Frazey Ford

Her voice is spine-tingling, and her Americana/soul tunes are likely to keep listeners company for a long time to come. She is returning to Australia this month for Bluesfest, having visited before both solo and as a founding member of The Be Good Tanyas, yet Ford very nearly followed a different career path altogether.

“I think anyone who decides that they want to honour music as something that they’re going to pursue, it’s highly unrealistic,” she laughs. “It’s one of the hardest paths, really. I used to do music for a while, and then I’d go back to school and do sciences, look at completely different careers, and then decide to take another year to write. I didn’t really know that you could make a living doing [music], so it was never really thought of as a plan. Every time I was doing it more out of wanting to, out of enjoyment. I think that’s good though, because I didn’t have any expectations. So I’d go back and forth, thinking about some professional career that was going to sustain me. So when the music did take off, it was a real surprise.”

After hearing some of Ford’s recordings, like her cover of Bob Dylan’s ‘One More Cup Of Coffee’, the implication that there is some divergent timeline out there where she decided not to keep pursuing music is too ghastly to dwell on. Between the band and her solo output, there are six albums now to get lost within – though as a choice of alternate careers go, Ford had hit upon a rather surreal approach.

“It’s funny. My friend wants to be a midwife, and so then I kind of wanted to be a midwife. For a while, actually, I was convinced I was going to make prosthetic limbs as a side job. It was like a scene from Flashdance, except I was making limbs. But it’s like a two-year program that costs 90 grand a year and my mum convinced me maybe not to. But I had this vision of me standing there in a tool belt, making prosthetic limbs. I think it came from a period where I decided that I just wanted to fix appliances, and that could be the side career. I sort of fell into the creative stuff. I was pretty into the sciences for a long time, and my mum is a physiotherapist. She pulled herself out of poverty by having this practical career, though she had a really artistic side that she couldn’t really pursue after having kids at a young age. So there was always this idea of, ‘Don’t be broke, have a career.’ We couldn’t really conceive of how you would make a living as an artist then.”

The world of prosthetic limbs has no doubt lost one of its luminaries (though apparently there are entire abandoned wartime warehouses in the Australian outback full of replacement limbs, so no shortage there). While Ford talks, her conversation becomes interrupted as her children return from school for the day. The impact of her family seems to sit at the forefront of her art; the encouragement of her own mother and children regularly dots her observations.

“I think it’s funny for me, because no matter what I do, I’m going to have a certain amount of my mum in my voice. Her side of the family are really into country. I had a soul band, but when I started writing songs, they all came out sounding country no matter what I said. I think it’s malleable though. People are down on people for imitating, but that’s how we absorb a style and then make it new. I think in my years as a singer, there have been so many singers I’ve listened to and studied, and they will all influence your sound to a degree. I’ve definitely heard people who can sound like anybody without really having their own thing. I think you need to be able to absorb, and then mix it inside you and put it out as something new.”

Even though her approach to music was somewhat circuitous, Ford’s passion for song has deep roots. She is proud of the lineage of artists who have influenced her own development, and adamant there are likely many more inspirations yet to come.

“I don’t know of any music that isn’t a link in the chain. We imitate each other so much. My mum comes from a strong lineage of music. I used to sing with her from a very early age, and she’s had a huge influence on my sound. But I also grew up listening to soul music, so I think whatever you’re paying attention to and thinking about, that stuff comes through you later on. You’re carrying forward that sound in a certain way. And I think that happens back and forth, even across countries. Like how the British really responded to soul music, and reflected back their version of rock’n’roll. It’s part of a chain all across the world.”

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