to be a bit out there,’ he finished, laughing.

            Finally I got around to asking Ben about the single, ‘Big Country Sky’.

‘I love it,’ he said, ‘it’s a great little rocky tune, it’s a driving tune. I love songs when you’re in the car and you’re driving and you turn the volume up, but one thing I love doing is getting out and about whenever I can, and Australia is such a big, big country, it’s a massive place, and at every opportunity [I] get up, out the coast – up the coast, down the coast, down the country, wherever, and sort of getting out there and experience the countryside and everything that this place has got, and that was the genesis of the song, and because I like driving.’

            One place Ben will be driving to soon is the next Tamworth Country Music Festival.

            ‘I guess around July, August we’ll start booking the dates in,’ he said. ‘We’ve got our sights on a few different venues there. The last festival we did twenty performances. There were fifteen full shows, but twenty performances altogether.  So we’ll probably look at trying to beat that record.’

            Given how dedicated Ben is to his craft, and to his role as a performer and songwriter, I doubt he’ll have much trouble doing that. Ben has also organised the Live at the Brewhouse sessions at King Street Wharf in Sydney, so he is making his own luck when it comes to performances. He’s definitely a name – and a talent – to watch.

For details on Ben’s album, singles and gigs, visit www.ransommusic.com