So you’ve recorded a song that you’re actually happy with (never a guarantee), and now you’re itching to get out there and show the world.
You book a handful of shows up and down the coast – Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne, Canberra if you’re feeling masochistic, a town or two inbetween – and feel happy with your schedule… unless, of course, you’re Ben Wright Smith. In that case, you pull together an insane tour of 35 performances stretching from Hobart to Darwin in support of your latest single, ‘Sand Grabber’.
“[Response] has been good!” says Smith of the feedback he’s received about the tune so far. “I think I’m feeling more relieved now, but on the day, when we first heard it was going to be played, it’s a little like that feeling of your first day in kindergarten.
“I hadn’t brought out any new music in a while because I’d been working on this new stuff, and it’s such a weird thing to sit in a room, recording this stuff, and you think, ‘Yeah, that sounds pretty good to me,’ and then you send it out into the world and it turns out it doesn’t actually matter what you think. It’s really on what everybody else thinks. But the stuff people have written to me after hearing it so far has been good, so that’s really cool. I’m happy.”
It’s certainly a catchy tune, though it marks a clear evolution in sound from Smith’s previous release, 2014’s EP In Parallel, which features the splendid ‘If Living The Good Life Is Easy (Why Is This So Hard?)’. Part of this is the inevitable change an artist will experience as they tour their wares and hone their craft – though Smith has recently become aware of some similarities between the releases.
“I think [music] tends to come full circle,” he says. “I was listening to some of the record the other day, and there are elements that seem to take us back to [In Parallel], that sound a bit like that. I don’t think you ever really want to force anything. I don’t really want to sit down and write another ‘If Living The Good Life Is Easy (Why Is This So Hard?)’, ‘cause it would just be a cheap rip-off. So there are elements that reoccur, but if you’ve got something that you like, you can’t try and reproduce earlier stuff. It’ll come out in different ways. I tend to only write outside on acoustic guitar, but if anything, I think now I’m trying to shake those habits as much as possible – to try and keep on making fresh stuff.”
That said, it’s going to be difficult for Smith to escape writing outside for the next few months. The Sand Grabber Tour sounds like a magnificent, exhausting beast, and as it turns out, it’s only the tip of his touring iceberg.
“It’s just the beginning,” says Smith. “I actually am coming back and forth a little between dates, ‘cause I still have to record and keep working on the album. Up until October it’s going to be pretty non-stop. I’ll be doing Hobart to Darwin in 18 days, so that will be something else!
The Sydney show we’ll be playing with the full band, which will be different from the Northern Territory where I’ll be solo. I think it’s always me onstage, but there is a side of you that comes out when only you play. I’m always really excited [to be] playing in front of people, which,” he laughs, “probably brings out a more hyperactive part of my personality.”
Oxford Circus plays host to Ben Wright Smith on Saturday August 27.
