The story of Drowning in the Desert.

Songs about modern dilemmas | written in the desert | on a cricket tour | in 2021.

It all started in Bellingen. We were there at Xmas time at the end of a torrid 2020 (with worse to come as it turned out). In that wonderful middle ground between alpha and delta, this album came to life. In Bellingen, I started writing words again, just reflections, but stumbled upon a few new approaches that would come to influence the lyric writing. I called it getting “two past the obvious” in order to be evocative, less literal. Or, write more like David Byrne and Neil Finn. I also embraced the time between sleepy thoughts and waking thoughts as the time to write, ie hypnagogia.

The critical musical discovery was the Boss SY-1 pedal which imitates the old 80’s guitar synths. Had to have it. After a month of exploring the 88 sounds on the pedal, a series of new ideas emerged. I could not have written the lead line for “Armando” or the bass part for “Electric car” without that jolt into different sonic territories. It’s like an artist switching from working with pencils to paints. You just discover different stuff as a result of the new palette and the inherent possibilities.

I had some songs from 2020 that were almost complete, so when these new discoveries piled on top, by the time Easter rolled around, I had 15 songs without lyrics. Time to put down the guitar and pick up the pen. Another breakthrough courtesy of hypnagogia; I woke up with a strange visual representation of writing lyrics as a series of connected but not related recognisable phrases. The first song I tried that approach with was “Bitcoin”. It seemed to work.

A two-week trip to the Northern Territory came in April. One week near Uluru with the family followed by a week of playing in Alice Springs and camping out in the ranges with the cricket team. The desert inspired me to write. The space, the stories, the beauty and the tragedy which collided with the shame I felt for any part I had played in misrepresenting and misunderstanding the history of Aboriginal Australia. I wrote on the bus, in the morning sitting outside my tent, in the afternoon waiting in the shade, on the plane. The flow was on, I just needed to get pen in hand.

We were at Glen Helen gorge, full of water in the middle of the desert. One of our guys nearly drowned while swimming. How do you explain to an insurance company that someone drowned while in the desert? The theme came to life. In a so-called “barren landscape” there’s so much life, everything you need, you just have to know where to look. You need to follow the songlines.

The music needed to yield a fraction to fit the new words and the next few months were spent refining and re-working the arrangements and I was lucky to engage Philip Foxman (Supernauts, Illustrated Man) to help with fitting the blocks together. While his advice was spot on and out of the “League of Professional Songwriters” it was actually the encouragement from someone who knew what he was doing that kept pushing me beyond my default standard to do the new songs justice.
Lockdown came in June but I snuck in a “proper” recording session for the drums before retiring indoors for 4 months with plenty of time to build up all of the tracks. Back to the studio in October to mix it all down. Very 2021.

So here it is. I’ve been doing home recording projects since my first “little tape” in 1989 and I have to say, I’m super proud of this album. Musically, it’s where I want to be as a writer. Performance wise, I pushed myself toward a painstaking eye (and ear) for detail when recording. Lyrically, I’ve stepped away from angst and complaint. I hope you hear humour, reflection and some poignant nostalgia. Thanks to Philip for the guidance and inspiration; Simon for making the Alice Springs “covid” tour happen; Sam, Rob and JT for contributing and to the family at home for enduring thousands of attempts at various guitar solos.

Wherever I go, there you are.