Where are you currently based?
At the moment I’m on flight from Sydney to Melbourne, where I live. I’ve got the row to myself so it’s super spacious and it was on time so probably a 10/10 for a tiger flight.
What have you been up to in 2018?
Its actually been a pretty cool year for me. I got an album together, a band to help me play it live, been playing nice shows on the east coast and I’ve been recording/mixing/mastering a couple of bands round Melbourne and Sydney.
How would you describe your music?
I’d say it’s melancholic pop mainly if that works? Like this new album is pretty guitar driven, reverb dripping guitars and a couple of synth lines and stuff all with pretty sad, moppy lyrics.
Who or what influences your sound and songwriting?
I find myself taking a lot from my friends lives – which is probably pretty invasive of me to be honest. I’ll hear stories from them and I think it just sticks in my head and I’ll have lyrics that’ll kind of stem from that and I’ll just put it in the first person and exaggerate it.
How do you go about writing and recording music?
I do it all myself cause I’m a real penny pincher haha I usually just sit at my computer with a guitar and mess about until something okay comes up. Hopefully I’ll have a few lines in my phone notes otherwise I’ll put a melody done and spend a fair amount of time trying to get something down that doesn’t make me cringe.
Who are you listening to at the moment?
Right now I’m listening to ‘Sunshower’ by Flowertruck and it’s just hit the chorus as I’m typing this and it’s great. Totally perked me up and I’m close to landing so that’s great too – I might have to pause this for a moment and come back to it while I get off plane and deal with all that noise.
How did you first start playing music?
Alright I’m back home haha -I originally pretended to play guitar with a cricket bat and sing at my self in the mirror thinking I was a real rockstar. Very narcissistic maybe? Is that normal for a 10/12yr old to do? But anyway my mum’s boyfriend at the time gave me this beaten up old 3/4 quarter size acoustic which I played relentlessly for about 3 months so my dad bought me an entry level Epiphone Les Paul wannabe guitar and since then I’ve just been noodling and writing songs a lot.
You have an album coming out very soon! Please tell us about the songwriting process for this album?
Yea !! I’ve had it done for so long so I’m really excited to finally have it out. It was written/recorded/mixed/
Did you work with anybody else on this album?
This was probably the first album I actually had a bit of an outside opinion helping to sculpt the songs after I’d gotten them to a place where I could’ve just put them out. Fletcher, a friend of mine, had some real good suggestions in terms of just cutting away some time from intros / some little mixing things here and there. They weren’t huge things or anything but I reckon they ended up making a big difference in the overall quality of the album and how it played through.
What did you find most challenging and rewarding about the creative/songwriting/recording process?
I guess it’s a pretty honest experience and that does involve looking at yourself which can be a bit tough. But if you’re not stemming from real stuff I find that my lyrics will just make me cringe and some really juvenile.
What do you have planned for the remainder of 2018 going into 2019?
I’ll be putting this album out, heading up north to dog sit for my mum with Annie, come back to Melbourne play a launch show and hopefully have finished the next album sometime in early 2019
Favourite food and place to hangout?
I consider chocolate milk a food and at the moment that’s my favourite for when I’m driving home from work at 10pm while listening to either WTF with Marc Martin or Jen Cloher’s self titled album.
