Album review: James Thomson

James Thomson's eponymous debut album is the right amount of country, folk and blues, and could probably be categorised as 'Americana' if one were forced to pick. This doesn't mean that it's hard to identify what's going on - just that Thomson seems to have a few influences and he isn't reticent to combine them, depending on what the song needs. There's a bit of Townes van Zandt and a bit of Ryan Adams, and a bit of honky tonk, and they're all welcome on this record that makes you want to do nothing so much as curl up and listen to it. 

Thomson has a great voice - warm and smooth with a slight edge. It's an 'old' voice, in that it sounds like its owner has seen a lot of life and is bringing that to bear in the stories that he's singing. So it's hard to believe that Thomson is in his early twenties, because it doesn't sound like he's borrowing these stories - he sings them like they mean something to him, that they are his.

The album starts out with a wayward harmonica that leads us into a series of tracks that go up, and then down, in key. By the third track, 'Not for You (Odds & Ends)', we are in Thomson's quiet heart, and that is largely where we stay. This is not a raucous record - it is often gentle, and slightly melancholic. Some of the songs have a reassuring swing that never turns into a swagger. It's not hard to imagine Thomson sitting on a stool in the corner of a bar, simultaneously entertaining and observing the patrons.

This is country music in a largely urban setting, and given that there's a large city audience for country music, that is not at all a problem. Indeed, it demonstrates how the genre can adapt to all kinds of material - it does not require open plains and endless sky (although they're nice to have) - and perhaps even how it allows all sorts of stories to be told in a way they couldn't within other genres.

This album is a very strong start for a young artist - one can only hope he continues to write and play for many years to come, and that there will soon be another album of this calibre.

James Thomson by James Thomson is out now from Laughing Outlaw Records.

Interview: Jake Jackson

Jake Jackson has newly emerged onto the Australian country music scene with the single 'Hired Hand' and an album due for release in January 2013. But while he may be new to country audiences, he's a richly accomplished musician with a great story, as I found out when I spoke to him recently.

I'm going to start off by asking you what is the story behind the song ‘Hired Hand’?

The story behind ‘Hired Hand’ was a really simple little story. It was basically I got to the age of about 15 and the family had a pretty tough time. We'd come back from England without any money and been living in a boarding house; my brother and I and my mum. I figured it was time to leave and take some pressure off her and do something else and try and make a way for myself. So I left home very early, at 15, and headed out on the road and worked on farms and made a life for myself for that part of my life. I never went back, of course, but I did basically just create my own life and had a fantastic time in the process. That time is about exactly that moment, heading out and going up to -- I think the first place I worked at was this place up in Lake Bolac, which is in the western district of Victoria. Worked out on a farm there for a good, I don't know, eight, nine months and had a ball. I guess I found out who I was and worked out how it was going to go forward from there.

It's a really extraordinary thing to make a decision at such a young age to do that. Did you feel that you were older than your years? That you'd kind of experienced enough by then that it was a fairly natural decision in that you felt old enough to make it?

Look, I must say looking at kids now at 15, I think to myself how on earth did I do that? But now, looking back, I had at the age of nine gone to the UK. My mother was English, my father had died and we ended up going back there to see her family and then lived in London for four years. Went to school in London and out of London and experienced a lot. Did a lot of travelling -- well, not travelling but holidays with her in Europe at the time and we went to Spain and France and all that sort of stuff until, of course, the money ran out. We had a stroke of bad luck there. I guess I had a certain level of experience at that point in my life that made me feel that I was capable of doing that. I think the difference, too, is going into the country at that age and probably still now; it was a reasonably safe place to go. I think if it was the other way around, if I was in the country going into the city, I think if I was my parents I'd be concerned. But when it's the other way around, if you're going into the country people in the country are so accommodating and so friendly that it didn't really matter.

Given that you were a hired hand, does that mean you were just doing whatever was available? You just turned up and said what have you got?

Jackarooing, you know? Fixing fences, I did some shearing, I did everything -- all the farm jobs. All the farm jobs that the farmers usually end up not wanting to do, so I did a lot of that sort of stuff and it was fabulous. There were a lot of great times there and a lot of physical work. I'd always been very mechanically clever, I guess is the right word, and I could fix anything and had a go at everything. So I had a lot of fun. I was a fit fella and it was just a lot of fun. It was pretty easy for me to slot in there and assimilate and adapt to that lifestyle. It was a pretty easy transition. I know this sounds odd, coming from London and then Melbourne and then out bush. I'd always been into horses; I'd always done a lot of riding. As a kid, I'd ridden horses a lot and so getting out in the country and doing all that sort of stuff is not a big transition in some ways.

And you've never been tempted to have a property of your own?

Oh, many times. I'd love to have a little place, but farming now is a pretty serious business. I don't think anybody is going into farming now with a romantic vision. I think it's a very serious business with lots and lots of money involved. So at the moment I think it might be a bit complicated for me [laughs].

[Laughs] Well, I think it's complicated for everyone by the sound of it. But I was reading something about the song -- I think you first wrote it several years ago. Possibly even around the time you were working as a hired hand, is that correct?

I think I wrote that song when I was in my teens and it existed as a song that was in my head and lived there and I sang it a lot of times and never bothered recording it. Everybody always said what a great song, you've got to get that down and do something with it. It wasn't until now that I've really done that. I guess I always felt the song was missing something and the producer I was working with last year, Robyn Payne, and I sat down and looked at the song very carefully. She came up with something that changed the character of the song a little bit. Basically gave it another lift mid-song and away it went. It seemed to make the song come to life. Previous to that, it was always a good song and hopefully now it's an even better song [laughs]. But I definitely had that in my repertoire for a very long time.

It's a great song and a very solidly constructed song. I think the amount of care you've put into it shows. But not in a forced way -- it's not an overproduced song as sometimes country music songs from other countries, in particular, can sound overproduced. I'm curious that you wrote it in your teens because you weren't a musician in your teens. You were working doing other things but clearly there was a spark in you that wanted to write songs and ultimately to play music. So had you learnt music as a child?

I've always been involved in music. There's always been music in the family and we were a family that would always sing songs. Part of my life at that early age was definitely singing and playing and mucking around. It was never very serious and it was always very low key. We never thought much of it. Then I guess when I came back from the country the first time to Melbourne, the first thing I did was buy another guitar -- my first electric guitar -- and sort of got stuck into it. I was really writing a lot through that time. So, very simple songs but the beautiful thing about that song is that it is so simple and anybody that's just started on the guitar, or has been playing guitar for a couple of months, should be able to pick it up. It's only two or three chords and the melody is not hard to sing. It's an anthemic sort of thing that you can pick up pretty easily and I think that's such an essential part of any song, really. If you're starting to get too esoteric and too complicated you're losing the whole idea of what songs are about. They really should be songs that can communicate feelings and a simple song like that -- just to hear somebody sing. I've heard other people sing the song, and I've played with people that have helped me sing it, and it's always nice to hear it because it's such a simple little tune. But it's a lovely tune.

You said songs can communicate feelings and when I'm talking about country music or trying to persuade other people to listen to country music, I tend to say it's a storytelling genre. Much more, I think, than any other genre that we have in contemporary music in Australia. It’s the genre that tells Australian stories.  Rock and pop don't tend to. But I can hear that in your music as well. You're telling stories.

I think rock and pop tend to get stuck a little bit on very simple, simple concepts. Country music -- it generally spans on concepts and opens up, sometimes, long stories about people's lives. And that's what it is, it is storytelling and it's our folk music. If you go to Europe and listen to folk music in any country, you'll find that the songs are about stories about the place. Australian country music is our folk music. Good Australian country songs have got stories about Australian country life and about Australian life in general, not just the country, the city too.

One thing I find really interesting about your story is that you went to the Conservatorium of Music and you were classically trained and you gravitated towards country music. So I was wondering if you could talk a bit about that. I think if you love music, you love pretty much all types of music, but it does seem an interesting trajectory to go from such classical training into a genre that a lot of people would think is very distant from classical training.

I think it's like those people that go off on those boat cruises. They cruise all around the world and they see all the different colours of the planet and they see what other people are doing and they get a feel for lots of different things. They end up coming back and probably loving where they came from more. I think it's an interesting simile but it's true. I played a lot of classical music and enjoyed it and enjoyed the exercise and enjoyed the work and loved the dedication. It was a fabulous thing to be doing in my late teens, to be at the Conservatorium and enjoying the whole musical experience. It took me onto some really interesting musical journeys. When the album comes out in January next year, you'll hear some of those emphases. I went and spent some time in Spain playing flamenco music and all these sorts of things and they all add up and they all go into the pot. So when it comes to playing, it affects how you play and how you think. But like you say, after all that music and after all that education, I guess to be -- and I don't want to use the words ‘coming back’ to country music because it's not right. I've ended up where my heart is and it's a lovely genre to work in. Especially as a singer, you know? As a guitar player, if I just purely focused on the instrument; a lot of people, they seem to spend a lot of time getting very intellectual about guitar playing. But as a singer, to sing country songs and tell stories and to write stories is really, to me, the joy of it all, absolutely.

So do you find that with your singing voice, it feels like your natural singing voice? I guess when singers sing in different genres, they have to adapt sometimes. But is this where you feel your voice belongs?

It’s funny that you say that, because there was a time there when I was trying to push my voice in all sorts of directions and I think I went through a period of about -- I think it was about the same time I went to Spain, I decided I wasn't going to sing like that any more. When I came back, I was just going to start from the ground up again and just singing with my natural voice and not bother with any more than that, and never try and sing out of my range too much, and always basically be comfortable. Because the reality is you can't get the emotion into your voice if you're trying to sing things that you're voice isn't capable of doing or isn't designed to do. And everybody's voice is so different. So for me, I started -- well, I haven't started -- I've taken the voice to a degree where I'm only going to sing things that I'm going to be comfortable singing now, in my own natural singing voice. You're absolutely right that you've heard that because it is exactly what I'm doing nowadays. I'm not trying to do anything too technical with my voice. I'm just trying to sing the words and make them mean something.

For musicians working in the country music genre, I think the audience and performer interplay is really interesting and supportive, in that you're allowed to be vulnerable as a country performer. You are allowed to sing what you feel and the audience will support that. And I think part of the reason is that the audience -- no-one who goes to a country music show is trying to be cool. They're not trying to impress anyone. They're there because they genuinely love the music and Tamworth is like that on steroids really. But I guess as a musician, it must be really satisfying to know that you're appearing before an audience that is completely open and they're there to receive you.

Hundred percent. I've played all those rock venues and I've played all those sorts of venues. I've played jazz and I've played all sorts of music and I can tell you, it can be daunting at times because you know that everybody's there -- as you say, trying to be cool and trying to make an impression on everybody else -- and they're not really there for the right reasons in some ways. But country music audiences are fantastic. They love to hear it, they love to listen to it and they're very generous with their appreciation too. They go beyond - they're a listening audience as opposed to a beer-drinking audience -- of course, they can be beer audiences too -- but as opposed to an audience that there for a whole lot of other reasons apart from the music. As a musician, as a singer, as an entertainer, there's nothing nicer than to be working to a room where people are interested in what you're saying and what you're doing and what you're singing and what you're playing. As opposed to just standing around looking cool [laughs].

[Laughs] You don't get a lot of band T-shirts in a country music audience.

No, no, no it's probably uncool. It's funny, every genre has uncool things to do and country music band T-shirts are not the go. That's right. But, hey, it's a great genre to work with and the musicians too, there's a real family-orientated feel about it. I played some jazz music for a while and I used to play standards and sing, and it was a very loaded environment where people were very much into how you stand technically and where you sit with your taste, and you've got to like this guy and you've got to like that. And if you don't like Charlie Parker, you don't know what you're talking about sort of thing.  Whereas country music audiences and country music lovers are really just interested in the songs. They're really just interested in the things in the songs and also the other great thing about them, too, is they are prepared to judge. They're prepared to say yes, I like that, and that is a really good thing, because you'll find in a lot of audiences or a lot of genres where the music is so similar and so stereotypical that nobody's prepared to like anything new because it doesn't have a big brand attached to it or something like that.

It's an audience that's super supportive of new artists, regardless of age or sex, actually. You can be an 18-year-old young woman starting out and you'll have 70 year olds sitting there saying, ‘Good on ya, love.’ And turning up for the gig.

Australia's full of that.  Pretty much.

And also it's an educated audience, in that a lot of country music people know the history of the genre. They know about Hank Williams and Lefty Frizzell and they can talk you through any number of things. But they will embrace new artists. If a reference is there, they'll hear it. So do you have any references in your own music. If there's any historical country music that you really like or that you refer to in your songwriting?

I can tell you a story that'll make you smile. When I was at the Conservatorium, I was teaching in the evening, teaching guitar because I was getting pretty good at the instrument and so I was able to make a few dollars teaching. And I ended up teaching a blind guy. I went around to his place. He'd called me up. I went around to his place and there were a lot of funny stories associated with his story. And he's an amazing guy. He just lost his sight, very unfortunately, a lovely fella and he decided he was going to learn to play guitar. He was totally into Hank Williams and so we spent a lot of time learning Hank Williams songs and me teaching him those. Teaching him the words and teaching him the guitar parts and was fantastic fun. The first time I went there, there wasn't a light operating in the place and it was a stark reminder of what blind people have to deal with. Of course, he never changed the globes because they were of no use to him [laughs].  So second time I came back, I brought two or three globes with me and put some globes into his lights and then I could see what I was doing as well. He didn't need them of course, he had the other sense. But, look, my influences go back a long way and of course, people like Hank Williams are pretty important to me. Of course, it's all there. But I moved through that period when I was listening to guys like John Hiatt and Steve Earle and those sorts of midwest American players and really enjoyed what they were doing. I think John Hiatt played a big role in my lyric growing and my songsmithing. He's an amazing songsmith, amazing wordsmith. He was a big inspiration to me and still is, funnily enough. I still listen to that Stolen Moments album, it's pretty amazing … It's funny because I think when Dixie Chicks started coming out, everybody said to me what's that playing [laughs]. This is crazy. You've got to get onto this. And I still have those albums. I've had a couple of kids and of course, they ended up putting up with my eclectic country music taste. Occasionally I'd be listening to things that could be quite obscure and then I'd be straight into the mainstream because somebody came out with a song that just had everything. And of course, that's when I think about country music, you can dip it into the mainstream and nobody is going to say to you, ‘Oh that's uncool’, because they're all great songs. There's lots of great music around at the moment. A lot of good artists coming through too. People like Jasmine Rae and those sorts of people; they're really playing some lovely music.

Oh, there are a lot of good Victorians I found this year. Lachlan Bryan and Jed Rowe. I think there's something in the water down there with you guys [laughs].

We're working on it [laughs]. We're trying to make an impression on the country. Well, it's so cold down here; we've got sit around and write songs. There's all there is to do [laughs].

We're always hearing about how good Melbourne is for the arts. But it does seem to be the case with country music.

Oh, look, there's no doubt about it. Melbourne has got a really nice live music feel about it. But I think Sydney is the same, if you know where to go. I think you can find -- but I think it may just be a little bit more obvious here, that's all.

Smaller and more parochial, Jake, that's the way we think of it [laughs].

Absolutely [laughs].

You've obviously been doing a lot of different things but you arrived at this point of your life where you're going to put out a country music album. So how did you come to the decision of doing it now?

Oh, it’s straightforward -- did my job with the kids. Kids have left home. Personally, I love them to bits, they're fantastic kids. I lost my father early so I was determined to do a job for them. I tried to give them all the things that I missed out on and I was determined that they didn't leave home at 15 [laughs]. And of course they didn't. So in some ways -- well, I'm really proud of them and really pleased with how it all turned out. It's a bit of my time now. I struggled to keep playing music all those years, bringing up the kids. I went into all sorts of bits and pieces with my music. I was producing and playing and gigging but never really putting my heart and soul into it. I just couldn’t with the children, but now I'm free of that. I can certainly put a lot more time into it.  You know what they say about difference between a musician and a pizza: a pizza can feed a family of five and a musician can't [laughs].

[Laughs] I've never heard that.

It's a good one, isn't it? I often think about it [laughs]. But now I'm free of the kids, I'm able to focus back on the music. And I'm really enjoying it. It's great. I've rekindled a lot of friendships that I had years and years ago and some of those people have gone on and reached amazing heights in their musicality. Others have stopped playing and come back to playing. A couple of guys that I haven't played with for a few years that I jam with now and again. Every couple of weeks. They both stopped playing and now that I'm back into it, they've sort of jumped back in a bit too. So it's a nice journey to be back and doing it as ferociously as I'm doing at the moment. And I did the album and I came away from the album thinking I really like this album. I know that sounds odd, and I probably shouldn't say these things about my own things, but I really am proud of it and I'm really, really enjoying it, and what's nice about it is I play it for people and they enjoy it too. And that is a wonderful feeling; it's a wonderful thing to be doing.

There actually wouldn't be too many artists who can say that the album has happened at the right pace, at the right time of their lives. It's really unusual for someone to put their artistic ambitions on hold or artistic dreams on hold, to raise a family. I think the cultural imperative is to get out there and do it as young as possible and as quickly as possible. But, of course, then you're vulnerable to doing things when you're not ready. But you've had time to let it marinate, so to speak. And to put it in the oven when you wanted to [laughs].

 [Laughs] Yeah.

And obviously that's what you're feeling, that it's the right time.

Oh definitely. The nice thing about doing it a little bit later in life is that you don't have the same inhibitions that you do when you're younger. I remember I played hundreds and hundreds of gigs when I was younger and I never thought I was a good enough guitar player. I never thought I was a good enough singer. I was always trying to get better and I was always working on it hard. And, of course, you always do try and get better, but there comes a certain point in your life where you think to yourself well, that's what I am and that's what I've got and this is how I play and this is how I sing and I'm just going to work with that and work with what I've got rather than the continual push to try and make it happen in some sort of a way. The other nice thing too is that now I am doing it at my own pace. I'm not under any pressure. I'm not going crazy to get signed by some major record label or anything like that. I'm an independent artist and I'm basically just cruising along and doing it at my own rate. That's the only way you can really be creative. If somebody says, ‘Sit down here and write a song in the next half an hour’, it's pretty hard to do, but if you've got the time and you take your time, things just seem to happen anyway. So it's all good.

Your album's coming out early next year but will you be touring ahead of that? One would imagine you're touring around the time it's released as well.

We'll definitely be touring around the time it's released and hopefully we can get to as many ports in as many storms as we can [laughs]. I will be taking a band on the road -- I do a three-piece set-up with a singer and a fiddle player and just myself on guitar. That's pretty nice too. So we may be doing a combination of ‘band gigs’ and three-piece gigs. So we'll see how that rolls out, but that's what I'm very much looking forward to getting the album out there on the road. It'll be good fun.

As an independent artist, I guess, it's great to have control over your own music but the flipside is you've got to organise everything yourself. So is it somewhat daunting to think, ‘I've got to organise a tour or I'll find someone to organise a tour for me’?

It’s massive, it's absolutely massive. I can't deny it. I used to think it was just going to be a simple thing. Just putting together an album and away you go -- the rest of it will all fall into place. Well, I can tell you it's a big job and I tell you what, the stuff that I've been doing lately that I find to be an amazing job is putting those videos together. The videos for the songs are just a huge job and I guess I totally underestimated the work of the videographer. I have been very, very busy for the last six weeks now -- five weeks putting together a couple of videos. One of them is up on YouTube for this song [‘Hired Hand’] now. It's a lot of fun. We had a lot of fun filming it and we had a lot of fun producing it. That's a hard process. It's nearly as hard [laughs] as writing the music, dare I say it. In some ways it's harder because it's not my field of expertise. Music almost seems simple compared to the movies.

I almost would have thought that we could do away with videos these days. But they're obviously still very useful because people are making them.

Oh look, people will have to. People have to put a name to a face and a face to a name. They need to see it on the screen and I think it helps tremendously in terms of relating the songs. The video we did, it's a nice video and it's cool. There's a little bit of humour in there and it's not too serious and we're just having fun. You get to see the players and you get to see where we filmed it out in the country in Taggerty up in the north of the Divide here. It's good stuff. It's important, I think. If it helps people to relate to the songs and the next single which comes out in about another six or seven weeks, we're working on that video at the moment. 

And when you head out on the road, are you one of these writers who tends to collect stories from various places? Like you'll keep an ear out for what's going on and jot down a few ideas as you go? So if you're on the road, will it be partly a story-collecting exercise?

My car has two books, two old books in it that I just keep writing words in. I'm writing stories down, reference points. I leave two books in there because if I take one out and lose it or I put it somewhere else, I leave it in the rehearsal room or something, then I've always got the other one to jot it down. I've always got a jotting book next to me. I learnt that from a guy called Mike Rudd years and years ago. When I was a kid, I played around with a band working. He wrote a song called ‘Someday I'll Have Money, I'll be Gone’ it's called, I think. It was a great song, a huge song, huge international success. He taught me that. He said you always grab a little pad with you and write down words as they come. So yeah, definitely, as we're on the road, we'll be looking for -- not necessarily looking for experiences. We'll be noting experiences. There you go.

 [Laughs] Well, I guess again the genre feeds into itself that way. To be a country music artist necessitates going out to remote places often or just going to regional centres and you do tend to see a lot more stories or hear a lot more stories that way.

Oh look, no question about it. You roll up in a new town; you have a lot of experiences. I was doing a radio interview the other day and it was up in Tenterfield -- actually it was a day of radio interviews and I remember almost every town I'd been in, there was a story I could tell. Tenterfield, I came off a motorbike at 2 o'clock in the morning one night and spent the whole night in a ditch. I could've written a song about that but I don't know if I did [laughs].

You could still write a song about that.

I still could, yeah. I still could. The New England Highway in the middle of the night.

I hope it wasn’t winter.

It was okay; I survived it [laughs].

 [Laughs] That's good. Will you be heading for Tamworth?

Look, that's the plan at the moment. Things are happening very quickly for this, for me and this song at the moment. We're getting an extremely positive response to everything so I guess we've got to be at Tamworth in some way, shape or form. I'm not sure quite how we're going to get that sorted but I know we will and yeah, we'll be there somewhere.  So it'll be good fun.

Visit www.jakejackson.com.au to listen to 'Hired Hand'.

ARIA nominations announced

The nominations for the 2012 ARIA (Australian Recording Industry Association) Awards have been announced. Naturally, I'm just going to give you the country music category with links to reviews on this site, if they exist:

Beccy Cole – Songs and Pictures
Catherine Britt – Always Never Enough
McAlister Kemp – Country Proud
The McClymonts – Two Worlds Collide
Troy Cassar-Daley – Home


Warren H Williams has been shortlisted for the World Music category for his release Winanjjara: The Song Peoples Sessions and Mia Dyson's The Moment appears in the Blues & Roots category.

For the full list of nominees visit www.ariaawards.com.au.

Songwriters in the Round - Rooty Hill RSL

Luke O'Shea is to host three sessions of Songwriters in the Round at Rooty Hill RSL (admittedly, this is only useful information if you live in Sydney, but Rooty Hill RSL runs the Total Country website so non-Sydney folks may be interested in that).

The free shows will happen in the Club Lounge at 8 p.m. on 18 October, 8 November and 22 November. Each week three different songwriters will perform their songs in acoustic mode and talk about the stories behind the songs. The first week features Kevin Bennett (from The Flood) and Drew McAlister (of McAlister Kemp) along with Luke O'Shea.

For more information please visit the Rooty Hill RSL Total Country website.

Interview: Tania Kernaghan

Tania Kernaghan probably needs no introduction - she's released six studio albums and won quite a few Golden Guitars, and her career in country music has been going enough to prompt the release of a Greatest Hits CD and DVD. It was a real pleasure to talk to Tania on the occasion of the CD/DVD release and to find out a bit about her life, her creative process and the causes that are close to her heart.

            

What was the first song you wrote?

'I'll Be Gone'. Keith Urban played guitar and backing vocals on that particular track, and that was back in 1993, I think, when I wrote the song.  That was a pretty ground-breaking career move, I guess, for me.  I never realised at the time that the song would go on to be such a great success.

So did you and Fiona [Kernaghan, Tania's sister and songwriting partner] think you'd ever like to do something together, or it just kind of happened?

Yeah, it just kind of happened. We pretty much realised that we had to start writing our own songs if we wanted to make our own mark in the music industry, and move away from singing cover songs. So we just started putting pen to paper and writing together, and that's three decades ago now [laughs] that we started writing together and Fiona has been very instrumental in a lot of the songs that I've recorded and released over the years.

So, when you said you were doing cover songs, were you mainly doing country covers, or were you doing a whole lot of things?

No, definitely country covers. It's pretty much all I've ever done, in fact. I can't really sing any other styles very much. I think I'm just so country through and through [laughs].

That's probably a good opportunity then to ask you about your influences. Have they been the same the whole way through, because you sing – or you write –what I would call a traditional country style?

Very much so and I grew up with people with Patsy Cline, and Patty Loveless, Randy Travis, a lot of those early '80s, early '90s kind of artists … When I was a kid I listened to ABBA and stuff like that. I guess those songs were always pretty much at the forefront of when I was about a seven or eight year old singing. But, definitely, the more traditional style of country music, and then I guess these days with the different instrumentation that you use and your backing tracks you can give it more of a 2012 sound, as opposed to stripping it right back. It all comes back to, really, the lyrics of the song. You can dress it up with different instruments and all the rest but the lyrics are the most important thing.

You are a storytelling songwriter and country music is a really great storytelling genre – in fact, probably the great storytelling genre. Are you conscious of telling stories when you write songs?

I just write from real life experiences, mostly, and I find that if I go out there and live it and see it and experience it, that it always makes for a better song. Or if I meet somebody and they've got a particular story to tell me, something that happened in their life that I find very touching or moving, then usually I'll put pen to paper. So, I guess, that's probably why the songs that turn out to be more like a story. But the thing with country music is it's music that people can relate to, everyday kind of working man music, and I think that's why it's so popular.

So when you're talking to people and you might get story ideas, are you in the habit of keeping a notebook, or do you tend to store it in your head and then sit down later on and write?

No, no you should see my iPhone – it's just got pages and pages of song ideas [laughs].

What did you before an iPhone?

It used to be a notebook that I used to carry around with me, but now it's instant on the phone. And then when I go to write an album's worth of material I find that I pretty much have to submerge myself in it. So I can't really be doing other things and then also writing the song. I find that I need to pretty much go away for a couple of weeks and just think song, think lyrics, think ideas and think music, and that's the best way for me to really finish off those songs. But, yeah, a lot the ideas just come from people that I meet in everyday life.

It sounds like when you're writing, it's almost like there's a really intense creative period where you get a lot done. And, I suppose, given the life you have, where you're touring a lot and you're doing a lot of other things, you need to section off that time really?

Absolutely, and that's what you really need to do. You might put a bit of ideas down to songs, but when it really comes to the crunch you've got to just totally forget about office work, paying bills, grocery shopping, all of those mundane kind of things that everybody has to do, and you just have to section yourself off and just go away for a while. And I find if I head out west or head up into the high country and just set myself up there for a few weeks, that's the best place for me to go to start writing, get serious about writing songs.

I read in your bio that you like to get in the car and go out into the countryside, and you've just said that you like to write in the high country, so it sounds like for you the land is a really powerful force or a powerful motivator for what you're doing?

Definitely. I find that I have to get right out of the city and just really get into that landscape of – I think it helps you keep in touch with the songs that you're writing, the people that you're writing for. And just to be surrounded by the wide open spaces, or perhaps it's up in the hills, definitely helps you – it nourishes your soul when you're putting songs down on paper.

And do you find when you go to country towns that you're recognised quite a bit?

Yeah, country towns, particularly, people will take a double look, but I'm very happy to talk to people and I think that I'm probably very approachable and just in my personality its normally who I am. So, yeah, I'm happy to have a chat with the people. In fact, I was down in Hughenden in out western Queensland way a few weeks ago, and just in a little coffee shop out there, and had quite a few people come up to me and want to have a chat. So I was more than happy to do that.

It sounds like you're really aware of how you're singing to an audience and that the audience feeds back to you in a way that you're telling their stories and they're also reflecting back to you whether that works or not.  And that seems like it's a really fulfilling way for you to work.

It definitely is. It's a great gauge to know how your songs are being translated out there and getting back to just that the lyrics being so important. I think that some of the best ways to roadtest songs is to be amongst some friends around the campfire and roadtest songs just with a guitar and you can soon see if it's connecting with people and on that right level. Yes, it's pretty important that I get the audience feedback because you put so much into these songs and your albums that you want to make sure they have some longevity.

I don't think we can dispute that you have longevity given that this is a three-decade-spanning album or thereabouts!

Pretty much so, and I'm very happy due to the fact that not only is it to our twenty years of recording songs – the greatest hits also embraces a two-hour DVD and that tells the story of my life, and my touring and lots of music video clips and how I got into the music business and a whole swag of things. So it's really something that I'm very proud of, this particular package.

I was reading that it seems like your Facebook fans have a bit of influence in the song choice. Did it feel like of a strange way to choose the list?

It's incredible the way social media works these days, but I had my favourite songs that I wanted to include on the greatest hits, and I put a call out there to everybody on Facebook and said, 'This is what I'm doing. What are some of your favourite songs that you'd like see included on the track listing?' It just came in thick and fast. 'Boys in Boots', 'Nine Mile Run', 'Cowboy Up' – you name it. So it was the ones that really proved the most popular that got the final say on the album.

Was your own list quite different then to what ended up being on the album?

No, there was a couple of songs that I wouldn't have thought would have made it there, that had been so popular, but it was a pretty much I reckon 75 to 80 per cent there, it was pretty much what I felt in my heart that were the right songs.

When you're out on the road performing – even though you look like you must have started singing at the age of two to cover three decades' worth of performing – does it feel like performing is almost a different job to songwriting, so it's like different version of Tania that has to go on the road to the one who is sitting there writing songs?

I think what you see is what you get with me, I'm pretty much the same as I am at home as I am on stage. But I love singing on stage, I feel like … You've heard people talk about being in dharma? Well, when I'm on stage I feel like I'm in dharma. I just really love that connection with people and the audience, I love singing, I love entertaining. I love making people happy, and I just really find that's so much easier to do when you're on stage. And I was four years old when I first got up on stage and sang, and I got a few claps and loved it, so I thought I better learn some new songs. I never, ever doubted in my mind that I wouldn't be an entertainer or a singer. I never had another choice – you know, like a lot of kids would say, well yeah, if that doesn't work out I'll go and do this. But I never had that. I just always wanted to sing.

You mentioned dharma, which raises the idea of music as a spiritual practice and creative work as a spiritual practice – it seems like from a really young age you did know yourself and your own mind well enough, almost identifying that it was a spiritual practice even then.

Yeah, maybe so, because it is an incredible feeling when you're singing, and I've never really thought of it but I like that. But I guess that singing and music can be so very much a healing thing as well, and I feel the same when I'm on a horse – when I go riding it's just such a great feeling and it's so hard to explain to people that don't know what it's like, or have never ridden a horse before. The same kind feeling, it's just like you know you're supposed to be there, and with the music that's exactly how I feel. I know that I'm doing the right thing. And when I'm a bit removed from it, and I haven't had the opportunity to go out on the road and tour or sing for some reason or other, it's truly like you're being stifled.

So what you're talking about is the practice of being present, which is something that most people strive to achieve but don't actually achieve. And I think some musicians get it – not all of them, because I think a lot people when they're performing are worrying about various things – but it sounds like you've really cracked that ability to be present in those two things, horseriding and performing?

I think so, and, yeah, you're very much on the money with being present. And I do feel sorry for people who are working at a job that they aren't getting any sort of gratification from, and they just feel like it's a struggle. I just think we're not put on this earth to do that; we're supposed to be doing stuff that we love, and life shouldn't be a struggle – it should be a pleasure and an enjoyment. Sometimes you've got to make some dramatic changes to really get yourself in the right zone, but I think don't waste a minute with what you're doing. If you're not happy doing what you're doing, change and do something else because just because our parents taught us to do a particular job or expect something of us, it doesn't mean that's what we've been put on this earth for.

I think you've identified that to do with work but also your service is obviously a part of your life, because you are a patron of two different charities, so I was just wondering if you could say a bit about Angel Flight and also about Riding for the Disabled, and how you became involved and what they mean to you?

Riding for Disabled, I got involved with them in about 2000 when I'd released a song called 'When I Ride', and there was a young girl who was a rider at the Riding for Disabled Centre in Raymond Terrace (NSW). She contacted me and she said to me, 'The lyrics in your song are' – and she quoted a few of them, and she said, 'I close my eyes and I'm on the wind.  I can fly when I ride.' She said, 'That's exactly how I feel when I'm riding my horse at the RDA centre.' And it was through her and then a phone call from the head office of RDA asking me to be their patron, which I was just absolutely stoked about because I'm passionate about horses and I think that what Riding for Disabled provide that terrific service to so many people, it's just fabulous. That's kind of how I got involved with RDA. And then similarly to Angel Flights, I think I got involved with an outback fundraising event through western Queensland about four years ago, raising money for Angel Flights. Angel Flights look after non-medical emergency cases for people who are in remote and rural regions who need to be taken to medical centres for treatment. And there's a whole swag of pilots and earth angels, as we call them, people on the ground that look after these patients and it's all a free voluntary organisation. So it's so important to people in remote areas of Australia which I'm very passionate about as well.

It sounds like you have a really rich and varied and very satisfying life, which is amazing. I think that's what most people aspire to have and perhaps don't ever get to, but it just seems like you've got all these things sorted out, and it's really lovely to hear.

Well, I've got a lot of fingers in a lot of pies, it seems, but there's never any time just to sit on my heels and say, 'Oh, I don't know what to do, I'm bored'. There's so many things to experience, and I always say life's like a big smorgasbord, there's just so many things to try and experience and to taste – and start with Australia, because I believe we've got one of the best countries in the world here. We should always make sure that we look after it and look after its people. 

Just before I wrap up – you're going to head out on the road obviously for this?

Yeah, we'll be on tour with the greatest hits, and so this year and then also into next year as well, so there's plenty of gigs and shows and things to be done in the next twelve months or so.

Tania Kernaghan's Greatest Hits is out now.

taniakernaghan.com.au 

Album review: The Moment by Mia Dyson

Mia Dyson has a habit of producing very good albums, starting with her debut, Cold Water (2003), and most remarkably on the 2005 release Parking Lots. Then she dropped off the radar a bit (well, my radar), moving to the United States of America and trying to make a go of it there. Out of that time has come her new album, The Moment, which is a further example of the form she showed on Parking Lots.

True, she’s not a ‘country music artist’ but country is a broad church – in Australia, anyway – and I know from experience that Tamworth audiences will welcome anyone with a brace of stories and a guitar, regardless of genre. And anyone who has seen Dyson live knows she’s a great guitarist, as well as a singer whose voice seems to come from the mists of hard love and many lifetimes. That voice has a certain growl and rasp that isn’t often found in a female voice, but it doesn’t sound like it’s come from any kind of hard livin’ (as one might suspect in a man singing with a similar tone): it’s just her, and it gives her a distinctive sound.

Dyson also knows how to write songs that suit her voice, and her guitar, across a range of styles and stories. She can command, as in ‘When the Moment Comes’, and she can seduce (‘Tell Me’). Overall, though, this is not an album about hearts and flowers. There is darkness ('Dancing on the Edge') and pain ('Jesse'), and the acknowledgement that life is, in part, about what we fight for and what we lose ('Cigarettes', 'The Outskirts of Town' and, appropriately, 'To Fight is to Lose'). Dyson gives us unadorned emotions and tells us stories straight. This is a road album from someone who seems to now be trying to stand still – if only to tell us what she knows.

So while it’s not ‘country music’ there is a lot on this album for country music aficionados to love. Where Dyson fits most clearly into the country canon is in her seeming desire to tell stories of lives, loves, thoughts and memories, and to deliver them to her audience in as direct a fashion as possible. She seems like a rock ’n’ roll troubadour whose path could take her just about anywhere – and she always makes the journey interesting.

The Moment is out now through Co-op/MGM.
miadyson.com

Album review: Wiley Ways by Hat Fitz and Cara

'Eliza Blue' is the second track on the new album by Hat Fitz and Cara, but it sets the tone for the whole work: the call and response of Cara's rich voice and Hat Fitz's swampy, soulful cry weaved around a story and sounding like it's blasting straight out of a place caught between old time and new.

Wiley Ways grabs the listener by the ears, throat and heart and doesn't let go. It is the howl of the ancestors - musical and otherwise - and also the intriguing play (and sometimes push-and-pull) of two voices that complement each other beautifully, and two songwriters who understand each other very well but still find each other mysterious.

Hat Fitz and Cara go to the bedrock of story and song and dig up a few layers on the way down; they don't so much rebuild as reconstruct them on their way back up to the surface of the earth. Sometimes it sounds like we're pulling back the curtain on the late nineteenth century, seeing performers sitting around a campfire with whatever instruments they have to hand, deploying songs for their original purpose: to tell stories. One hesitates to say that there's 'the call of the wild' on this album, as that implies that it's not an accomplished piece of work - which it is - but it feels untamed and passionate, and in being so is a reminder that much of modern music is controlled, whether by the production process or because someone thinks the audience prefers that. Perhaps they do - a lot of us like our culture safe and unchanging (how else can we explain so many reality television shows that seek to 'find' singers, in a fairly unvaried format?). This is not a safe album. This is the blues, and it's country, and it feels like authentic Australian music - what, indeed, would have been played by long-ago folks when there was no one around to record what they were doing.

There is not much I can compare this album to, for the purposes of reviewing it. Hat Fitz and Cara are a husband-and-wife pair, like Kasey Chambers and Shane Nicholson; like Kasey and Shane they have an extensive knowledge of and curiosity about music. But that's as far as the comparisons go, because they produce completely different songs. There are muddy, swampy, rootsy outfits around but usually they don't have women in them - and this album is unthinkable without Cara on it. So I'm left with the conclusion that Hat Fitz and Cara are unique - and that's just one of the reasons to seek out this album. One of the others is that it will take the top of your head off, in the best possible way.

Wiley Ways by Hat Fitz and Cara is released on 1 October. 
www.hatfitz.net