Shane Nicholson on the Road to AmericanaFest

I consider it to be a catch-all phrase, like a big umbrella term that covers so many different forms of country music – but not just country music. Roots music, folk music, bits of rock ’n’ roll. It’s this kind of weird melting pot of stuff. It’s been around for a very long time but it’s obviously becoming a bit more known as a genre, I guess, and that catchphrase, that term. Which is a bit weird for us in Australia because it makes us think of the music as being American. But it’s not so much – we used to call it ‘alternative country’ but alternative country really to me is a subgenre of Americana. It’s kind of what these people who are fringe dwellers on the country scene are doing – they’re using a bit of rock and old blues and folk and all these different kind of influences in their music. But I certainly don’t see that there’s anything new. Neil Young was doing it in the ’70s, so it’s been around for a long time.

There’s a real burgeoning alt-country scene in Australia which has always been bubbling along underneath but now that it’s been recognised at the Golden Guitar awards with its own category, the introduction of Lost Highway – the label that I’m working with, which is pretty much a boutique label whose whole mission statement is to try to recreate the feel of what the American Lost Highway label did, which was really hugely instrumental in the careers of people like Ryan Adams and Lucinda Williams who really have pushed alternative country largely into the mainstream, certainly in American and also internationally. So I think there’s a push now – there’s a bit of a groundswell and a push for this kind of music and people are still gravitating towards it.

There’s a lot of country-folk-blues-rock music to be made in this country that hasn’t always had a home and I think that’s what’s good now: it’s getting to that point where a community is forming of people and artists who kind of know each other and get along really well and tour together, and that’s largely what this show’s all about that we’re starting, with the Road to Americanafest, which is going to become a bigger thing eventually. This is the lead-up to us going to Nashville for the Americana Festival but I want to turn it into the alt-country Americana roadshow and travel with it around the country, and show that there’s that melting pot of artists. That’s why I’ve got six people on the bill – the whole idea is that it’s seen as a community and people working together and playing, which is largely what they do in the States. All of our idols do that – they’ve all sung together and toured together and done all sorts of things where they cross-pollinate with each other, and that’s what I want to push in this country a bit more.

Totally – and it’s got this outsider feel to it for a lot of the artists and I think they enjoy that in a way. And I don’t mean outside the industry, I mean outside other industry circles, and it’s a group of people who are like-minded and love the same music. I think it’s interesting that the public, listeners, music lovers are discovering music that they love and they didn’t know what it was called, they didn’t know what alt country was or Americana music was. But it’s always been here, you know – we’ve always been listening to American music. Slim Dustry was a really great interpreter of Jimmie Rodgers. It all comes from somewhere. So we’ve been listening to American music for a long time, and if you want to put a finer point on it, it’s actually Irish music in the first place.

I really get bored of the argument or the deciding about delineating between Australian and American, because music is one of the two universal languages, the other being mathematics, and I don’t know anything about mathematics. The thing about music is that if it’s the universal language, then I don’t really care where it comes from, who plays it – it’s all there on the table and it’s all for the taking, so use anything and everything to make the music you want to make. We do have to give it names to differentiate between it, but maybe less now – there’s not really physical record stores any more where you need to go in and find the pop section or the classical section. I guess you just look up the sections on your phone now, on iTunes or whatever, so we still need categories so people know where to go to find something they want to hear. But beyond that I think labels are a bit pointless, really.

[Laughs] Well, it hasn’t presented itself to me yet.

Yeah, awesome, that sounds boring. I don’t think I can do that [laughs].

Not really. Not on such a grand scale. What I’m really doing when I’m producing is thinking about what sort of album they want to make and is that what we’re achieving. Every record essentially is about what that artist is trying to achieve and steering them down that path and around the obstacles and trying to make that come to fruition. I don’t produce everything for Lost Highway either – artists are able to use other producers. Most of my work is separate to the label, but it’s still because of that. People still come to me because there’s a certain sound they’re after or judging on records of mine that I’ve made in the past or for someone else – they become your business cards. [Those artists] come to you for a certain reason. I don’t get pop artists coming to me wanting to do a Top 40 song – nobody’s got an idea that that’s what I do because I’ve never done anything like that. So the people who come to me are generally more in my vein or the Lost Highway vein, and I think by virtue of that there is a knock-on effect producing a lot of those artists where it does become a bit of a group. Interestingly I don’t really think about it in those grand terms, I guess – it’s just about every record to me. As long they’re really great and I’m super pumped about how great they are, that’s as far as I think about it.

I guess it was a bit more pop back in those days [laughs].

No, no, and I loved doing that. There’s still large elements of those records in what I do now. The people you grow up listening to are always the people who come out in your work and you end up using all those influences as you get older. But obviously it changes over time. I find that the latest record [Hell Breaks Loose] is the first record that’s tying those earlier ones to the more recent records. It’s actually got elements of every record I’ve ever made on it. That wasn’t intentional at all but it certainly seems to have done that, from my perspective as a writer.

Cool. It just seemed to be that. It wasn’t till it was finished and I had some distance from it that it occurred to me that it references little bit of everything – It’s a Movie, Faith & Science, all that old stuff, but then kind of incorporates all the different shades of country I’ve tried in the meantime. It was a nice surprise, when I’d finished it, to realise that.

I haven’t. I’m going back in a couple of months to play a show out there with Warren Williams – a big outdoor festival show, I think in the historical precinct. And I want to feel a whole bunch of doco footage and retrace my steps from my last trip out there. It was just a trip at the time that I didn’t realise how pivotal it would be until later. It would be kind of cool to go back and retrace my steps and have a keepsake of it. Try to drag a filmmaker along with me, and play a show, which I think will be pretty special.

And they love their country music out there. Here’s a really quick story: when I was walking through Hermannsburg one day on my own, having a stroll, I heard music but it didn’t sound like a record. I thought, That sounds like a band playing. I followed the sound and walked into this corrugated shed with a dirt floor and there’s three guys jamming [with] this broken drum kit and this bass guitar with two strings, they just had the shittiest equipment but they were going for it and loving it. It was awesome. I sat there and watched them play for a little while. It was really cool.

Basically, it was more having the perspective for a little while and going away from your bubble. I wasn’t going to write. It was the one time I’d got on an aeroplane without an instrument. It was weird getting on a plane without an instrument. The plan was not to play music at all because I’d been recording so much in the studio and I was a bit all musicked out. But I guess that’s why and how it happens. On my first day there I sat down outside this church and started writing ‘Hell Breaks Loose’, ironically, steps of the church. And then I had to go and find a guitar off a local – I had to get Warren to find somebody who had a guitar so I could keep writing that week. So it’s just the way it works – nothing ever goes to plan.

That’s a good way to put it.

[Laughs] Absolutely not. If I wanted to wear a suit, I wouldn’t be a musician [laughs]. It’s just not comfortable enough for me. These days I will wear a bit snappier jacket or that kind of thing. But, you know, I’m a musician and I’m quite happy wearing my jeans forever. That’s getting dressed up for me anyway. Right now, I’m working in the studio today and I’m still in pyjamas, because that’s what I love about doing what I do: I don’t ever have to get dressed.

[Laughs] Maybe so. I don’t know that I’ll go that far. But I’ll leave the suit to Lachlan because I get too claustrophobic and can’t sing in a suit. If I was an accountant, maybe I’d wear a suit.

I did. Because this is a Victorian one, I wanted to choose some of my favourite Victorian artists who are working consistently in this world, in this genre, in Americana/alt country. And I’ve played with all of them before. I took the Weeping Willows on my Victorian Hell Breaks Loose launch tour and I’ve done some shows with Swifty as well. And obviously Lachlan over the years. It was a really nice group to put together, all being fairly local to Melbourne. Then the idea is that I’ll move it to another city at another time. I’ll do a Sydney one and have Sydney- or New South Wales-based musicians come and do it. Then one in Brisbane. That’s the whole idea: move it around eventually. This one in particular is just the three shows down there. They’re some good people who are really good to hang out with on the road, and I thought it would musically be a pretty fun night.

He’s probably cool with that.

Yes. He’s a very intelligent bloke too. And he’s been around a long time – he’s been something of an alt-country stalwart. He’s made a mark. I once presented him and The Wildes with Alt Country Album of the Year at the Golden Guitars. So they’ve kicked a lot of goals in the past. So I think it’s a pretty good line-up and it’ll be special night, really. And there will be guests and other musicians – it’ll be a bit of fun. In the future we’re going to expand it and have American barbecue food – make it a travelling road show.

I’ll be both and mostly a fan. I’ve got a few different things I have to do over there. Just one showcase but a few other performances. It’s a gathering once a year when all of my entire record collection descend on the same city for a week, so it’s impossible not to enjoy yourself. You never get to see all the shows you want to see or see all the people you want to see – and also a lot of Australian friends living in Nashville. There’s so much to do in that way. I’ve done this festival twice before and I love it, I really love it. It’s got an incredible vibe and I’ve never done a music week festival anywhere in the world that’s anything like it. It’s always exciting to be there.