1.The First Song I Wrote
I don’t recall the first complete song I ever wrote, but I think the first song of mine that was ever recorded in a decent recording studio was a song called ‘Black & White’ – a three-minute power pop song railing against authority using the metaphor of watching black-and-white movies on a colour TV to represent whatever deep-seated angst it was supposed to represent at the time. I always wanted to be Paul Weller but always ended up as Elvis Costello.
2. The Last Song I Released
The last song we’ve released is ‘There’s A Dark Side To That Moon’ off our new album, Bee In Your Bonnet, which we’re launching at Lazybones with The Nature Strip and The Forresters on Friday May 13. It’s a song with a ‘bad moon rising’ kind of theme. Last year there were too many of those so-called supermoons for my liking. It felt like stuff, bad stuff was happening every time one of these things would appear, so much so I grew to dread them.
3.Songwriting Secrets
It’s all a bit of a mystery for me, not unlike mushrooms appearing in the garden or on the lawn after rain. I’ve got no idea how they get there or why they don’t appear every time it rains. If I was to give anyone a songwriting tip it would be to respect the melody. The melody’s what it’s all about, at least when it comes to the type of music we make. People will forgive a crappy lyric for the sake of a great melody but a crappy melody stands no chance.
4.The Song That Makes Me Proud
Whenever I’ve seen one of those benches somewhere, usually at a lookout or somewhere similar with an “In Loving Memory” plaque on them, I’ve always wondered what the story was behind them. Who the people were, what that spot meant to them… There’s a song on the last Fallon Cush album, April, called ‘Where Your Name Is Carved’, which I feel honours, in my way, all those people and their relationships. I wrote the song in Orange one weekend. We ended up in the botanical gardens around sunset and sat on this bench which had one of these plaques on it and watched the sun go down. It was such a beautiful little spot and just felt special. I had the chords and melody in my memory bank somewhere and it popped into my head while we were sitting there. When we went back to the hotel room I wrote the lyrics in the time it took my wife to have a shower.
5.The Next Song I’ll Write
The next song I write will be one of the unfinished ones I’ve got floating around for the next Fallon Cush record. I’m hoping we can continue to get looser and more ‘bandy’ when it comes to making the next record. I don’t think there’ll be any eight-minute jams in there, but then again, why not?
Fallon Cush’s Bee In Your Bonnet is out Friday May 20 independently; and they appear, along withThe Nature Strip and The Forresters, atLazybones Lounge Friday May 13.
