From your Instagram
it looks like you had a very busy day yesterday. You went to the Gold Coast,
radio shows, Brisbane, radio shows, home.
[Laughs] Yes, fly back to Sydney, drive two hours home in
the rain to the Central Coast and
flop into bed.
Obviously it’s good
to get all that radio but it sounds like you were singing at each appearance –
is it hard to keep your voice on an even keel when you’ve got all that?
Funnily enough was in good condition yesterday –
surprisingly, because I got no sleep the night before. It was fine. I do
[warm-ups] when I’m going up in the lift and away we go. There’s not a whole
lot of practice before we go on, but that’s all right.
You’ve done a lot of
performing, so you can probably go from a standing start, but it’s a long day,
particularly when you are on the Central Coast.
Totally. But it was well worth it – a productive day. And
I’m thankful that all of my interviews today are on the phone so I can stay in
my pyjamas! [Laughs]
The Central Coast has
become a country music hub – do you find that there’s a good, supportive
community there?
Absolutely. A lot of the country artists live here and I’m
doing a couple of supports for Shane Nicholson, who lives on the coast. There’s
a lot of artists here – we haven’t been able to get out to a lot of gigs yet,
but it’s just nice knowing that you're in the right spot.
I keep thinking there
should be more venues there, so you can all play on a regular basis.
Luckily there’s this great little venue that’s just started pushing
live music, luckily two minutes from my front door, which is awesome, called
the Hardys Bay Club and I have a gig there in a couple of weeks, on the 27th
of August. They have really great artists – Shane has come through – every
weekend. Friday, Saturday, Sunday.
You grew up in
Western Australia – in the wheat belt – so how are you finding life on the east
coast. There’s different trees and light on the west coast.
It’s completely different but I am absolutely loving where
we are. We’re in Pretty Beach and it’s surrounded by the most beautiful
rainforest and water everywhere. There’s the river and on the other side of the
hill behind us there’s the ocean. So we get to still do bushwalks and hikes and
be surrounded by water. It’s so different to WA – it’s just flat, and it has
its own beauty in that. But I love it here and I get to go home every couple of
mouths and have my West Australia fix. I get to go out on the farm and have a
bonfire with the fam and look at the stars, which I do miss because the stars
are amazing in WA. And I come back here and it’s another beautiful place in
Australia and that’s one of the perks of having a job as a musician: we get to
travel a lot and see the diversity of Australia, which I love.
Growing up on a farm,
is that where your interest in country music came from?
Yes, totally. It was my brothers who got me into country
music. They went through that feral ute stage where they had the mud flaps and
the aerials. They grew out of it, bless them, but back then I thought that was
the coolest thing ever, and so I wanted to be just like my brothers. They were
listening to a lot of Australian country music at the time and so I got into
it, then I started songwriting and the first songs I wrote were really country
and they were terrible [laughs]. Luckily I got better as I got older. I’ve just
fallen into it naturally. But I never wanted to just think of myself as a
country artist – I just wanted to write songs and make music, and I guess
travelling a lot, travelling the world and listening to a lot of different
genres has really influenced my music as well.
You said your first
songs were awful – I think everyone’s first everythings are awful but a lot of
people don’t admit to it.
It’s like being an athlete – you’re not going to be a great
runner for the first track that you run but you get better with practice and
warming up and whatnot. I learnt how to write a song after many a terrible song
[laughs].
Just thinking in
terms of you conceptualising your life – being on a farm in WA, thinking, Music is what I want to do – how do you
start to make that plan? Where did you have to go next – to Perth?
I went to Perth for high school and I went to an arts
school, which was awesome. I was surrounded by kids who were all very musical –
not necessarily into country music. I studied musical theatre there and it was
a whole other genre, and I thought, Maybe
I want to be a musical theatre artist. I continued my songwriting
throughout high school and I thought, No,
I want to be a songwriter. I love that aspect of it the most. And literally
three days after I graduated high school I moved to the east coast. My mum was
devastated but I knew what I had to do – I had to be amongst it. It obviously
didn’t happen overnight – it’s been ten years since then [laughs]. It’s just
hard work. Nothing comes easy in the music industry and you have to work really
hard and put 100 per cent into it. I feel like I’ve done the best I can do in
the last ten years and I’m proud of where I am.
Hard work is also taking
opportunities when they come and being brave enough to take opportunities – I
note that you performed at a show with Keith Urban. Someone else might have
thought, I’m too scared!
Absolutely. It was very exciting and the biggest gig I’ve
ever played – there were 17 000 people in the audience at the Perth Arena. I
was nervous before I had to go on stage but as soon as my foot hit the floor as
I was walking onstage all my nerves went and I was just in the zone, absolutely
in awe of the whole experience. Standing next to Keith and singing this song
and looking at the audience, feeling the energy that the audience gives you, I
can see how it would be so addictive and such an adrenaline high for these
artists. What an amazing life they live; being able to experience that every
night is pretty cool.
I once asked someone
if it was scarier playing huge crowds or small shows and she said small shows,
because the audience is right there.
Absolutely. These radio tours that I’ve been doing, I’ve
been playing for the staff and there’s probably only about 20 people in the
room and they’re all staring and it’s broad daylight, there’s no lovely dim
lighting or anything like that. So literally it’s in your face and you’re
looking at these people, and it is very daunting and intimidating but you just
have to go into a zone. I sometimes, in my mind, pretend that I’m playing to
thousands of people and that really helps.
Now we’d better talk
about the song ‘One of These Days’. My take on it was that it was a song about
dreams and disappointed dreams, and also about being able to rely on your
mother – if not your father – when those disappointments happen. So what was
the spark for you to write that?
I’d been through a total songwriting drought and I was
desperate to write a song but nothing would come to me, and the night before I
wrote this song my mother-in-law had come over and she had brought her tarot
cards, because she knew how much I was struggling with not being able to write
a song. She said, ‘Just try these cards, see what you come up with.’ The card
that I pulled out of the deck was ‘Ask your creative goddess for inspiration
and you shall receive’. I was a bit of a sceptic but I thought, righto, I’ll
give it a go. So that night before I went to bed I was, like, Goddess of inspiration, I really need a
song. And literally the next morning, which never happens to me, I woke up,
ran to my guitar, picked up the guitar, sitting in my undies on my parents’
coach, at 25 years old, and I wrote this song, it just flooded out of me in
half an hour. I think the best songs come to you like that and so the goddess
of inspiration did a great job.
Have you asked her
for help since?
Yes, she’s been neglecting my work. I think this is the song
I really needed to inspire the rest of my album, because once I wrote this I
was so excited about recording my album because I loved this song and I wanted
it to be on it. I’m so glad that it’s a single and it’s really been a fan
favourite for a lot of people – they say it’s their favourite song on the
album, and I’m so stoked because it’s my favourite too. And I think a lot of
people, especially the younger generation – and their parents – can really
relate to this song, because the Australian dream of buying your own home in
your twenties is receding further and further. It’s a lot harder, it’s a lot
more expensive. Even renting on your own is so through the roof these days – so
Mum’s couch is looking really good [laughs].
You’re obviously
unafraid of work and unafraid of chasing your dreams, so I didn’t think it was
autobiographical in that sense.
[Laughs] I’ve had a lot of disappointments and moved home
just as many times as I’ve moved out of home. There’s a lot of knockbacks and
you have to go through this emotional turmoil every single day of What the hell am I doing with my life?
and then you think: Oh, that’s right – I
love making music. Then it sits in that area of, How do I make this my living? And you have that conversation with
yourself every single day. It’s not an easy one but it’s the passion and the
thought of, Well, what else am I going to
do? I can’t imagine doing anything else with my life and that’s what drives
me to keep doing it and keep making music. And I get a lot of beautiful fan
mail from people who tell me that they’ve listened to a lot of my music
recently because it’s helping them get through depression or a tough time in
their life, and that also really touches me and inspires me to keep going.
Music can bring a lot
of joy to people, and one of the great things about country music is how much
it can mean to fans. Even a sad song can be a reassurance, although your tone
on your album is really upbeat. I found on this song that there was a mix of
wistfulness and disappointment, but then there was that bit where you were wisecracking
– that acknowledgement that life is both up and down.
Absolutely, and I get a lot of mixed reactions to this song.
Some people think it’s hilarious and a great joke in the song, which it is, and
then yesterday I was playing the song in a radio station and this lady started
crying – she said, ‘I have a seventeen-year-old daughter and I just don’t want
her to move out of home’. It affects people in different ways and that is the
awesome thing about music – you can interpret it how you want and that’s how it
connects with you. I love that.
In terms of making
music your career, part of the trick and the challenge for modern artist is
that there’s always been that balance of performance with writing and
recording, but now with social media and promotion there’s a lot of time that
is spent not on music itself. When it comes time to write a new album, do you
specially carve out space or do you try to take little creative opportunities
when they come up?
I like to carve out space. Usually I’ll go to Nashville for
two or three months and just remove myself from my normal, day-to-day life and
write. I usually end up with thirty songs that I’ve written and heard a bunch
of awesome songs from different songwriters. I go out every single night and
listen to music and that is inspiring enough to keep writing. I usually do it
every year – this is the first year that I haven’t been to Nashville in five or
six years so it’s killing me. But I have been writing at home, which is great
and something that I don’t normally do, so I’m loving that too.
Nashville has become
a very efficient place for Australian artists to write and record.
That’s what I usually do. I went over last year for a couple
of months and wrote the rest of the album, and then Graeme, my producer, flew
over at the end of the trip and we came home with an album, which is a really
cool experience. It’s amazing, the history in those studios that you’re
standing in. I’ve recorded in the studio where Elvis had recorded and Roy
Orbison and all these amazing artists, and you’re thinking, This microphone … It is such an incredible
experience. The history behind the town is incredible.
Now to the near
future: I presume you’re heading for Tamworth.
Yes, and it’s always a highlight for the year. I love
performing at the Longyard, that’s my favourite venue. I’m hoping to get back
there next year because it’s such a great atmosphere and lots of fun. Then getting
around and jumping up with our mates and singing songs with them, and hopefully
I’ll get a guest to come and sing with us.
And anything before
then?
I’m planning a series of house concerts. The concept is to
go into people’s homes and talk about the songs and the songwriting, which we
don’t get to do at festival gigs. People can get to know me and I can get to
know my fans.
Applications for Chelsea’s house concerts are now open at:
No comments:
Post a Comment