THE CONFAB WITH MICHAEL G IN CONVERSATION WITH JACK CARTY

Jack Carty is an award-winning songwriter, musician, author, and graphic designer.  Jack developed a lifelong compulsion to create that has since seen him become one of the country’s most respected independent voices.

It is a path that has taken him around the world: touring his critically acclaimed indie-folk music across the UK, Europe, North America, and New Zealand. With a career now spanning seven studio albums and several Eps. 

Jack has collaborated and shared stages with industry icons including Josh Pyke, Dan Wilson (Semisonic), Katie Noonan, Lisa Mitchell, Sarah Blasko, Bernard Fanning, Kate Miller-Heidke, Justin Towns-Earl and The Once.

Join me on the ConFab to gain an understanding of his life journey and passions.

Transcript

SPEAKER_05 0:01

Welcome to the Confederate with Michael G on the Pebble Powered Radio 2XFM 98.3. We're streaming online and on demand on twoxfm.org.au. Tonight our guest is Jack. He's a singer, songwriter, and passionate about music. We're going to learn a little bit about his life story and passions and some of his other artistic endeavors. Welcome to the Confab with Michael G. Jack, would you like to introduce your first track, Who is the Performer? And why did you select it?

SPEAKER_00 0:38

So this is uh a case of you by Johnny Mitchell. Uh I love Johnny's voice and her songwriting. Um, my mum used to listen to this record blue a lot when I was a kid, and I just love her music, and I think this is one of the most beautiful songs ever written, which is why I chose it.

SPEAKER_02 0:53

Just before I love God lost, you said I am as constant as a northern star and I said, constantly in the darkness. Where's that at? If you want me, I'll be in the bar on the back of a cartoon coaster in the blue TV screen light. I drew a map of Canada. Oh Canada with your face sketched on it twice. Oh you're in my wine, it tastes so bitter and so sweet. Oh I drink a case of you and I would still be on my feet, or I would still be on my feet. Oh I am alone, painter. I live in a box of paints. I'm frightened by the devil, and I'm drawn to those ones that ain't afraid. I remember that time you told me you said love is touching souls. Surely you touch my ankle, are you forced out of me in these lights from time to time? So bear and so sweet. I can think of case of you still have your life. I will still be on life. She had a mouth like yours, she knew your life, she knew your deles and your deeds, and she said Go to him, stay with him if you can, but be prepared to bleed Oh blood you are in my blood, you're my holy wine is so bitter, yeah, so sweet. Oh I could drink a case of use beyond my feet. I will still be on my feet.

SPEAKER_00 4:54

I'm really well, how are you?

SPEAKER_05 4:56

Well, I am fine, good, sir. But I'd like to uh start off the programme tonight. You did mention that you could remember way, way back as a young child. But let's talk a little bit about your mum and dad. Did they were they born here in Australia or did they come to Australia?

SPEAKER_00 5:12

They were born in Australia, both of them. So my dad was born in um regional Victoria, and my mum was born in Sydney. Oh, actually, that's not true. She was born in Wagga Wagga in regional New South Wales, but grew up in Sydney.

SPEAKER_05 5:23

And so what did your mum and dad do? I'm assuming in was it a a typical family where your dad worked, your mum didn't, or what was the story?

SPEAKER_00 5:31

No, um my parents are both lawyers, country lawyers, and they both worked when I was growing up. And so I was born in Melbourne, but they met in Melbourne um through the law. And I was born in Melbourne, and then when I was about two, we moved to a little town called Bellingen in New South Wales, and they worked for a local uh little law firm there for a while, and then started their own law firm in the end. Um, well, not in the end. At at some point they started their own law firm and they worked on that for a lot of my childhood.

SPEAKER_05 6:04

And so what was Bellingen like uh in those days as a young child?

SPEAKER_00 6:09

Really beautiful. It still is really beautiful today. I've actually just I've just left Bellingen today. We've been there on a on a family trip with my family. But yeah, it was a really beautiful, peaceful, gorgeous place to grow up. But at the same time, you know, I I we moved there when I was two, so I wasn't always fully aware of how lucky we were, I guess. And when when I go back there now and I look at the escarpment and the mountains and how green it is and the river and everything, it's just it's it's such an idyllic place, and it was a pretty idyllic place to grow up.

SPEAKER_05 6:40

People listening from overseas wanted to know where Belling was in Australia. Where if you were to describe it from north-south, east to west from Sydney, perhaps, where where would you describe it?

SPEAKER_00 6:49

Um, it's sort of halfway between Sydney and Brisbane. It's a little bit closer to Brisbane, but yeah, approximately halfway between Sydney and Brisbane on the east coast, and Bellingen itself is not right on the beach. It's it's about 15 minutes' drive inland, but it is on a beautiful river in a river valley that then forks off into two other river valleys to the north and south. So it's sort of at the foot of three big, beautiful river valleys, uh just a little bit inland from the coast.

SPEAKER_05 7:17

Your early life in in primary school, what was that like?

SPEAKER_00 7:20

It was beautiful. I went to a Steiner school uh in Bellingen, or just outside of Bellingen, actually up one of the valleys, the Thora Valley, which is sort of directly west from Bellingen, and there's a primary school there, a Steiner School called Chrysalis, uh, and that's where I went for my primary school, which was a really amazing experience. It was like a lot of climbing trees, and we went we used to go swimming in the river and running around through you know the long grass, and it was sort of a very free-range place to go to school. It was beautiful.

SPEAKER_05 7:51

You said uh was that a Steiner school?

SPEAKER_00 7:54

Yeah, Steiner, yeah.

SPEAKER_05 7:55

What is that well describe what that actually means?

SPEAKER_00 7:58

Uh well Rudolf Steiner was a German thinker who um founded this style of education which is quite holistic. Um, and it's it's about educating the whole child, and it's very sort of gentle and I I don't to be to be totally honest, I know this is quite a strange thing to say considering that I went to a stunner school, but I haven't spent much time in my adult life researching the philosophy, so it's not something that I can easily articulate now. I would probably not do it justice. But what I know as a kid is that it was very we learnt through doing um rather than sitting in class and getting told things, and everything was sort of interconnected with everything else. So we would learn maths through going out and learning about plants and then counting leaves and things like that. It wasn't sort of just sitting in class in front of a blackboard and getting told to learn things by by rote learning.

SPEAKER_05 8:53

And as a young child, did you or did you not sort of ask your mum and dad why perhaps you were going to that school and not some other one?

SPEAKER_00 9:00

Not really. I I did. We spent a little bit of time in the state system. I went to Bellinger Primary School for a year or two. But yeah, I really much preferred going to Chrysalis as a kid, even though you know I still used to complain about going to school sometimes, and I used to love it when it flooded because we couldn't get out to the school because it was up the river valley over a whole bunch of bridges that were quite low. So if it flooded, we we just stay home. But I I never really thought to ask, to be honest. It was just it was just how life was.

SPEAKER_05 9:29

And what was the teachers like? You you said you spent some time in a states estate system and then you went across to this specific school. What was the difference perhaps for the teachers? Did you get a sense of difference there, or you were too young to sort of perhaps appreciate?

SPEAKER_00 9:44

Well, one thing with Steiner is that you have the same teacher for the whole of primary school. So um it's you really form quite a strong connection and bond with your teacher. You call you call your teacher by their first name, and they they very much become an important adult role model in your life. Uh so that was great. Our teacher was named Stephen, and he was a great teacher, and I think about him often.

SPEAKER_05 10:09

So, what did he bring to the lessons that perhaps indicate or suggested to you that he was you said he was a great teacher. Why why would you say make that assessment?

SPEAKER_00 10:19

Because he really cared about us. He really cared about the whole class, um, and he was very patient and inclusive and caring. Yeah, he was just a a kind person, and I think kindness is something that i is amazing to share with others, especially especially to children. So it was just a really gentle and peaceful and supportive place to learn and grow.

SPEAKER_05 10:51

So you come home at from school, you're um sitting down with mum and dad, both of them are lawyers, both of them are educated tertiary tertiary levels. Did your mum and dad have much interest in your education at all during that time?

SPEAKER_00 11:06

Well, I was a primary school student, so they were they were very interested in my entire life. I think they were they were just heavily involved in everything that I did, and they obviously made the choice to send me to a to a Steiner school. So yeah, I think they were they were definitely interested in it, and they made that decision consciously. There were there were state school options in Bellingen that they could have sent me to, and also there was a a Catholic school, there were other options, uh, but I think they really liked the holistic kind of peaceful situation that was going on out at Chrysalis.

SPEAKER_05 11:36

Now it's interesting, you're going to a school that is really about a holistic approach to education. Did your mum and dad talk about the world and universe over the dinner table, or did that was that was not the case?

SPEAKER_00 11:49

No, they did. We had a pretty we we've always had a pretty expansive kind of co conversational style at the dinner table, I think, my whole family. Um so yeah, we we used to talk about lots of stuff and I was always quite interested in history, even from a very young age. So I used to ask a lot of questions, and my parents always had those discussions with me, which was great.

SPEAKER_05 12:09

Did you get a sense that people sometimes say that history is always written by the winners? What was the narrative of your mum and dad's you were interested in history? So did you get a sense of a broad approach to history or a very narrow one?

SPEAKER_00 12:25

Uh my parents were always very uh open-minded and they didn't really push their beliefs onto me. They were very they just let me question things and answered questions as best they could, but were always pretty keen to point out that there were other ways of looking at things. And so um, no, they weren't prescriptive at all in the ways that they sort of answered my questions or taught me about the world. It was sort of they kind of guided me to explore myself, I guess, and make my own conclusions.

SPEAKER_05 12:54

Now, with state schools, they're all always keen on providing sport opportunities for those who like it and made those who wanted it, didn't like sport to attend it anyway. Was that a part of your life in that early primary school period of of sport or any what was what were you into?

SPEAKER_00 13:11

Yeah, I was really into soccer actually. So I I um joined the local soccer club when I was a little kid, probably under sevens or whatever it was at the time. And I got really, really into it and I ended up playing rep soccer for the Holiday Coast, which is the the region that Bellingen is in. Um, and at one point I was training twice a week for the Belling Club and twice a week for the rep team and playing twice on the weekends. So soccer was sort of everything all the time uh at one point there, and and my parents were always really supportive of that. And they used to drive me around to all the games and you know, a lot of carpooling going on with other other parents in Bellingen, and it was it was just awesome.

SPEAKER_05 13:53

So now you you've got to year six. Did you then go into your your high school period? Now, in your high school period, did you go up to year twelve or hadn't been introduced at that time?

SPEAKER_00 14:03

I went up to year twelve, um, but I didn't go up to year twelve in Bellingen. So so I went from Chrysalis, the Steiner School, I was there for almost all of my primary school. As I said, I had a short period of time in the state school in Bellingen. And then after year six, I came across to Bellingen High School, which is the state high school in Bellingen. I had to do tests before starting the high school so that they could place me in bands for the state school system because um I'd come from the Steiner system where they weren't testing in the same way that the state school was testing. So I had to go and sit some sort of I don't know, I guess uh placement tests so they could see where I would sit. I ended up getting put into all of the top bands for high school or for year seven. So, you know, I think that shows that the Steiner system works. Uh, and then I was at Bellington High School from year seven through to year ten, at which point I moved to Sydney to go to the performing arts school in Newtown and left home. So I moved out of my parents' house at that point and moved in with my grandparents for a couple of years and finished high school there in Sydney.

SPEAKER_05 15:12

Well, let's go back to your your high school from year seven to ten or thereabouts. Yeah, seven to ten. What was that like? I mean, you said you it's quite interesting that the the narrative and the opportunity for children to learn in that former system actually was interesting that it was then reflected in being placed at the higher levels in each of the educational disciplines. Which was you said you loved history. Was that a continuum? Did you continue that love into uh high school or did it broaden in other areas?

SPEAKER_00 15:43

Oh, I I definitely have always loved the humanities. I've always loved, I guess, subjects that are sort of in essence stories. And I was I've always been less interested in in subjects like maths where it's just quite prescriptive, and there's a right answer and a wrong answer, and there's not really that much of a story to tell about it. So there wasn't, I don't think at Bellington High School there was a specific history subject, but I was definitely interested in the humanities, geography, that kind of thing, much more than I was in maths, for example.

SPEAKER_05 16:17

And you're lucky enough to have a very special teacher that took you all the way through the primary school period. Now, in high school, of course, you got different teachers different teaching different subjects. Was there anybody in that uh group of teachers that really stood out and uh helped you or influenced you during that period?

SPEAKER_00 16:38

Well, I was obsessed with music. So by this point, I'd I'd really fallen in love with with music and um started playing the drums and trying to write songs and sort of learning the guitar here and there. And um there was a music teacher at Bellington High School who who was really supportive and made a big difference to my high school life, uh especially in those early days. So yeah, I would say Mr. Meal, who was the music teacher there at Bellington High, he was a big influence on me.

SPEAKER_05 17:05

And did you have an opportunity? There are some uh guests that have been on the program that have had a musical bent and have been lucky enough to perform in a school band or a local band. Did that opportunity open up for you in that period?

SPEAKER_00 17:20

Yeah, I played in the school band. I played drums in the school band for a little while. Um, and I also ended up, by the time I'd left Bellington High School, I was occasionally singing at assemblies with, you know, other kids on guitar, and I joined a a band of kids from school, a couple of bands actually, because I'd started singing by that point, and there there weren't that many kids uh at Bellington High in my year at least who were who were singing. So um, yeah, I got asked to join a bunch of bands, and I joined a bunch of those and started playing around the school and around the town, and we we did well in a couple of band competitions, and you know, at the time it just felt like the biggest thing ever. So yeah, the music thing became sort of my my main focus, I guess, somewhere there in in high school and really overtook the soccer thing, even though I was still very much into playing football, let's call it football. But yeah, at some point music just kind of took over.

SPEAKER_05 18:15

And Jack, at that time, did you start dabbling in writing music or were you just were we at that stage just singing? And some people just say singing covers, but it it is singing. But did you dabble at all in writing?

SPEAKER_00 18:29

Yeah, I started writing songs like quite early on. So I originally my first instrument that I started learning was the drums, and I was allowed to play the drums at home until 6 p.m. And then I wasn't allowed to play anymore. And my mum just for because of the noise. Uh and my mum had a guitar because she'd played guitar when she was younger. Uh and oh, she still plays guitar now, but at that point in time she really didn't have much time to play it. But uh there was a guitar lying around, and so after I after 6 p.m. when I wasn't allowed to play the drums anymore, I picked up the guitar, I started trying to learn the guitar, but really I wasn't trying to learn the guitar to learn the guitar because in my mind I was a drummer. I was just trying to learn the guitar so that I could write songs, and that was kind of the reason that I started playing the guitar at all, was just as a vehicle for songwriting.

SPEAKER_05 19:20

And so did someone help you with the structure of writing, or how did you come about? I mean, this is a question I always ask guess is you come up with a with a song. What was driving your thinking about song development at that early age?

SPEAKER_00 19:36

My parents always listened to a lot of music and have a really, I think, you know, really great taste in music. So we grew up listening to a lot of Neil Young and Jimi Hendrix and Joni Mitchell and Bob Dylan and all sorts of stuff. Uh so I was surrounded by music and you know, great songwriting all the time. I didn't really know that it was great songwriting at the time, it was just the music that my parents listened to. But I think that seeped in. Um, and I was also, I think, just quite a sensitive and thoughtful kid. And so I had a lot of feelings and things that I wanted to express. And um, I really got into songwriters like when I was a teenager, I got really into John Mayer and all these sort of singer songwriters who were just, you know, telling stories and expressing themselves through music, and just decided that's something that I wanted to try. And I guess there was a little bit of just young kind of arrogance, like, oh well, I can do that. If they can do that, I can do that. And so I picked up the guitar and started started trying to figure it out.

SPEAKER_05 20:37

Now you mentioned just a moment ago that you moved to Sydney to take up the last two years in a musical direction. What brought that decision on?

SPEAKER_00 20:50

Well, I was just uh completely obsessed with music at that point and wanted to do whatever I could to kind of make it a big part of my life. And we'd heard about this performing arts high school called the Newtown High School of the Performing Arts in Sydney, where you study high school like everybody else, but there's sort of extracurricular stuff and a strong focus on performing arts. So you have to go and audition. Uh, and my parents let me go and audition, and I was accepted for music and drama and moved down there and was really lucky that I was able to live with my grandparents who were they'd already retired at that point, but they for some reason agreed to have their 16-year-old grandson come and live in their spare room for a couple of years and finish high school, which was pretty cool.

SPEAKER_05 21:34

Now you said you've that you went down there, you had a passion about music. Did it fulfill your idea of what it was going to do to enhance your ability as a future musician?

SPEAKER_00 21:47

I think just moving out of Bellingen and moving to the big city did because as much as Bellingen's a wonderful place, it is a small town and uh it has its small town limits in a way. And I think moving to Sydney And in a way, being able to reinvent myself as a 16-year-old. I wasn't surrounded by people who'd known me since I was a little kid, who were always trying to put me in a box. I could just be whatever I wanted to be. And I met all these amazing, inspiring, exciting people, kids from school, and also teachers at the New South Performing Arts School. And I went and saw a lot of shows and just, you know, was surrounded by the big city, and that felt exciting. And it was a really eye-opening experience. And I I learned a lot very quickly, partly because I was at the school and the teaching stuff there were really great, and there was a lot of opportunity to make music. But I think more than anything, just being in that environment.

SPEAKER_05 22:45

Now, is there any particular teacher that has on reflection influenced your style of music or your ability to compose and uh perform music?

SPEAKER_00 22:58

I don't have a like dead poet society style teacher of where where I'm, you know, I feel like I owe everything to one teacher is the honest answer. I I've had a bunch of really wonderful teachers along the way um and learnt a lot from all of them, but I haven't had sort of like a really strong connection to just one teacher who inspired me to go off and start writing my own songs. I sort of did that with my friends, yeah, with my mates and for fun.

SPEAKER_05 23:28

Now before we get into part two and before we introduce your second track, was there any future studies that you were going to undertake following year twelve graduation?

SPEAKER_00 23:39

Well, I got into a funnily enough, I got into a law degree because I guess I applied for it from you know, because of the family connection, both my parents being lawyers. But my dad said, Do you want to be a lawyer? And I said, Oh, not I guess not really. And he said, Well, what are you gonna do a law degree for? And um he kind of encouraged me to yeah, just think about it. And I decided that yeah, I wanted to keep going with the music thing.

SPEAKER_05 24:06

Okay, well we'll pause there, good sir. Would you like to introduce your second track?

SPEAKER_00 24:11

The second track is called Let Down and it's by Radiohead, and it's just one of my favorite songs, which is why I chose it. It's an incredibly beautiful, moving song that I just every time I hear it, I just absolutely love it. And I have a really strong memory of playing. I was really lucky I got to play Primavera Sound Festival in Barcelona in 2016, and Radiohead played that year. And the stage that I played on was right beside the Mediterranean in Barcelona, and then I came off stage, put my guitar down, and walked across the festival and got to the main stage just in time for Radiohead to start. And they played this song, which they hadn't been playing at shows for quite a long time, but um, it was just absolutely magic. Yeah, good. Good, how are you?

SPEAKER_05 29:36

I'm good. I'm really pleased how this is going tonight. It's a wonderful story. It's interesting that you've uh had an interest in music for a long period of time and started writing, but there's also other avenues that you've taken artistically, which we'll talk about in part two. Now, you said before we finished part one that you thought you might go down the law avenue, but your dad was perhaps very wise and said, think about it, son. So what did you do? What was the decision you took then saying, Okay, I'm not interested in law. Where did your life take you?

SPEAKER_00 30:10

Well, part of the so the law degree that I would have done would have taken me away from Sydney, and I had just started playing a lot of shows around Sydney, and uh I just graduated Newtown High School of Performing Arts and had a group of creative friends in Sydney, and so what I did was I I went to Sydney University and studied arts and music, and that was a wonderful experience. Sydney University is a great place, and I lived in Glebe, which is just over the bridge from Sydney University, the the traffic bridge, not the river bridge. Um so my whole, you know, my whole world for a while there was just in this little pocket of Sydney. Uh, worked in a bar there and just started trying to play pubs around Sydney, and slowly people like I started playing pubs and getting my mates to come, and then slowly people who weren't my mates started coming, and then my mates stopped coming because they'd come to so many. And luckily by that point, I was sort of able to bring a little crowd of people who wanted to come see me play who I didn't really know. And somewhere along the way there I met a guy called Gad Stucky who had a little indie record label called Geek Piglet, and he offered to release my music, and we started working together, and that was when I started properly releasing, recording and releasing albums. And I was still going to Sydney Uni at that point in time and started touring nationally at that point in time too. So I was sort of trying to juggle these two things the touring and releasing uh albums and finishing my degree. And um it took a little while, but I managed to kind of get them both happening eventually.

SPEAKER_05 31:50

Well, Jack, can I take you back into the into the university side? Was that I mean people go to university, they come out of university, they've studied a certain direction, and they never use that degree. What was the university like for you and was it inspiring you in different directions?

SPEAKER_00 32:06

It was a really uh inspiring time. Um I think uh so I did an arts degree, so that's definitely no one does an arts degree thinking they're gonna come out of it knowing exactly what they're gonna be, because it's it's not a sort of prescriptive degree in that sense. Uh it's just sort of an exercise in critical thinking and writing, and I think because of that, I just loved it. I I love self-questioning and thinking about why, and I took a lot of philosophy subjects and I I essentially spent three and a half years of my life just doing music and philosophy and hanging around talking about stuff. It was it was great.

SPEAKER_05 32:43

And was that philosophy studies that you're undertaking influencing your the narrative of your music?

SPEAKER_00 32:50

I think it was a little bit, but I wasn't I wasn't writing songs about Immanuel Kant or anything like that. But but yeah, I think just the I the the ideas that I I think it just helped me to think a little bit more deeply about things and maybe try and get down to that next level down with my writing where you can write about one thing which can also contain a metaphor for another thing, and it it it helped me kind of go deeper.

SPEAKER_05 33:19

Now you said you were touring Australia. Were you touring Australia as a support act or as a as a principal act on a bill?

SPEAKER_00 33:26

So I started off touring as a support act. I was really lucky that I got so a couple of tours. I my first kind of big tours were with um some US artists. One was a guy called Joshua Radan, uh uh another beautiful American singer called Ingrid Michelson took me on tour with her, and I did some shows with a beautiful American singer called Brett Denon. And then um I ended up getting taken on the road by Josh Pike, who's a wonderful Australian singer-songwriter who's become one of my best mates. And I was a huge, huge fan of Josh's before I met him, and so going on the road with him was just amazing. We he took me on a big 37-day regional Australian tour, which was just a mammoth tour. We we went across every state and territory, big drives, beautiful shows, and it was just Josh and a tour manager called Dave and myself. Uh, and it was a lot of fun. And and that was really when I started being able to tour myself more widely because Josh uh introduced me to his crowd, and then that allowed me to then go out to these other cities and towns and and play for people who had heard my music before.

SPEAKER_05 34:38

Now I've noticed on your CV you make reference to another a number of other Australian icons, not necessarily for being popular, but for but perhaps for being sound and uh memorable. Who of that group have and you you mentioned Josh, who was influencing you perhaps in some of the decisions you were making about your music choices and some of the narratives around your your songs?

SPEAKER_00 35:05

So I think so Josh and Katie Noonan uh have been both been really they've both taken me under their wings really and been incredibly supportive of my music, but they've also been great role models just for how to be in in the Australian music scene. And you know, it's a it's actually quite a small industry. Once you get to the point where you're touring nationally, there's not that many people doing that. And so everyone knows everybody and everyone knows the venues, and you just have to be nice to people and kind and not let things go to your head, and by the same token, not get too down in the dumps when things don't go your way, too. You just you just gotta kind of be even and treat people kindly, and I think more than anything, Josh and Katie both had young families when I first started touring with them, and it was really inspiring to see them out on the road doing the music thing, but uh you know they were doing it for their families, and that was that was great to see, and that's very much where I'm coming from now too.

SPEAKER_05 36:08

Yeah, on your CV also it makes mention of some international work that you've done. Where is your career taking you overseas?

SPEAKER_00 36:17

Uh so I lived in the UK for a while and spent a lot of time touring over there uh and toured all through Europe and North America, Canada, obviously that's part of North America, New Zealand, Australia. Um, so yeah, I kind of most most English speaking parts of the world and Europe I've I've toured through.

SPEAKER_05 36:36

What took you to the UK?

SPEAKER_00 36:38

Well, I at one point I ended up getting a manager over there and a record label released my music over there. And so I started going over there every three months or so to tour and and play shows. And after doing that for about a year, I I just decided it was time to make the move and see if I could. I'd always wanted to live overseas as well, and I think the UK was a really attractive option because it's you know it's right there, it's got such an amazing history of of folk music, you've got all of Europe just a short flight away, and um and I already had uh a touring circuit over there and a fan base, and so it just made a lot of sense.

SPEAKER_05 37:19

Um could you do you said that you've um performed nationally around Australia and you would have got to understand the audiences and their style. Is there any difference between a European audience and perhaps an Australian audience?

SPEAKER_00 37:32

Obviously it would be generalising, but I think that in Europe the arts are considered like a generalizing. I think they're held in higher regard. I feel like Australia does have a bit of a sort of oh, you're an artist, what's your day job kind of attitude. Whether as I think especially touring somewhere like Germany, you know, like they really value people who are spending their time creating art and sharing it with people, uh, which is lovely because yeah, you don't you sort of don't get that sense a lot when you're touring in Australia.

SPEAKER_05 38:06

Jack, you said that you mentioned that you had a strong relationship with a couple of major artists here in Australia, those who've who are of substance. Were you able to get connections over in Europe with uh some fellow musicians?

SPEAKER_00 38:20

Yeah, so I I was really lucky to start touring over in the UK. Before I'd moved over there, I I did a lot of touring with a beautiful English songwriter called Blair Dunlop, who I became close friends with. And he is a quite established singer-songwriter over there and took me on tour with him. There's a beautiful Australian artist called Emily Barker, who is quite well known in the UK. She lived there for uh about 20 years and is a beautiful songwriter. And I I did a lot of touring with her over there, and a band called Keston Cobbler's Club from London took me on the road with them as well. So by the time I moved over there, I I already had like quite a strong community of musicians who I'd met over the years at festivals and just through playing shows that I was able to kind of slot in with. And I think that's one of the great things about music. It's it's sort of if you're playing music wherever you go in the world, you're gonna know someone who knows someone because once you're at the point where you're touring, like I said, it's it's not that big a scene. And so everyone kind of knows everyone, and and you end up just having a built-in community everywhere you go.

SPEAKER_05 39:24

And Jack, were you writing music at that stage in your career over over in the UK?

SPEAKER_00 39:30

Oh yeah, I've been writing music since I was 12 or something like that. So I've been I moved over to the UK because I had been writing and releasing albums, and at one point my album started getting released in the UK, and I got a UK manager. So I was I I made a a record called Wake to a Bright Morning over in the UK, uh, which ended up not getting released until uh we'd moved back here to Australia, but that that whole record was written and and recorded over in the UK.

SPEAKER_05 40:01

Some people will write about the narrative around them and their environment, others will just write the music as they like that narrative. Did living in the UK or in and and also touring in Europe have an influence on the narrative of your songs and the style of your music?

SPEAKER_00 40:17

Yeah, I think it got me out of my own head a bit and just helped me to be a little bit more expansive in the things that I was writing about. I think I when I first started and I was writing songs here in Australia, I was very much just writing in a very traditional kind of singer-songwriter, like from an intern a place of just looking inward and writing about myself. Whereas once I'd spent some time over in the UK and spent a lot of time touring over there and and just hanging out with all the beautiful artists over there, I started writing about people around me and things that weren't necessarily from my inner life, which was a nice change.

SPEAKER_05 40:58

Now some narrative at the moment is talking about musicians shouldn't have a political bent and others may just reflect on society around them. Being over in Europe and and seeing the world from a different perspective, did that ever come across your mind that uh that there is a a world out there that needs influence through music?

SPEAKER_00 41:18

Well, musicians are just people, so if if like the idea that musicians shouldn't have a political bent is insane because they're just people and people have political bents because politics is relationships between people. I find that when people say things like that it's just because the musician they're thinking about has a different political view to their own. Um but I think that I mean music music is human expression and human expression can come in all sorts of shapes and forms. So it's sort of I've come across everything, you know, I've come across any sort of any sort of human expression you can imagine, I've I've seen music about it.

SPEAKER_05 41:57

Looking at your C V again, because it's it's a great source of information about people's background on on social media. It does talk about you taking different directions in your artistic endeavour. Coming back to Australia, did you find that you could survive in the music industry alone or did you take a different make choices that took you in different directions?

SPEAKER_00 42:19

So I was I I managed to get to the point with music where I was able to make a living touring and releasing uh releasing albums. Uh but at a certain point I met my wife and well, she wasn't my wife when I met her, obviously. Um, but I met my girlfriend who then became my ex-girlfriend uh because she became my wife. And she and I ended up falling pregnant uh while we were living in the UK and we came home to have our first baby. And at that point, I decided I needed to sort of diversify, I guess, is a a really sterilized way to put it because um in order to make a living from music, I was having to spend probably 70% of the year touring, and I knew that moving forward I didn't want to be away all the time. So I ended up finding work as a graphic designer, which is something that I had sort of been doing for a while here and there, but I started properly working in that field. And and as luck would have it, or not that's probably the wrong way to put it, but as as uh fate would have it, it that ended up all happening right around COVID. So all the touring disappeared anyway, which was obviously a very stressful time for everybody, uh, and a really stressful time to be a musician. But I felt very lucky that I had this other quite creative thing that I could fall back on and and use to provide for my young family. And it's been a really wonderful thing to to embrace and and something that I'm really excited about.

SPEAKER_05 43:47

So, was this graphic design the work that you were doing? Was that for yourself, your family, or for other parties?

SPEAKER_00 43:54

I I so I started doing graphic design essentially to save money on tour posters and album design like I I just figured I could probably do some of that myself and I started teaching myself and then ended up doing qualifying as a graphic designer um and then once I started working as a graphic designer I I first started doing it uh in a freelance capacity and then and then I started working like I ended up getting a job as a graphic designer for a company and making it more official.

SPEAKER_05 44:23

And did that impact on your writing skills as a musician or you just said well part bit for some time?

SPEAKER_00 44:29

It was just like I said it was all this is all happening around COVID. So it was the the touring had stopped for everybody and and we we had a a very young child and another one on the way and it was just something that I needed to do. So it it definitely impacted on the amount of time available to me to write music but um it was it it felt like a very necessary and worthwhile thing to be spending my time on.

SPEAKER_05 44:56

I also understand that you're you write lovely stories for children. When when did that start?

SPEAKER_00 45:04

That started about 2022 I think 2020 2022 uh my so my wife Natasha is a beautiful illustrator she's worked for years in film and television in art departments and um while we're in the UK we started a greeting card business called the Cardi Club where we were making and selling our own greeting cards which ended up getting sold across five continents and was has been this whole other side of to the story. But she ended up doing some sample sample illustrations for a friend of ours who was pitching a book, a children's book and um that book didn't get picked up but the publisher asked who did the sample illustrations because they they really liked them and uh passed on Natasha's details, my wife's details and they asked if we had any stories that we wanted to pitch and we pitched a few and one of them was this the the words from this song that I'd just written for the kids called Time to Rest and that ended up getting picked up and became our first picture book. And since then we've we've released another three. So we've got uh Time to rest, The Love We Share, The Tunicorn and just last week we had a a new picture book come out called The Big Cue and we've got a bunch more coming over the next couple of years as well. So it's it's a a really fun quite unexpected turn that that this kind of creative life has taken and I'm really grateful for it. And I just love that it's a a melding of Natasha and my skill sets. She's a beautiful beautiful illustrator I've spent my whole life writing stories essentially and um it's just lovely to be able to create things together using those passions.

SPEAKER_05 46:47

Are you then turning your songs into stories or the stories may turn into songs or part songs?

SPEAKER_00 46:54

In the case of the time to rest I hadn't released I hadn't pitched any children's books. I had no I had no inkling that I was going to end up becoming a children's book author and I just wrote a song for the kids one Easter holidays just as a fun little thing to do. And so that was very much the case of the song becoming a picture book. But since then I've I've been writing picture books uh and none of them so far have turned into songs but you can never say never.

SPEAKER_05 47:24

So now you're into graphic work, you're into storytelling for children and a musician, which is taking priority?

SPEAKER_00 47:34

Well at this point I mean the the our family is just taking priority so I'm just doing whatever I need to do to kind of make sure I can keep paying the bills and um not be away all the time but I I guess I I'm doing all three of those things pretty pretty solidly and and as often as I can. So these days I'm I'm touring like I just released a new record I just did a big Australian tour um for the new record. I spent a lot of last year on the road I I um did a massive theatre tour supporting Katie Noonan on her grace tour which was celebrating 20 years of Jeff Buckley's Grace. And like I said we've put out four children's books now and I'm still working as a graphic designer. So I'm kind of juggling all of it at once these days.

SPEAKER_05 48:18

So you've you've got three irons in the fire as I as you would say put it where would you like your artistic endeavor to take you in the future?

SPEAKER_00 48:28

Well I'm going to continue making music. I think music is my music is where I feel the most myself. So I think I I really feel compelled to write songs. I do it because I love doing it and because I feel compelled to do it. It's not something it's it's almost not voluntary if that makes sense. So I'll continue writing music and recording it and uh having a lot of fun doing that. And I think at least for the foreseeable future I'll continue releasing the music that I write and record when that feels like the right thing to do. But I'm also really excited about all the children's books we've got coming out because like I said we've got quite a few coming out over the next couple of years. That's all that's we've got a lot of stuff happening on that front and the graphic design stuff is is really moving along beautifully as well. So I I think if I had to pick one it would be the music but I'm you know I'm I feel very lucky and excited to be doing the children's books and and the graphic design work too.

SPEAKER_05 49:25

Now reflecting back in your early life you went to the Steiner school and they were the principal there of of education was holistic and seeing the world in a different way than perhaps the state system. How has that influenced you now as an adult in the way you see the world and the way you tell the kids stories and your music?

SPEAKER_00 49:47

I think I just have always had a healthy skepticism for things and I I have never really just taken the simple answer as the right one. I always like to sort of ask why and go deeper and I think that has that's been a pretty common thread throughout my education and throughout my life and I think the the Steiner schooling has a sort of wonder and a magic to it. It's very open to the idea of magic. It doesn't that's not to say it teaches you that magic is real it certainly doesn't do that but it's it's open to the idea that there's sort of things about the world that that are just kind of hard to explain. And I think that feeling is something that is really beautiful to capture in children's stories because it's it's true, you know like it's it's magic doesn't have to be an actual thing that exists for it to be a feeling that exists and I think that's that's something that that really children's books that have affected me over the years especially since I've become a father and read children's books I I love those ones that that sort of leave you feeling a real sense of wonder about the world and and that is often because there are just things that you can't necessarily explain.

SPEAKER_05 51:09

And lastly Jack when you're writing and performing what do you want your audience to take away from the music that you write and your performances I think I've always just tried to express myself honestly so I'm I'm not I'm not necessarily trying to leave anyone with any particular message other than the truth is sort of I'm just trying to express myself truthfully as much as possible.

SPEAKER_00 51:37

And I think that's something that I think is lacking in the world more than ever these days um and that's what I'm going to continue to do.

SPEAKER_05 51:48

And lastly you mentioned as a young child and the family and your mum and dad listening to music at home and how that influenced you very very early in your life of songwriting. Reflecting back who you think in the music world has had the most influence on you as a musician?

SPEAKER_00 52:08

Probably Bob Dylan. And why is that because I listened to him a lot growing up um through my parents and then I got really really into his his music while I was at university and just loved his songwriting and his storytelling and it's just so simple but it says so much and I think that's there's a real beauty in that simp simple things that are actually very complex when you kind of when you take the time to listen.

SPEAKER_05 52:38

And on that note good sir would you like to introduce your last track who is the performer and why did you select it?

SPEAKER_00 52:45

Uh so this is New Year's song by Josh Pike and I chose it because it's one of my favourite Josh Pike songs and uh as I mentioned before Josh took me on the road and in a way is sort of largely responsible for the music career that I've had and um he's also just become a really dear friend of mine and I just think he's a a beautiful writer and a really special human being.

SPEAKER_05 53:11

And Jake on that note thank you for being a guest on the Confab with Michael G.

SPEAKER_01 53:15

Thanks for having me freezing on your left side and you're boiling on your right side then I guess you might be warm upon the line And there are many ways one can divide a life and I've got mine I was flying home and I saw the sunset from the sky I saw the dark come spinning down upon the land and I thought about the distance we all covered and it made me sad And as the army took a bow and joined the setting sun it comes around again like a rear frame And we all sing along and think of things we should have done to one never came for little comfort I'm afraid you're not enough I've had some learning but unwelcome and unkind And it seems there's but one story told them we worked on throughout time Are you a good one or a cruel one? Is it just the laws that make us better What can we do to measure where we stand Or I judge myself by what I give to someone else I don't know where I am as the old you took a bow and join the setting song it comes around again like a riffray And we all sing along and think of things we should have done to one you and then you in the book One you and the knee in the Burk And join the setting sun it comes around again like Glory And we all sing along and think of things we should have done to warn you and then you in the book Don't let this sense of urgency betray you in the dark The rustle of a curtain is not a sign Don't frame this picture now with some kind of closing remark and most of all stay warm upon the line Most of all stay warm upon the line It's best if you stay warm upon the line