Courtney Barnett: Ready To Rock (Interview)

Australian musician and songwriter Courtney Barnett looks to be one of the highlights of this month’s Laneway Festival. Already the Melbourne-based rocker has started her own label, Milk! Records, had her song Avant Gardener named best track of 2013 by Pitchfork and been named Best Guitarist this past December during the first annual AU Awards ceremony…plus she rocked the KIngs Arms in Auckland this past September. This is all before releasing her first proper full-length album. That hotly-anticipated album is now recorded and ready for release. The 13th Floor’s Marty Duda spoke to Courtney Barnett about her new album and what to expect at her Laneway show.

Click here to listen to the interview with Courtney Barnett:

Read a transcription of the interview here:

MD: I saw you at The Kings Arms here in Auckland in September. (Read The 13th Floor review of the Kings Arms show here) 

CB: Oh cool.

MD: Yeah, it was a great show. So you’ve been pretty busy since. You seemed really surprised that people were there, it was a sold out show and that people knew who you were.

CB: Yeah, well, people know me, it was incredible.

MD: And was it like that for the rest of the tour?

CB: Yeah, it was pretty good. You know, like the, so that was the first show, then we did Australia and I mean all the Australians shows were great. We kind of never done our own headline Australian tour, so that was pretty incredible and yeah…just going overseas and playing with so many, yeah, there’s people turning up to your shows, you know, buying your records.

MD: Right.

CB: It’s Important, a  special thing.

MD: I see you did a duet with Evan Dando, he’s going to be here in Auckland tomorrow and…

CB: Oh cool. Yeah, I played guitar in Jen Cloher’s band and we did a couple of shows with them, then he said he’d heard my cover. So we decided to do a version of it.

Watch Evan and Courtney perform Being Around: [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KwSLl8-9Idc]

MD: And I know you also recently recorded a version of The Breeders, Cannonball as well, is that right?

CB: Yeah, it’s 90s, 90s all around.

MD: 90s all around. Is that kind of the main place that you draw your influences from or it just happened to be?

CB: It’s kind of…sorry a fly just flew into my face…it’s kind of all over really, but for some reason those covers have all seemed to be from the 90s. But no, I mean I grew up in the 90s, so I kind of, I guess grew up listening to a lot of that stuff, but I get my inspiration from everything, all different genres and all different eras.

MD: Right, right. I think I read somewhere where they stated that Cannonball was kind of a starting port for recording your new album. Is there any truth to that, does that make any sense?

CB: Yeah, I think I said that somewhere. Yeah I think I just got the record on vinyl a couple of weeks before we went in the studio so I’d been really listening to it a lot.

MD: Right.

CB: And yeah. The morning I went into the studio, I played it real loud to get myself kind of pumped up.

MD: And so how is the new album coming along?

CB: Well it’s finally…we just got it mastered the other day, so it’s pretty much ready. it’s taken a while because we’ve been touring and it was kind of hard to get it all finished while we were on the road. But it’s gonna come out early next year and I’m really happy with it and I’m really proud of it and yeah, excited to show it to the world.

MD: Because usually when people put out their first album there’s not many expectations, they’re usually kind of recorded and released with very little fanfare because nobody knows who you are at this point. But that’s kind of different with your first album since there’s been so much excitement about what you’ve already done. So does that effect how you have approached coming up with this first album?

CB: Yeah, not really. It’s kind of there in the back of your head, but I try to, every time I thought about it, it just stressed me out. So I just felt, considering that, you know, just wrote songs and played them and did it how I would normally do it because that’s, you know, the point and the purpose of doing it and It’s really kind of more about pushing myself a little bit more as a song writer and I kind of messed around a whole lot with the songs and in the studio we kind of took them apart and just yeah. I didn’t, it’s more about the process of making music than about, you know, trying to please the people who were hopefully going to buy it. If you start thinking like that then you’re really on the wrong path.

MD: Right, right. I think when I saw you here in The Kings Arms you kind of took a lot of people by surprise because you’re much more, for a better term, rock and roll than the kind of, maybe they were expecting you to be a little more folky and whatever they had heard on previous records. Is that where the new record is kind of heading in that direction as well?

CB: Yeah, it probably is. I mean, yeah, I think it’s hard for me to recognize that sometimes because obviously, I’m me and I’m just doing what I’m doing.

MD: Right.

CB: Yeah. When I look at that and I listen to the record and then I listen to where we are now, I guess it’s quite a, you know, huge difference. But I think it comes from touring a lot and just getting more comfortable playing on stage and more comfortable with those songs and just finding like the band that I’ve got. When I did the first couple of EPs it was kind of always a different bunch of musicians cause’ I just kind of got friends from other bands to fill in for whoever was not on tour or whatever. But you know, now I’ve got my own band and we’re really kind of click as a group. So we kind of, you know, I think that makes a huge difference, you know.

MD: Right, right, and you, yourself are now an award-winning guitarist, if I’m not mistaken, is that right?

CB: Yeah. So someone says. I don’t know about that, but it’s a very nice sentiment

MD: When you approach your guitar playing, is there anyone in your mind that you kind of take queues from,  that you listened to as a guitar player over the years?

CB: Yeah its quite a lot of different people I guess like Sonic Youth is in there and kind of PJ Harvey I know I like The Drones a lot hopefully you know them.

MD: Right.

CB: They’ve been in America but they’re Australian.

MD: Yeah, yeah.

CB: Kind of Neil Young, I went to Crazy Horse last year and it just kind of blew me away but yeah again a very kind of, lots of different stuff.

MD: Yeah. Is the album going to be coming out on your own label again like your other stuff?

CB: Yeah, yeah. In Australia and New Zealand it will be Milk Records and then our other labels internationally, that would be pretty cool.

MD: I was wondering if you’d heard about the speech that Steve Albini did a few, I guess a couple of months ago.

CB: Yeah, yeah. I saw that.

MD: The Face The Music conference thing where he was talking about how the state of music is in great shape and all that. Do you kind of concur with his opinion or do you have an opinion of your own about it?

CB: I remember it was very long… (Read a transcription of Steve Albini’s speech here)

MD: Yes it was.

CB: I kind of remember, I remember agreeing to parts of it, you know, I like where he was coming from, but you know, I think the problem with the discussion about music and digital blah blah blah, all that stuff is that everyone is different and every musician is different and everyone are in different stages of their career, you know, have to face different things. Someone like him is well known and probably makes a lot of money selling music wherever.  He probably doesn’t need, you know, digital or doesn’t need to worry about things that maybe some more like up and coming bands do and blah, blah, blah. I just think everyone’s different and it’s hard to come up with one…people think you can kind of come up with one outcome that pleases everybody. But I definitely think that music is, what’s the word…it’s one part of this thing which now I’ve completely forgotten. I don’t think music should be free.

MD: Right.

CB: You know, I think it’s valuable. People put valuable time and effort into it and when it becomes free it loses its value and respect and yeah.

MD: I also wondered when I was reading that, you know, if you’re gonna give away your music, I mean where does that put people like session musicians, people who don’t go on the road and play, people who just are musicians how are they supposed to run a living at that point.

CB: Yeah.

MD: It’s not what they do, you know.

CB: Yeah.

MD: I don’t know, it seemed kind of flawed. I mean I kinda understood where he was coming from to a certain point but then it just kind of…

CB: Yeah. Me too and that’s what I mean like, it’s different for everybody.

MD: Yeah. So when you, you’re coming here to play in the Laneway Festival and…

CB: Yeah.

MD: So do you enjoy kind of being involved in a situation like that? Have you done many festivals?

CB: Well we’ve done a handful of festivals this year but it’s probably kind of really exciting because it’s kind of one of those, you know, the travelling kind of festival, It seems like it’s gonna be a lot of fun. You know, the same bands kind of doing a handful of shows together. Yeah, should be really, really exciting.

MD: And are there bands on the line-up that you’re kind of interested in ? Do you know who’s on the line-up?

CB: Yeah, I remember when I, off the top of my head, I can’t remember all of them. But I know that theres Matt Demarco and St Vincent and, oh there’s some other really cool ones that I’ve forgotten. Benjamin Booker’s coming, he’ll be great. But yeah, it’s a really great one.

MD: And do you tend to kind of get together with other musicians in situations like this and kind of compare notes or you know, just commiserate in general about music?

CB: Yeah, we kind of end up sitting around, most of the time as a musician is spent sitting around waiting for something to happen.

MD: Right.

CB: So yeah, you know, you definitely bond over those moments of stuff and good shows and bad shows, stories of people who are nice and people who are not nice.

MD: Gotcha.

CB: Have a little gossip session.

MD: Cause’ when you played in Auckland last time, I think it was just a one off show here in the city.

CB: Yeah.

MD: Are there plans to kind of cover more of the country at any point?

CB: Yeah, definitely. When we do the album, which would be probably a little bit later in the year, we’ll be touring the album. I definitely wanna see a bit more.

MD: So are you going to be playing some of the new stuff from the album during the Laneway thing?

CB: I reckon, yeah. I reckon we’ll do a little bit, yeah.

Click here for more info about the Laneway Festival.