radionotes podcast episodes

Mick Lindsay is so passionate about music that he started his own music festival and shares in this chat how it relates to one of their other big passions high in the sky.

Mick spoke to John Murch of radionotes

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IMAGE CREDIT: Supplied

Singles included Drink About You, Afterparty and If You’re Sleeping the last one there includes Brittney Hockley from the Life Uncut podcast in the music video clip.

SHOW NOTES: Mick Lindsay

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In The Box:

Feature Guest: Mick Lindsay

Next Episode: Cynthia Tauro

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[Radio Production – notes: ]

CREDITS

Theme/Music: Martin Kennedy and All India Radio   

Web-design/tech: Steve Davis

Voice: Tammy Weller  

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TRANSCRIPT

First version provided by REV team member Tanya H – check to audio before quoting wider

John Murch:
Mick Lindsay. Thanks very much for joining us on radionotes.

Mick Lindsay:
Hey John, how are you?

John Murch:
Absolute pleasure to join you. These film clips that you’ve been doing for the up and coming album, “Drink about you”, as well as “If You’re Sleeping”. I’m sure “Afterparty” has one on the way as well. How’s it been working with such delightful talent?

Mick Lindsay:
Filming music videos is kind of, it’s where the story of the song really sort of comes to life. It’s a whole other ball game. I used to hate it because I hate acting and hate being kind of in it and have to be all posey and stuff, but it’s slowly gotten a little bit more comfortable. But it’s really cool, the amount of different people that you get to work with. We had a film crew come up from the Central Coast. Brittany, as you said before, was the model in one of them and we literally just got a model one time off Facebook. We just said, “Hey, who wants to be in a music video?” So it’s really fun shooting videos.

John Murch:
It’s so much like the nineties, but back in the day it was more Myspace. What were we doing before Myspace? I guess ICQ. It was all text.

Mick Lindsay:
I completely forgot about MySpace until you mentioned it just then, but that was the thing, wasn’t it, and you had your top friends or whatever. I’ve just downloaded TikTok actually, speaking of social platforms and I’m just starting to get the gist of what it’s about and I’m trying to think of good ideas to make a TikTok.

John Murch:
What is your favorite social media platform and why?

Mick Lindsay:
I used to be mainly just on Facebook. It was my main thing and I was kind of a bit hesitant to jump on Instagram and I’m, “Oh, it’s just going to be one of those fad things and Facebook’s still going to be the staple”. But now I’m right into the Instagram, but then you see all these TikTok’s on Instagram and then you’re like, “Oh, that looks fun”, all these different dance moves. I dragged my mum and dad. I was meant to be going to America, but all this Coronavirus thing and I’m glad I’m in Australia to sit it out. I ended up cruising back to Toowoomba in Queensland to my parents house and I thought I’ll spend a couple of weeks here and it’s been really fun, but I dragged them into a TikTok dance together. I haven’t posted it yet, but it was pretty funny watching the old man trying to dance.

John Murch:
You’ve said just there, a couple of moments ago, that you weren’t so keen on music videos because of image really and Instagram is all about the image. How do you balance that as a musical performer who’s on that platform because you have to show yourself. You can’t just do your best photography of the day.

Mick Lindsay:
Yeah, totally. I’m always caught in a bit of a hard balance between, because I… have you heard of the Vipassana?

John Murch:
The pashioner. Are we now talking about something that happened last weekend, the Easter?

Mick Lindsay:
Vipassana is a meditation, but it basically dissolves your personal brand and stuff and it dissolves ego and everything, but to be on, posting about yourself and what you’re up to and you, you, and it’s just a constant conflicting kind of philosophy, I guess. So I love, I’m actually loving the isolation time and having some time to just catch up on a few jobs and not have to go out and be that social. I’m a bit of an introvert when I’m not actually performing.

John Murch:
What is it about flying that gets you so excited?

Mick Lindsay:
My parents, well my dad and half of my family are all pilots. So from a very young age of being kind of cruising around with dad and he’s a mechanic and a pilot, so he flies out to fix tractors and fix trucks and stuff based out of Toowoomba. So I guess I’ve done hundreds of hours in a plane, but I always used to get sick. I used to get air sick every time we went up. Dad would just have to have all these sick bags and he’s like, “Surely not going to be sick to today?” and it’s like the smoothest flight ever and I’m still getting sick, but yeah, he’s always tried to get me into aviation. I’m like, “Nah, I just love playing music and that’s all I feel like doing.” But in the last couple of years he bought a little plane, a little Cessna 150, which is like a trainer sort of plane. Very slow and very floaty sort of plane.

Mick Lindsay:
I ended up sort of having a bit of a go at that and got an instructor and I was like, “Oh, this is actually really, really fun”. I loved it. So I’ve just been spending a fair bit of time getting a few more endorsements and I started in RAAus and got converted over to GA and just got a constant speed retractable and going for my PPL hopefully in the next week or two. Slowly continuing an aviation journey. I don’t plan on taking it up as a career or anything. I just love flying.

John Murch:
For some people they used to get car sickness, but as soon as they’re in the driver’s seat, once they had control of where they were going, the sickness goes away. Is that happening with you at all?

Mick Lindsay:
Yeah, totally. It’s amazing. The difference between actually having the stick and actually being in control. Yeah, you don’t actually get anywhere near the amount of motion sickness because you know what’s happening.

John Murch:
What’s front of mind when you are behind the stick in the air?

Mick Lindsay:
I guess safety. That’s the biggest thing you need to constantly think of and just be really accurate with all your numbers when you’re landing and everything. Like it’s a… Dad does it without thinking. He’s just cruised in and can land a plane in whatever weather, but there’s a lot of concentration and a lot of different little things going on. It could you your life if you’re just a bit blase and you don’t have the experience, so I’m constantly just in full concentration mode and I just turn my phone off and don’t have any distractions. I follow a few pilots on Instagram and stuff now and they’re all just making phone calls and chilling out and doing all the radio calls so smoothly and I’m like, “Ah, I can’t wait to get to that level of competence I guess, where you can sort of just be a little bit more relaxed and enjoy it a bit more.” But at the same time, that’s how accidents happen when you get complacent. So at the moment the safety is on my forefront.

John Murch:
Sounded like you’ve got a pretty small plane, which I’m sure it doesn’t help with motion sickness as well, but what would I know. What kind of planes have you flown over the years and which one has been the most impressive for you as someone in a plane who knows they were going to eventually take control of a plane?

Mick Lindsay:
So dad flew a Cessna 182 for most of his flying career over the last 20, 30 years. So that’s probably the time that I’ve spent most in, but I learnt in a Pioneer 300 and then I did my navigation endorsement in a Sling which is a really popular two seater little light aircraft and then I’ve done some stuff in a Cessna 150 with dad and then I just got a Constant Speed Retractable Endorsement in a Sting which is a carbon fiber plane. It’s a really fast little two seat plane that’s really economical. Yeah, they’re from Italy or somewhere.

Mick Lindsay:
I want to fly a six seat Cessna 210. That would be my goal because there’s a lot of gigs that I play in the middle of nowhere, like out near Birdsville and what not and to get out there, to drive out there and take all the sound gear out, is two days out and then you do a two day gig and then two days back and what not. But yeah, just the efficiency. If you’ve got another gig booked in and sometimes they’re no flights you can catch, and it’s like, well, we could actually be doing so many more gigs if we could get to all these places more efficiently because there’s so many kilometres between them.

Mick Lindsay:
We’ve had to charter a few flights, which seems a bit crazy. If I’d thought of that when I started playing guitar, that I was going to be flying places and chartering planes or something, it seems extravagant, but it’s just logistically the only way to get to some places and make some gigs happen. So to be able to take my whole crew and everything and fly ourselves out there just in a six seat plane, which is a tour manager, sound guy and a four piece band. We’re always trying to figure out where this other person, someone has to drive out there because we could only take six people and one of them had to be the pilot. So I’m like, well, I’m going to finally learn how to fly a plane so we can all just cruise out and do gigs.

John Murch:
I’m imagining also as part of that, so that you actually are awake and alert for the gig obviously and the return flight, that sounds like a really good solid three, four days in a small country Australian town.

Mick Lindsay:
It is good to go out to different towns and spend a little bit of time there. I guess the idea of trying to fly out and fly back is, you’re in and out pretty quickly and you can actually be at another gig. But there’s kind of nothing better actually if you’ve got nothing else on, and I’ve done a lot of solo touring over the years of just going for a drive and not coming home for two months kind of thing. Just like, “Oh, I’ve got two weeks to get to this gig in Townsville and I’ll just take my time getting up there.” Then I need to be in Birdsville 10 days later and it’s pretty cool just cruising out and driving. But once you’ve got a band and everyone’s got their life and they’ve got wives and kids and jobs and all that sort of stuff, they can’t just disappear off the face of the earth for a month and go play music kind of thing. So some of the trips with the band needs to be really sort of short and sharp unfortunately, but it’s very constant balance.

John Murch:
The Backroad Bash Music Festival. I believe it’s your baby in some way, if not in a big way.

Mick Lindsay:
Yeah. The idea actually sort of came about, I wanted to do a hometown gig. A lot of the larger festivals and events that I’ve played at all over the place, I’ve done about 30 countries now, nearly none of them have actually been in my hometown of Toowoomba and I’ve got so many family and friends here. I was like, “Ah, it would be really good to put on an event or do something bigger than just playing at the local pub for a home coming show I guess, or whatever.”

Mick Lindsay:
So yeah, I ended up booking a really cool venue and booked my sound guy in and we had all these sound and lights and we had a big marketing plan on how we’re going to put the word out that we’re doing a hometown show and all that. We’re like, “Oh, we need a support band or something, yep.” We booked one band, two bands, and then we were like, “Oh, well, why don’t we, we’ve got the sound there, so why don’t we just book another one?” So we ended up booking nine acts and we’re like, “Well, we’ve got a music festival now.” So we came up with a name, it kind of just transformed into a music festival where we’re like, well, we’ll just give it a crack. The first year we actually covered our expenses actually, which is a bit crazy really.

John Murch:
A bit unheard of.

Mick Lindsay:
Was not expecting. Yeah, I was really expecting, I’m like “We’re so going to lose so much money on this and it’s such a bad idea. Why don’t I just do a smaller show? Why don’t I just go play at a pub and get paid?” But it turned out really cool because a lot of people came out and it was something really different for the local community I guess.

Mick Lindsay:
So we’ve just put our third year on, but we had crazy droughts over the last five or 10 years, but we just had a one in a hundred year flood in Toowoomba as well. All the towns were cut off on the day of the event this year. So there was still a few hundred people there which was cool, but there was I think hundreds of tickets of people that just couldn’t make it unfortunately. So it was a bit of a rough year this year, between the fires and floods and Coronavirus it’s been a bit of a start to 2020.

John Murch:
Did notice on a happier note, stalking the Insta, that Strathalbyn, speaking about South Australia, for which I am currently in.

Mick Lindsay:
The Lower Lakes Challenge in Strathalbyn just outside of Radelaide. I’ve never played a gig in South Australia before until I played that last year and it was such a good time. There was so many new faces there and it’s basically like a stockmen’s challenge where everyone comes out and competes on horses and there’s all food vans and it’s just run by the local community. They ended up getting some entertainment in and we got a stage in and put a show on. I think that’s the first time they had live music there of a larger format with bigger sound gear and stuff. Yeah. It was really, really fun.

John Murch:
So you’re a bit of a whiskey drinker are you?

Mick Lindsay:
Never really drank beer. I never grew up around anyone that really ever drank much beer or anything. It was just always a quiet rum or a quiet whiskey or something like that. But I was drinking, I think Jim Beam for the longest time in Australia and then I ended up going to Nashville and spending a lot more time there and they’re like, “Man, you can’t be drinking a Kentucky whiskey in Tennessee. You need to be drinking the Tennessee whiskey, which is Jack Daniels.” So yeah, I’ve been converted to Jack Daniel’s. Gone and saw the distillery a few times.

John Murch:
You’re missing Nashville aren’t you at the moment with everything that’s going on?

Mick Lindsay:
I’ve got a few buddies there that I’m still talking to, but it’s really not a great time in America at the moment from what they’re telling me. So it’s probably a good time to be in Australia, but I do miss songwriting and recording and catching up with all my buddies in Nashville. One of my best friends in Nashville actually just got pneumonia around this whole COVID saga and just absolutely coincidentally got pneumonia and was sick for the longest time and he tested negative to Coronavirus, which is really random.

John Murch:
Let’s talk about fitness because I know you’re a bit of a, not a junkie, but you are very much into fitness. What is it about fitness and Mick Lindsay?

Mick Lindsay:
Never been right into a gym junkie or anything like that. I just really value health and maintaining a base level of fitness at least. Really random, I always wanted to do a fitness camp at some point and I had a month off about a year ago and I ended up going over to Thailand and doing a four week fitness intense training course. I was doing Brazilian Jiu Jitsu and Muay Thai and weights training, speed and agility, yoga, meditation and all different… it was like really interesting learning about so many different types of fitness, but it definitely melted away a little bit of a layer of winter fat or whatever you might call it.

Mick Lindsay:
It’s amazing the transformation the human body can make in, even in two weeks the difference was incredible. By just eating the right foods and I suppose getting more knowledgeable on what foods are actually doing what to your body and seeing it actually work. To dedicate a whole month of just life to go and learn that and see the difference. I try and keep a relatively active kind of outdoorsy feel going.

John Murch:
When you came back, did that change, one would think it would have, your daily routine of how being fit was part of a daily routine?

Mick Lindsay:
I went from working out or doing whatever exercise for about five hours a day, sometimes six hours a day and it was pretty intensive, straight into family Christmas. It was like all this unhealthy food or just, not even unhealthy, but just really heavy. Lots of just meat and bread and heavy Christmasy food that you get. All the sweets and I think I lost it reasonably fast, but I never really lost that fitness. Your body sort of… every time I think I’m unfit and then I go for a run with somebody that is fit, they’re like, “Oh man, I can’t keep up” and I’m like, it’s cool, but if you just do a little bit every day or do a little bit even every week, but if you can just maintain that base level of fitness, it helps you out with everything that you do in your life.

John Murch:
Mick a couple of singles have now been released. I get the vibe that there is an album either in the vault or nearly ready to go. Can you talk us through where the future Mick Lindsay album is at?

Mick Lindsay:
Yeah. So I think at the moment I was planning to, this last Nashville trip that I was going to do, I was going to record the other half of the album, but because that’s not happening now. Maybe late 2020 we’ll be able to record the other songs that I’ve got. We do have from the first recording trip, a six song EP kind of planned out and I was hoping to make it an album, but I think we’re going to have to release it as an EP and we’ll have another single coming out relatively soon. I’ve actually just been, now that I’m in sort of isolation, I’ve been mucking around with some of the songs and working out some loop set ups and some acoustic versions and stuff. So probably about half a day away of posting, I guess, acoustic live looping version of “Afterparty” which is really interesting actually. I’m really happy with how it came out. I’m playing with Novation and Logic and Ableton Live and learning all these programs and stuff, but it’s a new version of “Afterparty” I guess that I’ve worked out.

John Murch:
John Mayer released four EP’s and put them together as an album. So that’s a possibility as well, maybe.

Mick Lindsay:
Yeah. Well I might even release a couple of EP’s and throw them together as a compilation album. Yeah. That happens all the time. It’s amazing how many different strategies there are to release music when you start looking at how all the major label US artists release music. It’s like, I thought I heard that song like two or three years ago and it’s on their brand new album kind of thing, but it’s kind of cool that you’re already familiar with some of the songs on the album and it makes you want to listen to the newer ones that have just come out on the album. So yeah, I think that’s kind of how this will have to go this year.

John Murch:
Then you throw into the mix that they do covers and you have to do that deep dive of trying to figure out where the original first appeared from an artist from many, many decades ago. Actually on that, what’s your favorite cover to do live?

Mick Lindsay:
Most musicians would hate me for saying it, but “The Horses” is actually one of my favorite songs of all time anyway and I guess most musicians have got that requested a thousand times every show. So they’re like, “Oh my God, get away from “The Horses” kind of thing”. But it’s actually a really great song and it was originally written and recorded by Rickie Lee Jones and then Daryl Braithwaite, the story that I’ve heard, he was on the way to the studio and it was his last… he had to do one more song for this album and the producer was like, “All right, well let’s not spend too much time on it. What did you want to do?” and he’s like, “Oh, I’ve got this cover of “The Horses”.”

Mick Lindsay:
And they’re like, “Okay, well let’s get a chick to sing on it” and the female artist that was in the music video for that song, wasn’t actually the singer, she was just a model because the actual singer was over in Europe trying to make a career and was like, “Oh, I won’t spend much time and I won’t fly back for the music video, it’s just to back track kind of thing.” Then it just became a huge hit. So I ended up in Nashville recording a cover of that a couple of years ago and releasing my own version of it and like “The Horses 2.0” kind of version. Yeah. That’s probably my favorite cover to play.

John Murch:
What are you looking forward to in the next six months? I know a lot isn’t happening at the moment.

Mick Lindsay:
Since I’ve been home for a few weeks, I’m really enjoying kind of helping the family out with different jobs and helping my sister landscape her house. I’m not normally around for this family stuff because I’m always on the road or overseas and missing out on birthdays and all sorts of events. So I think the biggest thing is family time and even…

Mick Lindsay:
I’m a chippie by trade and I was telling my dad that I remember the day I decided that music was going to be a full time thing and I was putting insulation batt’s up in a roof in like 45 degree heat thinking “You know what, that guitar thing doesn’t seem so bad.” Sweating it out all itchy in a jumper in a ceiling and I’m like, “I’m going to give you this guitar thing a go. That’s more fun.” Then dad said, “Oh, actually I’ve been meaning to put some batt’s up in the roof. Do you want to give me a hand?” and I was like “Ah, why not.” So just doing odd jobs and having some fun with mom and dad and my sisters and niece and nephew and the extended family and what not.

John Murch:
Nothing wrong with being a chippy, but does that job keep you focused on the music when you’re doing it, that there is this other job, but…

Mick Lindsay:
I haven’t had to go back to it yet, but it was a consideration for 2020 because I wasn’t sure what we were going to do, obviously, with no gigs or no public gatherings, that’s how most musicians make all their money. So there’s about 15 other different income streams, including royalties and merchandise and CD sales and all that sort of stuff, but it really only makes up 5% or so of a normal musician’s kind of wage.

Mick Lindsay:
So with live performance gone, I was thinking, “Oh, maybe I could finish this flying thing a bit quicker and try and get a job as a pilot or hammering in nails.” My drummer is a chippy by trade as well so I was thinking of hitting him up for a few days here and there, but we’ve worked out a way to get through it and we’ll be focusing on music more. I’m really looking forward to producing different versions of my original music and releasing more covers and I guess trying to be a bit more active on social media and yeah, I suppose engaging a little bit more, because I’m a little bit of a home body and introvert. Between the flying and family time and the music that’s how I’m going to keep myself entertained. Up skilling.

John Murch:
Mick Lindsay, thanks very much for joining radionotes.

Mick Lindsay:
Thanks so much for having me along.