The Cacophony Interviews: June 2007 Darren Hanlon, Singer/Songwriter

A few weeks back, on a retreat at New Norcia, I woke on a Saturday morning to some animated voices not far from my door. A few blokes were talking about the Australian music industry. One of those blokes seemed to have a pretty good idea what he was talking about. In my semi-conscious state I remember taking some guesses as to who that was. It was obviously a recording artist who toured a fair bit, but beyond that I didn't have much to go by.

Later in the day, I discovered Darren Hanlon was the guy who had been doing the talking. Curiously, Abbot Placid was the one who told me that Darren was staying in the Monastery Guesthouse and further, he would be giving a short 'performance' to the parishioners after mass on Sunday morning.

For those who are strangers to Darren's work, here's a couple of clips to get you on the page:






And this link will get you to his MySpace.

Genres can be uncomfortable pigeon-holes, but there's plenty that's acoustic and folk-rock about Darren and you can fill in your own categories beyond that. If I was adding a pigeon-hole for Darren, it might be the 'quirky' hole. There's a intricate humour and rich tapestry to many of the word-pictures and stories that find there way in Darren's songs that are both endearing and self-deprecating (interesting how often one of those attributes triggers the other).

To give you some idea where Darren fits into the Australian music pantheon...the answer is: somewhere. Each of his 14 albums/EPs have racked up around 10,000 sales.

After dinner on Saturday night, Darren and I caught up for a two-and something hour conversation about a bunch of stuff that become the guts of this June edition of The Cacophony Interviews. Darren was happy to step up to the Cacophony plate and I was happy to do some pitching.

C: Right off the bat, what brings you to New Norcia?

DH: A bit of a whim really. I've been up to my ears in music administration gear for the last few months and I wanted to move from an admin head space to a writing head space. A change of location helps.

(complete with some dodgy details, here's how the Courier Mail reported it)

C: Sure, but New Norcia? You're from Gympie in Queensland aren't you?

DH: I grew up in Gympie, but I've been living in Sydney for a few years now. And New Norcia? Well, it's a bit of a story. My first choice was Prague but the money wasn't there to get that far away. A year or two back I was touring Australia with my band. When we got to Perth a friend gave me a call from Meekatharra. She's a teacher up there and she was hoping we might be able to come and sing for the kids. We obliged and headed for Meeka. On the way we drove through New Norcia. I remember thinking as we drove through that we'd just barged in on some movie set with all these Spanish buildings in the middle of the countryside. It stuck in my memory as a great place to come back to. And here I am...slightly more affordable than Prague.

C: Is there a spiritual context for you to be paying a visit to a Monastery?

DH: I grew up in Gympie as an altar boy. I was in church Saturday and Sunday morning. I don't go to church these days, but I love the tradition of it all. It brings back a whole lot of memories for me.

C: What stopped you?

DH: Well, I think I just stopped getting much out of it. I still go to church now and then. Often when I'm touring I'll go along to the church of the country town where I am. A while back the church I grew up in made some renovations to make it more modern. I didn't like that much. I thought that was missing the point thinking that a better building would draw a bigger crowd. I think I got a bit disenchanted with it all. I find I'm more spiritual away from the church then inside it.

Having said all that, I love liturgy. I find it quite hypnotic. I have to confess, I've got some great ideas for songs while being transported by the hypnotic effect of the liturgy!

C: How does Jesus fit into the picture?

DH: I think I regard him as more of a feeling than a person. There's often a spiritual theme or element within a lot of my songs, but I'm not hammering it at all.

C: What are the dominant stomping grounds for your lyrics?

DH: The usual stuff I guess. Girls...personal politics...Australiana and country towns, friends and incidents, tributes and encouragements.

C: Do you follow a rigorous process in your songwriting or is it more organic?

DH: It's not really a formula or necessarily a natural progression. I'll often develop a groove and work from there. I often write in multiples and can have a few songs going at any one time. Often, as I'm working on one, the framework, basis, or chorus for another can fall out. I think you the act of giving attention to the process of songwriting puts you in the path of more songs.

C: You seem to have a great affinity with country Australia. Fair call?

DH: For sure. I love escaping to towns and cities. There's a richness in the character of country towns and the folks that live in them that is often missed in the larger cities. A lot of my friends are envious that I come back from touring with such interesting stories or people I've met along the way. I think it's more that I tour in places where there are a whole lot of interesting people.

(Hanlon's most recent album, Fingertips and Mountaintops, features pianist and trumpeter Cory Gray as well as Shins drummer Jesse Sandoval. It was recorded almost entirely at the charming old Majestic Theatre in Pomona in rural Queensland.)

C: You don't just visit country towns either...you get around don't you?

DH: Yeah, we've played in lots of Eastern European countries. Estonia, Latvia...and some of your more traditional European cities.

C: Estonia? What do they think they're coming to?

DH: They're just mad keen Australian pop-music fans. To an extent they're coming because I'm from Australia but, over time, you get a following as well.

C: Are there many at the shows?

DH: We regularly play to 500+ in places around Estonia and Latvia so it's a fair crowd. There's a bunch of Aussie musos who now tour that circuit. We'll probably crowd out the market soon, but there's been a neat little niche for us all because of how many of us have toured around there.

C: Do you get recognised much around the place?

DH: Nah - a couple of times in places like Paris and London or New York, an Australian might recognise me but I'm really not that much of a big deal.

C: Are you ambitious?

DH: Yeah. Not in that I want to be famous and earn millions, but in that I love the exciting life of adventure that is touring, traveling and playing around the place.

C: Is there a dream?

DH: This is it really. The whole moving from town to town and city to city playing my music. You can keep the whole music admin thing - that's not part of the dream - but the regular rhythm of playing gigs and interesting places, that's more like it.

C: I read somewhere that you're a fellow fan of the Moleskine...

DH: A huge fan. I'm a notebook geek. I just like carrying them around. Sometimes I find them too sacred to write in so I use Spirex notebooks for lyrics and lists and stuff. But Moleskines, they're beautiful.

(What proceeded was a homage to the Moleskine Notebook...but you've heard it all before on this site so I'll spare you.)

C: I heard you talking this morning about your friend who has sold a bunch of records and her experiences in the music industry.

DH: We were talking about staying independent or going to the big label. From my point of view, being independent is a great way to go. I live with a girl called Sarah Blasko who's on a major label, so it's good to see the differences. She's doing amazingly well - she's got a really good deal. But I'm friends with a lot of people on other labels and basically they're not seeing any money and it's very hard to make a living because, from what I've heard, the record company will charge you for everything and it's a difficult road to take. Then again, you become famous instantly. Whereas if you're independent, you own everything and one of the great things is that you don't owe anyone any money. So even though I don't have the money to make a $30,000 video clip or spend a lot of money on recording, at the end of the day if I sell cds, the money's mine and I don't owe any big label. The other good thing about Australia is that a lot of our big bands are independent. John Butler, The Whitlams and The Waifs are all independent and have all got where they are from hard work.

I've just got all my stuff up on iTunes too.

C: How does that work?

DH: I'm still working it out really. I used to be with an indie label called Candle Records but they've recently folded - hence all the admin. Apple just have the normal royalty deal - it's simply another avenue for getting your music out there. I've got a whole heap of papers I need to sign and stuff. Admin...

C: Has coming New Norcia helped you get away from all that?

DH: Pretty much. The internet connection in the Guesthouse Library has been a Godsend. With a tour coming up, there's a constant need for communication for locking in dates and gigs around the place. I actually got an email tonight from a mate who's touring around Europe when I'll be there and wants me to do some supports with him. It's been good to have that internet lifeline here to keep the ball rolling.

C: Out of interest, how do you go with vocal health?

DH: Hmmm...not too bad. I got pretty sick - actually, really sick just before my last tour and had to cancel the whole tour.

C: What happened?

DH: I started getting these fevers and pains in the chest. I just wrote it off to start with, but they got worse and worse. One night, while I was at home with my folks in Gympie, it just started to get worse. I'm not one to make much of a deal but I said to parents that I thought I'd better get to a hospital—the pain was unbearable. We went to the hospital in Lismore and they sent me on to Prince Charles Hospital in Brisbane. I still remember being wheeled in to the hospital and the nurses seeming more interested in whether I was the Darren Hanlon who sung 'Punk's not dead' than whether or not I was staying alive. It was a blessing that Prince Charles is one of the foremost coronary care hospitals in the country because the doctors said that I was not long off a serious/fatal heart attack.

C: What was it?

DH: They did a bunch of tests without finding out too much. It's some form of auto-immune disease and it absolutely wiped me out. It wiped out a tour and it delayed the recording of the album in a big way. I remember in May 06 I was back into Royal Prince Alfred Hospital in Sydney because I had fluid on my lungs as a result of the condition. I'd been pretty lousy and had been in a hospital bed for 3-4 days. Problem was, I was supporting Lior at the Enmore Theatre and I couldn't cancel - I really needed the money from that gig to survive. It was a good paying gig. I told the doctors I had to do the gig. They thought I was crazy but said if I left for the soundcheck/gig and came straight back to my bed, they'd look the other way. When I got there I told them to turn off the smoke machines because I couldn't breathe with them on. I survived the soundcheck but just before I was about to go on some friends came out the back where I was struggling to get up to tell me that there was heaps of smoke machine action. I went ballistic at them and told them (not so gently) they'd be get them off or they were going to have a dead guy on their hands. I survived the gig (just), got back to hospital and got paid.

C: How is it now?

DH: Well, after a while they tried steroids which had some pretty bizarre side effects. I was awake for about three days and had one of my most prolific stretches of songwriting ever, but I wanted to get off them as soon as I could. They certainly helped though. Along the way, a natropath told me going of pretty much all sugar would be a big help as well. They were right, so it's no beer for me anymore (which is a bugger, 'cause I love beer). Laura Imbruglia told me around the same time that Daniel Johns had got a lot of benefit for his reactive arthritis condition by getting heaps of Omega-3 from fish. I now eat plenty of tuna and different fish and it seems to be keeping it under control. It's an ongoing thing though...

C: So, with the health pretty much under control a cliché question: where do you see yourself five years from now?

DH: Hopefully making records of integrity or doing something creative. Most likely doing what I'm doing today.

C: Thanks for talking mate. You've got a big gig tomorrow. Better get a good night's sleep.

DH: Yeah - it's a bit weird. It's certainly my first gig in a monastery. I'm a bit nervous. What do I play?

C: Whatever you want!

DH: Do you even know where I'm playing?

C: No, but I'm sure it'll be fun

(Darren played to a packed room of about 30 people; curious on-lookers, bewildered monks and a couple of people who occasionally tapped their feet. It was fun for sure.)

Darren's Touching Elbows Tour comes to Mojos (237 Queen Victoria St, North Fremantle) this Saturday, June 16. You can buy your tickets right here.

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A footnote: I read in the music press over the weekend that Darren plans to record his next album at New Norcia based on his experience at the monastery.