Having read your bio
I thought I’d start by saying that you seem to be a bit of an underachiever.
I’m not sure you’ve quite done enough in your life – scoring movies, recording
albums …
[Laughs] I talked to Stuart Coupe the other day and he
seriously accused me of being lazy, but that’s mainly because the solo album
output’s pretty low. I promised to fix that up. There’s been three solo albums
since 1999, which is a bit … yeah, that’s scandalous. But I have been doing
other things.
Well, you absolutely
have. Given that you have these different aspects to your work, and they are
quite diverse, do you need to shift gears in order to write and record songs
for yourself? Does it require becoming more introspective?
I'm generally sketching stuff no matter what I’m doing. If
I’m collaborating with somebody on a film or busy doing something else, I’ve
generally got a journal that’s gradually filling up with song ideas and it’s
just a question of when I can sit down and give myself space to make them into
songs. Sometimes it is consciously putting myself into a more introspective
place and sometimes it’s just to do with the vagaries of being a freelance
musician in a little country like New Zealand, where there’s quite a bit of
work but you’ve got to duck and dive. So that’s probably the answer to that
one. It certainly is a different set of skills, though. I guess I’ve always
considered myself a songwriter and singer who does other stuff in between gigs
rather than the other way round.
Given that you’ve
done a few different things, I guess partly it requires being able to think of
how the audience is different each time. So the audience for this album is not
exactly the same as the audience for a film score or working on a different
sort of project. So do you have that sense of audience when you’re creating?
When I’m collaborating with somebody it’s clear because the
whole apparatus of the project is set up and I'm just coming in and
contributing ideas to something that’s already up and running. I must say that
when I’m sitting down to write my own songs it’s more for me. Picking up a
guitar is a kind of healing thing for me; if I’m wandering round the house not
feeling very good, I tend to pick up the guitar and feel better. Then I suppose
having written something, having got a song out – I’m quite slow, I don’t write
fast – actually taking that to an audience completes the circle. But I’m not
entirely sure that I’m thinking of an audience when I’m writing a song.
Certainly when I’ve been in bands and when I’ve been working with other
musicians, I think of them. With the Mutton Birds, which was a ten-year band,
after about three or four years I’d sit down to write and I’d think, David, the guitarist, would have fun with
this bit here and Alan’s going to think up a cool bass line for this bit here.
So it’s more like that, I think, than thinking of an audience.
What you’ve just
described with the Mutton Birds kind of goes against the idea of the
egotistical singer-songwriter who just wants everything in his own image.
That’s a real sense of serving the bigger purpose when you write like that.
We became a very democratic band and I think to some degree
you have to, if you’ve been going for a while. We were living in vans and
travelling all over the place together, and we really tied ourselves to each
other’s wagons in terms of our careers. And we started the band quite late, too
– I was twenty-nine when I started it. The other guys were younger. But it
wasn’t just goofing off and having fun down the pub with the guys – although there
was plenty of that. So we did end up taking quite a lot of notice of each
other. Even now with Lucky Stars,
this album, I got a real kick out of collaborating with the guitarist, Tom
Rodwell, on it, because he’s got a particular style – a whole bunch of styles –
and he means every note that he plays. And that kicked me up a gear, I think.
Once I realised that I was going to get the drummer that I’ve been working with
for quite a few years [Chris O’Connor] to work over the top of some of the rhythms
that I’d already laid down, that changed it again. We’ve been doing some stuff
live, just as a three-piece. I’d really love to bring that to Australia when I
can afford to. Right now these gigs that are coming up are solo. But I think
it’s a really cool band and it’s changing the way that I write.
I suppose it’s a
different experience to the Mutton Birds, though – do you miss that sense of
the travelling band of brothers?
It’s got a lot going for it and certainly during the Mutton
Birds period I wrote enough songs to put out four albums in the ten years we
were going, and that’s probably the highest output that I’ve ever had. So it
was certainly good for me. But I’m touring a lot, and even if it’s solo there’s
usually a tour manager and a sound person, so it’s still fun, it’s still really
companionable getting around the country. In fact, these last few months of
touring have been some of the best that I’ve ever done. Something about
arriving at where I want to be. I’ve given away a lot of the other work that I
used to do. My kids are grown up now so I don’t need to rush out and earn as
much as I used to, doing film scores and TV scores, so there’s a really
enjoyable simplicity to my life at the moment and I’m getting a real kick out
of it. Also we were touring in the spring – we headed around New Zealand just
as the blossoms were coming out.
Well, that’s just
nauseating! [laughs] As in nauseatingly beautiful. What a wonderful thing to
do.
[Laughs] It can be nauseatingly nauseating if you want.
I’m listening to your
talking about your experience touring this album and also note that you’ve said
that it’s more personal than your previous work and you didn’t adopt characters
on it, and I wonder if some of that comfort you’re feeling in the work you’re
doing now is because of that – because of you stepping to the forefront as a
narrator of your stories.
There’s a link, certainly. And it’s probably just arriving
at the age I’m at. There’s a lot to be said for all the different songwriting
devices that you can employ, like creating a narrator. Sometimes I’m motivated
to write a protest song about something or write an angry song about something
and it’s easier in a way for me – just because of the way I’m made – to create
a negative persona and have that person try to explain themselves and fail. I
find that really interesting and I’ve done a few songs like that. Some people
can write a direct ‘Free Nelson Mandela’ type of protest song and I’ve never
been able to do that, but I do enjoy that more kind of short-storyish
unreliable narrator type of vibe. So I’m not going to give it up completely,
I’m going to come back to it certainly. But the fact of this album, everything
came out and seemed to be more direct and shorter songs – songs which didn’t
take the audience through a story. It’s great to stand up and do that stuff.
And also there’s a few other indicators – I don’t think I’ve ever had the
confidence to play the whole album from go to whoa when I’ve just made a new
album. It’s more traditional to hide the new songs in amongst the old songs so
that you don’t frighten the horses. But for this album, the first tour that we
went out with, with the three-piece band, that’s what we did: the first half of
the show was just the album in order, then everybody went away and had a drink,
and the second half of the show was more familiar stuff. And it felt great.
We’ve never done that before and it felt fantastic. So maybe it’s to do with
the nature of this album and maybe it’s to do with where I’m at, at the moment.
I guess songs change
form, in a way, as you perform them to others – you can discover different
things in them. Have you found that these songs are still very much as they
were when you wrote them, or have they changed a bit?
Well, they’re growing, and I think that’s the cool risk you
take when you decide that you’re going to play all the new ones, because you
don’t leave the problematic ones in the fridge to take out later. So that’s
really exciting. There’s a song called ‘For Your Touch’ on the album and I
could have left that out, I suppose, and not played it live, but I’ve really
been getting a kick out of playing it live and learning more about how to sing
it. It’s right at the edge of my ability to sing, so that’s a real challenge,
and just starting it and thinking, Do I
have those notes tonight after all that whiskey? [laughs] After all that chatting I did to people
after the show, do I actually have those falsetto notes? And then, if I
haven’t got them, finding some other kind of thing that still sells that idea.
So it’s been a real blast.
Now there’s a line in
one of these songs, about dropping your weapons – and just to take it out of
the context of the song … a creative life has its challenges and I wonder what
sort of weapons you’ve had to wield over the course of your creative life and
what have you now learned to let go of or had to let go of?
Well, I’m very good at wielding weapons against myself.
Certainly, when I was going through the rock ’n’ roll life of major labels –
because the Mutton Birds signed to Virgin UK so we had guys in the employ of
the record company coming in and trying to coach us – me, particularly – in how
to do interviews and not be self-deprecating. [Laughs] All that sort of
palaver. And I came out of that feeling like I’d just been through a wringer. I
suppose in order to get through there’s a sort of ‘put your head down, get up
on stage, do the photographs, try to manufacture the self-belief or manufacture
the impression of self-belief even if it’s not there’. And that’s a weapon that
it’s good to get rid of.
It’s exhausting, I
would think, having to do that.
It is exhausting. And the thing is, you write for yourself –
you’re an artist because you want to be an artist – and all the rewards are
there in the act of making something that you’re proud of and putting it out in
front of a few people. All the rewards are there and all the other ones are
just ancillary, they’re all to do with other people who might want to make
money out of what you do. And that’s the thing that’s got to sustain you, and
it has sustained me. It’s got to the point that I just love what I do. I’m
lucky that I’m famous enough in New Zealand and, to a lesser degree, in other
parts of the world that people will come to the gigs. Not famous enough that
it’s inconvenient.
Australian tour dates:
11 November - Smith's Alternative Bookshop, Canberra ACT
12 November - Petersham Bowling Club, Sydney NSW
13 November - Clarendon Guesthouse, Katoomba NSW
14 November - Melbourne Folk Club, Vic.
