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Finally after three solid years of traveling, Melbourne based singer/songwriter Jack Carty is on the verge of releasing some more indie-folk goodness. His third full-length album “esk” is set to drop September 26th.
GroundSounds recently caught up with Jack to talk about his upcoming album, musical inspirations and more, check out the exclusive interview below!
For those who are just discovering Jack Carty can you tell us a little bit about your roots and how you got started with music?
I grew up in a tiny little country town in New South Wales, Australia called Bellingen. It’s about half way between Sydney and Brisbane on the east coast and wonderfully beautiful. A lot of hippies moved there from the bigger cities in the 1960’s, but it’s also a really fertile farming area, so it has a strange hybrid personalty thing going on. That’s where I first started listening to music, going to see live music and playing music. It was a great place for it, lots of creative people around and a small enough community that I felt ok about singing some of my own songs at the town markets at 15.
Can you tell us about the creative and writing process for your track “Be Like Water?”
I wrote Be Like The Water whilst on a big national tour of Australia launching a collaborative EP I made with a producer called “Casual Psychotic” last year titled “The Predictable Crisis Of Modern Life”. It was the second last show of the tour and we were playing an old hotel in a little coastal town called Bulli. It’s a regular stop on the Australian touring circuit and there have always been whispers going around that it is haunted. I think that influenced the sound a bit… It sometimes has a sinister tonality. The song is about the value in staying the course and steadily chipping away over time, like water eroding a mountain. I recorded half of it in my house in Melbourne because it was one of the last songs we recorded for “esk” and I only had enough studio time left to get the bass, drums, acoustic guitars and lead vocals down. That worked well in the end though, it meant I could work on layering and textures in a really relaxed and comfortable environment till it felt right.
Can you tell us about working on your upcoming album ‘esk’ and bringing it to fruition?
esk is my third full length album, it was the easiest to start and the hardest to finish but that is what makes it the best one yet. The songs were written over a period of about two years during which I toured pretty-much constantly and had no fixed address. We started tracking bass and drums way back in August 2013 and ended up recording twenty-two songs before finally settling on a track list. It wasn’t that I’m not really proud of the songs we cut, I am sure they will see the light of day sometime, I just wanted this record to be dynamic, and to sound big and to cover all sorts of lyrical ground whilst still having a unifying theme. Because I was travelling so much, we recorded in short blocks of a few days here and there and then (like I mentioned earlier) towards the end of the process I took all the sessions home and recorded things like electric guitars, harmonies, shaker, tambourine, claps and glockenspiel in my bedroom. I wrote a song with Josh Pyke for the album, which was incredible because he has been a favourite songwriter of mine since high school, and I was also lucky enough to write and duet a song with Katie Noonan, who has one of the most incredible voices I’ve ever heard.
What inspired the album title ‘esk’?
There is a river in Tasmania called The Esk River…It always blows my mind how beautiful it is down there. I wrote a love song about/around it, which is on the record. When it finally came to naming the album as a whole I liked that “esk” wasn’t too prescriptive, it lets the mind wonder but it still has vague ties to things here and there.
When you have spare time, how do you relax? Do you have any hobbies?
What music are you currently listening to?
Right this very moment I am listening to Conor Oberst’s “Upside Down Mountain”. He is one of the most incredible lyricists I have ever heard, he seems a lot more settled/happy on this album but the songs are as good as ever. I’ve also been listening to a lot of old-school Justin Timberlake recently, I was 15 when “Justified” came out and I missed the whole thing because my little sister liked it and in my angry-teenager phase at the time that pretty-much meant I just ignored it. Glad I finally came around though, it’s so intelligently put together.
You have been traveling for 3 solid years, what has it been like and what do you enjoy most about being on the road?
I can’t remember as much of it as I should… which is a bit of a worry. I have really vivid memories of specific shows and places, but the overarching narrative of it all feels a bit like a blurry dream. It’s been amazing to see so many different parts of the world, and to have met so many interesting and talented people. It’s been very humbling too, because the high’s are so high and the lows are so low that I’ve had to try to learn how to keep an even keel about the whole thing and just keep working. The thing I enjoy most about being on the road (and about life in general) is playing music and meeting other like minded people who love it like I do.
What is one thing every visitor should see or do in Australia?
Australia is a big place! It’s a hard ask to pick just one thing… I’d have to say go and see/SCUBA Dive The Great Barrier Reef. It’s in all sorts of trouble at the moment because of coral bleaching and an introduced pest called the Crown Of Thorns Starfish, so It’s shrinking every year. But it is the largest coral reef in the world and breathtakingly beautiful.
Can you tell us about the inspiration for your track “Honey, Do You Know The Way Back Home?”
Honey, Do You Know The Way Back Home? was written during a 27 date Australian tour directly off the back of a trip to The U.S.A to play SXSW and some shows around California in March 2013, which came directly off the back of some summer festivals and a tour with Justin Townes Earle. So, it was really inspired by exhaustion and loneliness and distance and the effects that can have on the more normal day-to-day elements of life. This was one of those songs that felt like it wrote itself, I was just there to commit it to paper.
After the album is released what’s next? What can fans look forward to?
The album comes out on September 26 and I’ll be touring it throughout Australia and New Zealand till mid-December. We’ve got European dates confirmed for the new year and hopefully some North American dates too, so chances are wherever you are, if you wanna come say hi we will see you soon.
http://www.jackcarty.com/
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