Concert News

Ben Salter

• 10th Jul 2012

12th October 2012 @ Mello Mello
Ben Salter
Emma Stevens
Rob Vincent

BEN SALTER
Anyone with even a passing interest in the Australian music scene over the past decade should be aware of the work of Brisbane musician Ben Salter, although which of his diverse array of musical projects they will have encountered is another matter entirely.

After a nerdy adolescence spent in the dusty garrison city of Townsville, North Queensland, Salter’s ambitions drew him south to the Brisbane, where after a few false starts he formed self proclaimed ‘intelligent hard rock’ outfit Giants Of Science in the late nineties. Still a going concern, the Giants have thus far released two critically acclaimed albums and a pair of EPs, as well as performing with the likes of The MC5, Swervedriver, McLusky, JSBX and Radio Birdman.

In 2004, after five years of intensive touring with Giants, Salter began performing with a disparate group of like-minded musicians he’d met at a weekly open mic night he hosted. A few hastily arranged recording sessions later, The Gin Club was born. With their unique amalgam of folk, rock, country, soul and pop, this free-wheeling collective – featuring no less than seven singer/songwriters – have released four acclaimed albums and played nearly every festival on the Australian circuit, as well as taking their music as far afield as the United States and Canada.

Never one to knowingly sit still, Salter also found time to write and record two albums with another collective of sorts, The Wilson Pickers, whose strong songwriting and captivating live shows quickly earned them a swag of fans around the country, as well as an ARIA nomination for their debut album Land Of the Powerful Owl.

Then there are the six albums recorded with garage skuzz merchants The Young Liberals, and numerous other collaborations and short-lived outfits such as The Hi Waves, Fatal 4, and Megafauna.

Yet all the while, in parallel to all these other projects, Salter continued to write, record and perform his solo material, songs that either would not work in any other format or he was reluctant to part with. And now, after a decade of empty threats, he is finally releasing his debut album under his own name, The Cat.

Recorded and produced with Gareth Liddiard and Robert F. Cranny at Liddiard’s rural studio in Havilah, Victoria, The Cat is easily the most assured work of Salter’s career. Whilst occasionally (and understandably) reminiscent of his other incarnations, The Cat is its own beast entirely, an intoxicating blend of avant-garde pop, rock and folk that is at once conventional and defiantly odd.

“Gareth gets bored pretty easily, as do I…”, says Salter. “So we just wanted to approach these songs, some of which are over ten years old, in an unconventional manner. Thus, no hi-hats. Hurdy Gurdy, saxophone.. Swedish bagpipes! The songs themselves aren’t terribly radical, to be honest, but the treatment is pretty strange in parts. It’s not black metal, but it’s not Wet Wet Wet either.”

Salter had no shortage of friends to call on for help when it finally came time to put The Cat together. Gin Club alumni Gus Agars and Ola Karlsson played drums and bass respectively, while the quest for weirdness led to him employing legendary Melbourne jazz saxophonist Julien Wilson, multi-instrumentalist Peter Novotnik, and Australian rock’n’roll luminaries Joel Silbersher, Tom Lyncolgn and Steve Hesketh.

“Tom and Joel, not to mention Gareth, are absolute legends, people that I really admire and look up to both as musicians and as people. So I was thrilled when they agreed to be a part of the project”, Salter says. “Most of the songs were kind of in place as far as arrangements and lyrics and stuff, but my work with The Young Liberals in particular has made me realize the importance of organized chaos, for want of a better expression; something random. So we set aside a day to get (Tom & Joel) up to Havilah to do some overdubs on some of the songs. I’d become somewhat taken with Scott Walker through the documentary, 30th Century Man, and particularly with the revelation that Walker would often not let his musicians hear much (or all) of the tracks they were working on before recording their parts. So I endeavoured to do the same with Joel and Tom. There were no guidelines, no playbacks before their takes and a maximum of three passes at each song. I wrote out the chords for them so they weren’t completely in the dark, but that was it. I didn’t answer any of their questions regarding whether they were doing the right thing or not. And the results were stunning – Joel’s Korg flourishes on West End Girls or the duelling guitar parts on The Cat… you just could not plan that stuff, it was exactly what I was after. I was in heaven.”

The Cat covers an extraordinary amount of musical terrain over the course of its ten songs, the layers of sounds and textures giving the songs a depth that far transcends the already considerable beauty of the compositions themselves. The title track is a case in point, a stunning composition with some of the most powerful lyrics Salter has ever put to paper. “’The Cat’ features some of my own favourite lyrics. It started out as a poem that came to me very quickly after I spied one of the neighbourhood cats being tormented by a gang of crows or magpies. I could see the cat plotting dreadful revenge and it was kind of tragic. The music took ages and ages though, trying to get some chords and a melody that would suit the song. But the addition of Julien’s sax solo really took the song into outer space.”

With this album, Salter begins an exciting new chapter in what is already an illustrious and highly decorated career. The Cat promises to be one of the most interesting releases of 2011.

“I firmly believe Ben to be one of the world’s great singers, and if I weren’t so goddamn competitive, one of its great songwriters.”
Tim Rogers

“As part of The Wilson Pickers, Giants Of Science and The Gin Club, Ben Salter is familiar to many in the room as an integral part in a band cog. But as a solo entity, (he) brings.. an entirely new element to the table.”
Benny Doyle – Timeoff

EMMA STEVENS
Emma began her musical journey when she was bought her first guitar at the age of 3. After many years of training classically on piano and cello, writing hundreds of songs in her bedroom, and studying Guitar and Performance at The Academy of Contemporary Music, she began her career as a professional songwriter. Fresh out of college Emma was asked to write and perform on the album for the Britain’s Got Talent finalist Andrew Muir.

Emma’s playing skills are in demand: over the years she has been a session musician for fiN., H-Boogie, and Ronit & The Aramingo’s. This has led her to tour worldwide with bands such as The Kooks, Mona, Feeder and Incubus. No stranger to the stage, Emma would often perform at arena style venues to up to 20,000 a night!

Soon after being picked up by music manager Bob James, Emma began working with established artists and songwriters all over the world, Her first cut achieved no.1 in Asia, selling over 100,000 copies in it’s first week of release! Emma’s love for songwriting and ability to play many different instruments, means she can write in different genres, naturally thinking outside the box. This attracted a range of different artists. Emma’s music is catchy and filmic, and has already been synched for TV, clients including BBC and ITV, this is even before the EP release! She has recently been a part of Kate Nash’s music video “Girl Gang” and supported Kate on her last UK tour in Guildford.

Emma likes to play everything you hear in the songs she’s written. This includes; guitar, piano, cello, ukulele, banjo, mandolin, percussion and baritone guitar.

Through all of this, Emma has built up her own very unique approach – a combination of music and art, all 4 EP’s will showcase Emma’s talents, along with all the emotions and experiences of her journey so far.

“…Emma’s ability to produce her signature sound on whichever instrument she chooses impresses me to no end. That coupled with the soft tone of her voice suggests a successful artist career and one with longevity is part of Emma’s destiny…”
– Ross Gautreau, A&R Polydor Records

“Emma Stevens has a singular ability in her writing and singing to realize the pure heart and true intention of a lyric and melody. There is no artifice in her creativity, not in her hauntingly honest voice or melodic sensibility. Writing songs is so much of the time a collaborative enterprise and Emma, in our collaborations, has been as good as it gets: sensitive to the song and her song-writing partner.” – Charlie Midnight.

ROBERT VINCENT
If there’s a lot of half-finished, semi-fulfilled, vaguely unsatisfying music around these days – songs that say nothing to you about your life – then maybe it’s because the people who make it haven’t lived much of a life themselves.

Not so in the case of Robert Vincent, the searingly honest Liverpool singer-songwriter whose mix of folk, rock and country is like a Mersey Van Morrison or a Scouse Springsteen.

Born into a house that rang to the sounds of Johnny Cash, The Beatles and Pink Floyd, Robert knew before he was five years old that he wanted to be a musician. When he became a father at 17 he had to balance the hard graft of life in a working band with the responsibility of providing for a family. He’s seen setbacks and false dawns, he’s come near to success only to have it snatched away, but he’s never lost his faith in his music. And now that faith is coming good.

“I’ve done the whole thing of trying to be what people want me to be,” Rob explains in his warm and good-humoured Scouse drawl, “And in the end I just thought I’ve had enough of this. The songs I’ve written now, some of them sound like Johnny Cash and some of them like 50s rock’n’roll – but they’re what *I* wanted to write. And the funny thing is, the more honest I am the better people like it.”

The result is Rob’s debut album ‘Life In Easy Steps’: a set of songs that are alternately as open and empathic as ‘Second Chance’, and as raw and righteous as ‘Riots Cry’ – all held together by a singular lyrical vision and a voice that can soothe, comfort or tear down a wall. In a sea of plastic pop, this is real rock and roll.

“There’s no smoke and mirrors about it,” Rob says with a smile. “It’s like a good old fashioned country record. Sing what you mean – and sing it like you mean it.”

It all goes back to that house in Crosby, north Liverpool where, alongside country and The Beatles, his older brothers initiated him into the mysteries of Pink Floyd. ‘Piper At The Gates Of Dawn’ taught young Rob that a song could be cosmic and mystical – but it had to be a proper song too. He became fascinated with lyrics. “It wasn’t just what Roger Waters wrote but why he wrote it,” he says. “That really interested me as a kid. And then I started meddling with the guitar…”

Rob left school at 16 to dabble in local bands, growing mildly frustrated that his mates only wanted to play standards and not write their own songs. A job as a roadie for a covers band earned him a few quid and a chance to get up and sing a couple of numbers – ‘All Right Now’ and the inevitable ‘Wish You Were Here’. “You’ll give anything to get up and have a go at that age,” Rob recalls.

Then his girlfriend became pregnant. “It was a massive, massive thing to happen when you’re so young,” he admits.

For a while music had to take second fiddle to providing for the baby. He worked in catering jobs and even as an Estate Agent – but there was always a band too.

One of them, a group called Boa, won Rob the chance to represent Liverpool at a festival marking 50 Years of Rock’n’Roll in Memphis in 2004 and to record at Sun Studios, Sam Phillips’s fabled Birthplace of Rock’n’Roll. But just as Boa seemed about to happen the band fell apart. “After that,” Rob says, “I thought, I’m doing my own thing from now on.”

By 2007 he promised himself he’d never be left high and dry again. His band ‘Night Parade’ recorded a debut album but management wrangles kept it from being released. More setbacks, more refusal to give in. But Rob was now in the rhythm of writing his own songs and more convinced than ever that he knew what he was doing – and why he was doing it. He’d also started working with one Pete Smith, Grammy award winning co-producer of Sting’s ‘Dream Of The Blue Turtles’. Together they recorded ’Life In Easy Steps in Brighton.

The years of hard work put grit and insight in these songs by an artist who’s still barely in his thirties. When you’ve worked in a band for four or five years and the rug gets pulled, it can feel like you’re left with nothing, he thinks. But that’s not really the case. You’ve got all that experience, that practice. It toughens you up and focuses you. You find you can write about people as they are – the good and the bad.

So Rob Vincent’s songs are compassionate and perceptive. There’s a wild evocation of the fact that every life is lived in the eye of a storm on the blues-blazing ‘Riots Cry’, and forgiveness for former friends who’ve let you down in ‘How Do You Sleep’. There’s an elegy for the wasted opportunities of a dead relationship, where your partner can’t change, in the plangent, Lennonesque ‘Second Chance’.

And he’s not frightened of getting a little cosmic either. The intimate, gently strummed ‘Stars’ takes that familiar spine-chilling moment when you look up into the vastness of the night sky and realise your insignificance, and then flips it. We might be tiny, the song says, but what matters is what we are to one another. “I’ll be here in the light of the stars,” sings Rob, and in the end that’s all that matters.

“Having a kid so young gave me a way of looking at how people act towards each other, especially with children,” he explains. “There’s a song on the album called ‘Heaven Knows’ that wonders if maybe we were happier when we had more social boundaries, not fewer. I’m not religious but you wonder if some things – not everything, but some things – might have been a bit better in the days when we all went to church on a Sunday, dealt with all the grief and misery of the week, and came out feeling better. I think people are missing those boundaries.”

“The record is about trying to be the best person you can possibly be,” he continues, “And I think that’s what most people want from themselves. You want to be a better human being. I write from the point of view of being a dad, and worrying about the world my kid is growing up in. The world focuses so much on the individual – iPhone, iPad, I, I, me, me all the time – and there’s something unhealthy about it. We feel cut off from other people. But if music is good at anything, it’s reconnecting us.”

Rob’s mum likes to remind him of a tale from when he was perhaps four years old. They’d got off a train in comfortable Freshfield near Southport, where footballers and businessmen reside in spacious houses near the woods and the beach. Little Rob pointed to one of the big houses. See that, mum? he said. When I’m a rich rock star I’ll buy you one of those.

“Daft, isn’t it?” he says, laughing. “I was only four. But the thing is, I didn’t really want to be rich. I just never, ever wanted to do anything else but this. It’s been hard work getting here but I’ve never, ever wanted to pack it in. I know what I’m here for – to do this. It’s always been music for me. One hundred per cent.”