The Bell Streets are a musical partnership of Nick Batterham (Blindside, The Earthmen) and Josh Meadows (The Sugar Gliders, The Steinbecks) who have combined to release their debut album – Monument.
Nick was kind enough to join John from their home studio for a chat for radionotes…
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IMAGE CREDIT: Ursula Woods
Singles from Monument (Popboomerang) are Fragile and Disappointment Town.
SHOW NOTES: The Bell Streets
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The socials… Instagram – Facebook – Twitter
Feature Guest: The Bell Streets’ Nick Batterham
- Bandcamp
- Instagram – Twitter – Facebook
- Fragile (Official Music Video)
- Whoever’s Been Using This Bed – The Earthmen (Official Music Video)
- Give Me Some Confidence – The Sugargliders (Audio – Youtube) – Furlough EP (Discogs)
- Barely A Glimmer – Blindside (Audio, that features the photography taken in laneway)
- Ursula Woods (Official Site)
- Disappointment Town (Official Music Video)
- Stay Connected – Broads album (Bandcamp)
- The Independent (Movie)
- RONE Empire – Stepping Into RONE’s Empire (Showcase)
- Empire – Nick Batterham (Bandcamp)
- The Shadow – Luke Howard Trio (Bandcamp)
- Nick Batterham (Official Site)
- Monument on Bandcamp – Apple Music – Spotify – GooglePlay
Next Episode: MAXO
- Won’t Let You Go (Official Music Video)
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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 Anna R – check to audio before quoting wider
John Murch:
Nick Batterham joins us on the line.
Nick Batterham:
G’day, John.
John Murch:
Firstly, I want to know, friendship, Turkish bread, peppermint tea and now a debut record. Does that sum up some of the story between you and Josh?
Nick Batterham:
I guess it does, the points along the way. It does come from a place of friendship with me being in The Earthmen. Josh was in The Sugargliders and The Steinbeck’s in the nineties and those bands and my bands, Blindside and The Earthmen, we were on the same label, Summershine Records. And we played shows together, toured together and all knew each other very well, even did backing vocals on each other’s records, that kind of friendshipy music thing.
Nick Batterham:
But we’d always talked about doing something together and I’ve always felt an affinity with Josh and was very pleased to find out was a mutual admiration society. And coming from that place, the idea of, “Oh it’d be a cool thing to make music together”, I just love his lyrics and I love his expression. He’s a very sensitive, gentle man and the music that he’s created has always been up there with my favorite music of all time.
Nick Batterham:
The Summershine single of the Sugargliders, the Furlough EP called Give Me Some Confidence, that song on seven inch is the first seven inch I ever bought. There’s all this love for the music and the man behind it, but actually coming to do something together, it feels a bit random that it did ever end up happening because that time of shared experience is long past for us. It was in the nineties that we were really bumping around together, but it had been something that we both had in the back of our minds, but I just put it to him, “Come and let’s do it”. I think he had been experiencing a bit of writer’s block or that sense of feeling a bit stale. I felt like, well, let’s see what we can do together.
John Murch:
One of the first seven inches I bought, which saved me from the heartbreak of my first ever relationship was this one right here by Blindside, which featured Plague and To Be Found was the other song. So thank you for this release on Summershine, SHINE 026 back from 1992. The reason why I also show you this is photography. Clearly back then, 1992, photography and imagery was important. Can I ask please, Nick and photography, when were you first interested in photography?
Nick Batterham:
Wow, what an unexpected twist, but I welcome it. I’ve always played down the visual side of making records because my name appears on the sleeve enough times without saying I’m doing the artwork too. Look I could be a really amazing artist. So there’s a shyness about it, but I think I got into it as a teenager around the same time that I got into playing guitar, 15, turning 16. I had an old Praktica SLR camera that had been my mum’s, I think, but Dad gave me some basics on what F stops are and how you set a basic exposure. It’s like anyone with that, I think just photograph things around the house and out in the garden and lots of pictures of birds and flowers and whatnot.
Nick Batterham:
But around the time Blindside was happening, which is the start of the nineties, I started an unfinished graphic design degree where we got to choose electives and the elective that became my major was photography. And because there was a dark room, like with music, my burgeoning music career at the same time, it just fit a path that I can see now everything’s related, me getting into black and white photography, there being a lab at the uni, to taking photos of my band mates.
Nick Batterham:
That single you raise has a picture of Hamish Cowan who is my co-songwriter in Blindside, picture of him that was out of a photo essay I did of a whole lot of pictures of him in a laneway in the city. And that laneway also is on the front cover of the Blindside album, Hopes Rise.
Nick Batterham:
I’ve kept doing that always through my own releases. There’s been elements in my own artwork and I like playing on Photoshop and doing layouts and I know a record’s finished when I then sit on it for two months while I’m kicking around with artwork on the computer and people would say, “Well, really does it matter whether the negative space there is black or white or grey. What’s it got to do with putting your record out.” But it’s actually a very enjoyable part of it.
John Murch:
You talk to us about that completion that that does give you, of having the right image for that record that’s just been produced and about to be released.
Nick Batterham:
There is definitely a sense of wholeness and whether it’s just being a megalomaniac or having to micromanage everything and having my imprint on all aspects, I think that’s of natural if you’ve got creative urges to follow them. It does have a sense of wholeness doing the visual aspect. So too with video clips, having concepts for video clips that then you can get someone else involved to actually make it, but having an idea of what visually works for the song is, yeah, it’s all part of the same expression I think.
John Murch:
Ursula Woods did the video clip or the music clip for Fragile.
Nick Batterham:
That’s one clip where I can gladly say, as all Ursula’s amazing talent. She is a friend I know through music. Her husband, Jethro, I play music with and I’ve known Ursula for quite a while. She came up to Melbourne and did a film shoot for us, for our promo pictures. She took shots of Josh and I walking around the woods at Mount Franklin. We had thought to do a clip that day and it just didn’t work out that way. And she said she had an idea for something that she could shoot herself down in Tasmania, where she lives. Yeah, the idea sounded really cool that it was really in the spirit of the lyrics of the song, which Josh wrote. And there’s an innocence somewhere in Fragile. There’s an innocence. Like I love Josh’s lyrics and it’s not completely clear what it’s about, but it feels to me like he’s singing to his child and about them growing and allowing them that, but wanting to protect them, but wanting them to just noticing how brave they are. That’s what it feels to me.
Nick Batterham:
Ursula’s take on it, filming these girlfriends, going on a road trip and having this delightful sense of wonderment of the natural world and just the innocence and joy of friendship. That’s another take on it, which is as good a read as any of what the song might be about. Ursula did spend a couple of days on it, with people that she knew through, I think a photography course. There was some sort of art course that people also in the course and she had been experimenting with Super 8 and whatnot with these people and shooting. She shoots quite a lot of underwater stuff she lives on the Huon. She’s done a lot of clips with people where she’s got an underwater element and the aspect of it being set in nature and it is at Eagle Hawk Neck down there that where they drive across. That whole area is just very scenic and beautiful. And yeah, I guess also appeals and ties into Josh and him living in Castlemaine. He’s every all nature boy, lover of the wilderness.
John Murch:
Are you a bit of a nature boy yourself?
Nick Batterham:
I am a bit of a nature boy. Yeah. Love and crave the wilderness, particularly the beach and a lot of family history of trips down to the beach as a child. And I still feel the call of the water. Like it’s got some centering healing force and I know some people are like the mountains and some people are like the sea. And I think I’m on the sea side of that divide. But yeah, I live in Pascoe Vale South on Bell Street. It’s about as urban as it comes. And I like it here. I like that nature is there to go, but that’s just not the way my life has gone so far.
John Murch:
Does it also make the heart grow fonder for nature, for that very reason?
Nick Batterham:
Quite probably. I mean, I have a dreams that I would live by the beach someday, but I probably am not the only person to feel that way. But yeah, I go down to the beach a couple of times a week, just for a walk and fitness down there.
John Murch:
Let’s talk about that idea of the space I believe that you’re currently in or nearby that Josh was welcomed into to make this very record. What was that feeling like? Inviting someone you admire so into what essentially is your own private space?
Nick Batterham:
Well, it definitely is a private space for me having a studio has come about through my own writing practice and teaching myself how to produce records. It’s just happened over 30 years, of starting on a four track cassette machine. So it’s definitely a private space and there is a real intimacy in writing something with someone and that process to this extent I haven’t done for a long time, since the nineties really, and yes, an aura of great respect and admiration that did make it I think nerve wracking for both of us. Josh thinks I’m all cool, calm and collected. Despite my monotone delivery, I’m usually bubbling over with all sorts of anxieties on the inside. Just amazingly good at yeah, wearing a mask that appears like I’m not falling apart. But I think we were both nervous and excited. The first session felt like, it’s maybe not going to work.
Nick Batterham:
I think it’s very hard, even writing by yourself to quieten your negative inner monologue and feel like what you’re doing is worthwhile or that it’s good even. And I think songwriting, but one of the things as an individual that it’s really rewarding for is there’s a meditative immersion about it, that in the process of doing it, you can work with that in a monologue or get past it in order to do something good or create anything, you have to allow ideas to gestate. You’ve got to give them time to become good and that’s by the thousand edits and decisions that happen on top of the most basic idea. So the first chord you strum either by yourself or writing with another person, it’s not the end of it all. It’s the beginning point and it might not even end up in the song. And I think for both of us, that process of it’s not insecurity so much, it’s being unsure, unsure of yourself and unsure of what is together that made us both a little bit unsure what we were doing was any good.
John Murch:
Somewhat of the flip side of that and I’m quoting something you’ve already said, but I’d like you to expand as much as you’d like, that idea and I quote. “Protection of a duo.”
Nick Batterham:
Absolutely. A freedom that comes from releasing yourself from your own shackles and confines. You build this personality almost and as a creative, you build an imagery around yourself. That is familiar. And if you can release yourself from that and say, “Well, I’m capable of making anything.” It’s a little bit like a society. Why do we choose the things that we make?
Nick Batterham:
I think Josh and I have got similar and overlapping tastes in things that have influenced us, a period of life, where we’ve made music through. And he’s an avid fan of so much music that I don’t know, but I think our sensibilities have got… There’s contrasting elements that work well together, but also, there’s probably more in common than there is that’s different. And because of that, I think very quickly working together, that sense that we we’re both able to come up with things that we wouldn’t usually come up with, that the collaboration brought out elements of ourselves that we otherwise would suppress, meant that very quickly, as soon as we had written a song, we could hear that, “Hey, this is cool.”
Nick Batterham:
And there’s enough positive reassurance of, “Love you, mate. Love you, mate. Yeah. This is awesome.” To feel like, “Wow, how am I to do this again?” That’s a snowballing feeling, the keenness to do it again and do something else, see what we come up with. I think even in solo songwriting, there’s an element of that, where you get on a roll and it’s a big problem solving puzzle that you feel like you can’t stop until you’ve at least got the edge pieces in place and you know what it’s going to look like. And these are the bits, these are the other ones, I’ve just got to finish it another day. There is an intoxicating thing of being on a path towards a finished thing, and you can see the light and you’re moving towards that. How that works with two people, it’s slightly different, but it’s incredibly rewarding process.
Nick Batterham:
And I think probably there’s a stage of life element as well to be open to it, not in a competitive, combative way of, “My chorus is better than your chorus. I don’t like your chorus or your lyrics are crass .” I mean, Josh, as I said, is very gentle and sensitive and we both, well, I’d like to think we’re both gentle and sensitive, but I think sometimes my gentle sensitivity would hit him like a steamroller. Whereas he would be more likely to just withhold encouragement for something that he didn’t like rather than put it down flat.
Nick Batterham:
Gentle manipulation, of us both massaging each other’s sensitivities to arrive at a point where we both think, “Wow, listen to this.” And we would finish a day. I’d burn a CD to listen to in the car and give Josh a lift to the train station to get a train back to Castlemaine in the evening.
John Murch:
Captive audience.
Nick Batterham:
Yeah. Well, two people sitting in silence, listening to themselves going, “Wow, we’re f—ing awesome. This is great.” So that is an intoxicating addictive thing to do. We really enjoyed making the record and through that, we developed a friendship that you can only have through how much you have to reveal of yourself, in order to write honestly, with another person. That’s been a blessing, unexpected.
John Murch:
On these numerous listens of the record, I’ve noted that Josh seemed to crack the code or at the very least shine a light into your own songwriting. Josh was the light to some shade that you had.
Nick Batterham:
Yeah. So I don’t know if I was quite ready for that aspect of it, particularly with things where in writing together, writing lyrics together is particularly challenging. And I think we fell into holes a bit with that. But I like the spring of an idea. Here’s some chords and a melody and I’m making some words that sound kind of like, Ooh, bugga bo and taking a seed of an idea and then crystallizing it into something, given in a meeting, Josh can craft lyrics and amazingly quickly that while I’m fleshing out the guitar parts and putting a beat down and so we’ve got a structure to sing to, he’s making lyrics that make sense. All the while, back to your original peppermint teas and Turkish breads, a huge part of the songwriting by yourself or with someone else is seeing inside, revealing yourself in some way. For me, that self expression is a bit why I’ve always done it, to say things that I’ve needed to say, or to get clarity for myself.
Nick Batterham:
So we learned a lot through our chats of the first hour or two, just hanging out and having some dinner and a cup of tea and what’s going on in our lives. I think that then got reflected in the songwriting and Josh writing lyrics that I felt were very personal to me that he’s taken a view of me that I couldn’t have of myself because it’s me. And that to me is very revealing. I wouldn’t want to spell that out for the listener to say, “Well, these lyrics mean this.” They’re ambiguous enough to be open to any interpretation and that’s beautiful writing on his part. To me, they’re songs that hit a definite nail on the head where he’s made my thoughts and feelings into a form where I can hear it and go, “Wow, you bugger. How dare you reveal me in a way I’m not prepared to reveal to myself or anyone else.”
John Murch:
And that’s why he used the crack the code analogy, a bit like a mastermind. He knew what colours you were in order of. So something the public might not know, but he knew it was red, yellow, blue, blue, yellow, green. And he was able to put that into a lyrical form for you to hear back. What sense of vulnerability did you feel listening to the lyrics that were about yourself?
Nick Batterham:
A great deal, but also incredibly touched and grateful feeling that I got to have that experience because that is a truly amazing thing, an amazing act of friendship as well. I think within our friendship, there’s a kindness and generosity to collaborating with someone on what is artistic expression. There’s a generosity in helping another person, even as an engineer or producer. There’s a giving in that that is really rewarding to work with people in the studio, to help them achieve their artistic vision. That’s a very satisfying job for me, but to do it as a collaborator in writing music together, there’s a mutual give and take of that. So I just feel like, what a wonderful experience to have. Yeah. Very grateful for that.
John Murch:
Now to the record and one of the tracks from it. Disappointment Town really touches that tension between disappointment and hope within something called a relationship. Now we’re not saying who’s of the two it is, but what a lovely place to be, talking about something, particularly in these times where people aren’t going out and escaping to other relationships they have with other people are stuck together.
Nick Batterham:
Yeah. It’s funny how timing works in that way. Josh is responsible for most of the lyrics and the concept of that being a relationship based duet. It’s one of the first things that we wrote musically and I had offered up the opening line of the melody of the verse that I came home and found my luck run out. My magic had lost its spell. It was a start. The idea of a song about disappointment called Disappointment Town, we’d had from the very start of writing and asked Josh what he wanted to write about. And he felt like this was a core theme of mature adult life as dealing with your expectations not being met or this is who you are? And this is who you are now and being at peace with that and your word journey. I think that journey to be okay with yourself, coming at that from the angle of disappointment, my opening line, that’s kind of like, “Hey, what’s up, baby? How come you don’t treat me so good no more?”
Nick Batterham:
He took that and in his way, made that, well, he’d like to hear the other side of that story. Who’s the one who is disenchanted and how do they feel about it? Because maybe they feel exactly the same way and who’s dropped the ball so to speak? Why do things go the way they do? And I think he wrote a beautiful piece. I was blown away when he came back the following week that it’s going to be a duet and had these parts that these are the two voices. And we started that by me continuing how I’d started the song. And he sang these interjecting parts. And the second verse is the partner’s point of view that luck has nothing to do with it, not a luck of out of luck situation. But the idea that there’s disappointments and immature relationship rides through those and is stronger for accepting that people have faults, people have problems that do or don’t get resolved.
John Murch:
Talking about that tension. And of course, through all that you would have been looking and you did find such a great other voice to get on board. In fact, you’ve got a Broad onboard. How does that come about?
Nick Batterham:
Well, we feel very grateful and lucky that Kelly Day is a good friend of mine and I worked on the last Broad’s record, Stay Connected. They’d done some tracking and then came here to continue the tracking. And then I mixed that record and so spent months of studio time with Kel in finessing that. And we were already friends. We played shows together with Broads and her solo playing shows that I’ve done. I guess, somewhere in that she asked me to play guitar with Broads when their record came out. I played a couple of shows with them, filling in, and Josh was really excited about it because I think aside from just being a fan, there’s just something in Kel’s voice, a little bit like an equal and opposite from my voice, having a world weariness tone that is matching in what the message of that song is and carries the feeling of that song very naturally.
John Murch:
It’s just that perfect voice of, we have been together for a couple of decades now. We have been there. No, you never put the washing out kind of voice.
Nick Batterham:
Yeah. We’ve made a record together. And that is effectively having a pressure cooker of a relationship. Talk about that intimacy and the amount you need to reveal of yourself, to work in collaboration. But certainly in the studio, when you record a singer’s vocals, particularly if it’s their own words, there’s an intimacy in that, that there’s a vulnerability that’s on display because you’re hearing this and their attempts at expressing their words in the best possible way they can record and helping them get to that. So I feel like the bond Kel and I have is very deep through a process of making music together. And now having shared so much about our personal lives, I think I’ve got a lifetime friend there. She’s the best.
John Murch:
Nick Batterham is our special guest on radionotes today. Let’s talk about him as a composer. 2007, did the film soundtrack for an Andrew O’Keefe film? Talk to me about when you were first interested in composing film music.
Nick Batterham:
At the end of the nineties, when the Earthman finished, I was at a little bit of a loss as to what to do because I hadn’t really defined my adult life to that point. And I hadn’t used that time to amass any practical skills to use in the outside world on being in a band. So it got used to at least having my main life, in the front of my life, being a sort of self expression. I was interested in film, interested in filmmaking, and I was very lucky to get into the Victorian College of the Arts film school, which is where I met Andrew O’Keefe. We were in the same year at film school and The Independent was his first feature film that he made, I guess that’s five or six years after we finished film school.
Nick Batterham:
But for me, that interest in film, I felt like when I was at film school, I was a bit of the naive artist that a lot of people who knew Cassavetes this and Fellini’s [inaudible]. I was like, yeah, I mean, Star Wars and Diehard and stuff. I’m playing more dumb than I am, but being part of someone’s expression, like with making a record, making a film is like making an album that’s 50 tracks long and involves a hell of a lot more people. I think there’s a high concept. There isn’t the immediacy that you go from making music and the element of sound and music in a film brings forward the emotion for the audience to simplify it. It gives you the emotional reading of what the vision is. So, you know, Oh, this is sad and this close up of his face where he looks like Roger Moore is sad.
Nick Batterham:
So for me, that just fits really well with not just making sad, sad music, it’s communication of emotion. And I think that’s really just a thing that I’ve been doing since I was a teenager, is communicating my emotion. It’s not a huge step to use that same function of myself to communicate someone else’s emotional content. So reading and film, the first aspect of any film music is spotting cues as to where music is going to go. And I think a lot of composers work in a similar way. You just make sh*t up. You play along to the vision and somewhere along the way, what you’re doing sticks. You can think of ideas of what the music might be like, but until you actually sit down with an instrument and make sounds and see how well they gel with the vision, and its then the two things really resonate, you don’t know what’s going to work until you do it.
John Murch:
But like photography, there’s a sense of heart as well as a sense of yourself, understanding within that as well, isn’t it? If you don’t understand what those characters are doing on screen, the music will be quite average.
Nick Batterham:
Very true. I think that’s the same thing as the collaborative songwriting, of enough needs to be revealed and on display. And working with a director on any piece, even if it’s an ad or a short film or whatever, there’s a sense of needing to understand what they’re communicating in order to be able to make something that helps them do that. The Independent was my first experience of such a big project. Most of the music for that had a slightly band sounding. It wasn’t too far removed from singer song writery kind of music. Whereas in more recent times I’ve done more classical music, a different tonality, the same sort of expression.
John Murch:
And referencing there, the RONE Empire project, I guess.
Nick Batterham:
Yeah, and commercial work where I think that’s either side of that RONE thing has been a good demonstration that even to myself, that those skills exist. Because I always thought that in film music, I wouldn’t be able to do classical music because I don’t know what I’m doing. And that’s greatly pleasing to discover that you don’t have to know what you’re doing.
John Murch:
In to the collaboration aspect of the new Bell Streets record. And whilst it is the duo of you and Josh at the fore, you’ve brought some beautiful people together.
Nick Batterham:
Yeah. There’s a couple of players who have played on other recordings, including the RONE Empire soundtrack, the cellist from that film cloud Viola slash violin, Jenny and Thomas, they have both played on Rone and I used them in the studio and a couple of record projects for other people. So when it came to doing those kinds of instruments on it, they were my wrecking crew for that. But also on the record there’s two drummers Josh’s drummer from the Steinbecks. Joel Sprake played on half of the tracks and the other half is Craig Mitchell, who was in the last incarnation of the Earthmen and has played on most of my solo records where there’s drums, it’s usually him playing them. So we both had our preexisting relationships that were brought into the record. And when it came to tracking the drums, it’s the beat of the song and they have distinctly different styles that worked well in the songs that they’ve played on.
John Murch:
Let’s do some quick things. Let’s talk about reality TV, a fan of If You Are the One.
Nick Batterham:
Yeah. So I think that’s just the time when we were making the record, that when Josh would arrive at the studio, I have the television on as wallpaper with the sound off. It helps my general concentration with being on the computer all day, having the TV on somehow helps my brain. But yes, I find that showing quite entertaining.
John Murch:
And Josh has also revealed an interview that possibly for the two of you, Juliana Hatfield, I want your view on Juliana Hatfield, would you want to tour with Hatfield?
Nick Batterham:
Well, I wouldn’t say no. I didn’t get into her records in the way that Josh obviously did. But yeah, I don’t dislike her, I think her music’s great.
John Murch:
Luke Howard’s just released a new record. Have you heard it? I have not.
Nick Batterham:
I haven’t heard his new record yet. No. I saw that on Instagram just the other day, but yes, he’s been helping me playing some piano on the new Rone project that I’ve been working on.
John Murch:
Tell us a little bit more.
Nick Batterham:
I’ve known him a long time, but we haven’t worked together for about 20 years. The last connection being, he did play piano on a short film that Andrew O’Keefe the director of the Independent, made in film school. And that’s when I first knew Luke, but he’s played keyboards with Matt Sigley who was in the Earthmen and we all know each other. Yeah, Luke’s played piano on a couple of pieces for an upcoming Rone project that’s at Geelong gallery, which was meant to be starting in about a month but has been put to early next year. But the music’s written, mostly recorded and we’re just waiting for the gallery to reopen really. Major projects have all been suspended like that. So it’s annoying to be in a state of suspension now that, Oh, I just want to finish it. And who knows what it will feel like to revisit it in months from now, how the connection to the music will feel. But I’m very fortunate that the project’s still going ahead. Lots of friends in theater, for example, have just had projects be canceled and they won’t see the light of day.
John Murch:
I’ve got on my list Luke’s new record, obviously as well as Tilman Robinson, I just need the right head space to get into Tillman’s new record to give it the ears that it deserves. Where is musician Nick at, at the moment, particularly with your songwriting?
Nick Batterham:
My song writing is an ongoing concern and I’ve got a record pretty much finished, that having this isolation time has been good for me to have an opportunity to keep working on it because it’s been on the back burner through the Bells Streets and the Rone Empire project and the Broads record and the Golden Rail record. I’ve had a record, it’s just like, “Oh when am I going to get to do my record?” And yeah, back to the core of your question in that, there’s a real difficulty of now coming back to it. And the things being expressed in it do feel two, three years ago, to me, who I was as a writer at the point when I wrote them, we haven’t had as an arranger with the sound of the record. I don’t fully feel like that’s what I’d make now, but I need to finish it because it’s a record of a time, just not this time.
Nick Batterham:
And I think that problem is going to exist for everyone always. It exists in the Bell Streets record and where do we go from here? To me, I’d love to do another one. When that happens, I guess, all depending on how well received this is, but the actual process of doing it is a process I’d love to go through again. Putting out music into a world that is in isolation, I’m rocked with this feeling daily about doing self-expression at the moment. Self-doubt, because it feels so trivial and self centered in a time of such immense suffering. And I guess the self expressive artist is always having this argument with themselves going, “This isn’t worthwhile.” And it takes some external validation to make you go, “Oh, hang on. It is appreciated. This is a role to play in society.” And I see through all the house concerts, all the online concerts and this great celebration of people in their expression that there’s a gratitude for, like, “Thank you for beaming into my home and entertaining me.”
Nick Batterham:
If not a realignment, people are aware that the arts is valued. There is a sense of, “Well, actually this is a valid thing to do as a life, as a job, as a career.” There’s a lot of performers who are really struggling at the moment because there hasn’t been a safety net for them and their jobs have just stopped instantaneously. But as a society, we are recognizing that, well, these people are important and that self expression of the writer, of the artist is as important as ever. It’s just, again, quietening that inner monologue that says, “This isn’t worthwhile. This is trivial.”
John Murch:
Last time I mentioned Nick’s name was I think to Meow Meow. What a great friendship you have there, I think and what a great record she has as well.
Nick Batterham:
Yeah, she’s a very dear friend. I hope we get to work together again someday.
John Murch:
There’s a collaboration that needs to happen more often, one would think. Throughout this entire conversation, I’ve been teased by Nick, by him having behind him, what seems to be, I guess, his outlet. What’s the story behind that piano?
Nick Batterham:
Well, how long have you got, it’s a winding story. I needed a piano for the studio and in hunting around… I wanted our family piano that I grew up with and it has a particular soft tone to it, that’s very, quite dull, not very bright. And so I wasn’t interested in modern or usually Japanese made pianos are quite bright and I wanted an old German thing and they have the let down of being usually hard to stay in tune and a bit falling apart because they’re a hundred years old. And most people have some sort of family recollection of one of them occupying a big wall or corner of a family lounge room. But I looked around online and found one that I just absolutely loved the tone of because it was so gentle and the guy who tunes my piano, Reese, he just always moaned about it because it just won’t hold its tune. You put it in tune and by the time you get to the other end, it’s out of tune in the first place.
Nick Batterham:
I loved writing on it. It’s a beautiful, inspiring instrument, but almost useless for recording. And so I went in search of another one and couldn’t find anything like it. There were better quality pianos, but nothing that just had this X factor that is so necessary to write and feel inspired. And Reese found one through elderly, retired piano restorer, named Ron who had the exact same piano as the one I had that didn’t stay in tune, but much older and in much better condition. I had to go and have lunch with him to meet him. He had retired. He had gotten rid of all his piano’s except for a couple that he couldn’t bear to get rid of. And over lunch, I must have said the right things, that he was prepared to gift it to me because I was the right person to have it. It’s by no means a valuable piano, but the value is in the tone and the history and my connection to it.
Nick Batterham:
So Ron, over some months did the restoration job on it at his 90 year old pace and I’ve only had it now in the studio for a couple of months. And it’s just… I still love the old one. I gave that to Kelly Day and I’m sure she loves it and probably curses it for the same reasons of it not staying in tune. A little bit of a dud gift in its way. But it’s a magical piano and has a quality that is different to this one. And this one is working very well and I’m working on a new Rone project, which I’ve done all the recording on this piano. And I just bloody love it.
Nick Batterham:
*plays some piano*
John Murch:
That is absolutely beautiful. Thank you.
Nick Batterham:
That’s nerve wracking.
John Murch:
Nick, an absolute pleasure. Thanks for joining radionotes.
Nick Batterham:
Thanks John.