Amusician’s aspirations are as varied as leaves. While one might dream of stadium rapture and spotlights, another may find a quiet evening set in a caféall the reward they need. Having your material covered by other artists, however, is an honour of its own, and one that folk/blues songwriter Xavier Rudd must enjoy frequently these days. The instant I heard ‘The Reasons We Were Blessed’ performed at a small coastal market years back, I was hooked on Rudd’s evocative, stirring lyrics. As he explains it, like most of his material that song emerged with a life of its own. All Rudd had to do was not get in the way.
“It all happens pretty fast,” he explains. “Most songs present themselves, and the only rule I have is to try not to involve my ego and just let them be. Feel it, let it come through. That song, for example, I was out driving around fairly fast and that song started to match it. There was a speed to it, and that’s how I want them to be. Those are the keepers, you know? I don’t usually write things down. If a song happens and if it doesn’t stay, then it wasn’t meant to be. When a powerful one comes, it comes thick and fast. I just try not to let my mind get caught up in it, let it be something on its own. I respect that. I’m just there to guide it, not take ownership of it.”
Even prior to his 2002 debut, To Let, Rudd’s belief in the autonomy of music had been long-seeded. Growing up in Victoria between the ocean and the bush, his sense of each song possessing a unique essence – in much the same way that the natural world around him was brimming with history and spirituality – was perhaps inevitable. It is a connection that has served him well throughout a career that spans eight albums with this week’s release of Nanna. Indeed, it is difficult to tell who is the real shepherd here – the performer or the performed.
“It’s a lot like my music is a few steps ahead of me on my journey. I’ll reflect on what a song meant to me or what inspired it much, much later. See, I understand we all have active sprits around us that guide us, and they present to different people in different ways. And for me, that’s always been music. It’s pretty clear for me, that distinction between something being a personal, emotional reflection, or whether it’s coming from somewhere else, some kind of spirit that’s coming through me. I’ve grown to understand that more as I’ve got older, but it’s been happening all my life. I respect it, and just try to humbly take that tradition that I have and stay strong, and try to be the best vessel I can for it.”
It is a fascinating concept; that any artistic creation exists almost in potentia, laying the scene for your eventual arrival. It implies an acknowledgement of an interventionist spiritual life form – a concept that can be difficult to embrace for cynics. What does seem certain, though, is the deeply personal, reciprocal exchange Rudd finds between his music and his faith. Not that a sustainable career in music was ever a certainty for him.
“I was always writing songs. I was always singing little melodies about what was happening around me, which is essentially the same thing that I’m doing now. That was always part of my DNA, and I can’t really imagine that part of me not being there. It’s like a limb. I didn’t…” Rudd trails off for a time, and when he continues he sounds unexpectedly reluctant. It is as though the balance of his creativity is so intangible he would rather not draw too great a focus to it; to not, as he says, let his mind get caught up in it.
“I guess I had a feeling I was going to be doing something in music. In saying that, I always wrote songs, but it was always like a secret game, like a little meditation. It wasn’t something I ever shared. I never thought – well, I never panicked about what I was going to do; I somehow knew that everything was going to be cool. But I wasn’t set on it, had no backup or anything. I always enjoyed being outside and always enjoyed making music. For example, I worked on a golf course. I’d be riding around on the mower on the golf course, and that worked for me for a while because I wrote a lot while I was doing that.” He chuckles. “One of the first EPs I ever had had a picture of a Toro mower on the front. And then I had a little boy real young; that was unexpected. So life got real pretty quick, and I was blessed.
“I started to play music for people, and they really reacted to it. It boosted my confidence, and that journey was pretty smooth and fast. There was nothing tedious. Yeah, it’s been long and it’s been tiring at times, and it’s hard work, but it was an incline to being able to open up my music to people. And that’s been constant now for the last 15 years.”
To give Rudd credit, “hard work” is something of an understatement. On the back of 2012’s Spirit Bird, he toured across the world for 30 months. That he was able to assemble an entirely new band, The United Nations, and record an album while doing this is nothing short of incredible – the man’s stamina would put Samson to shame. As the band’s debut performance at Bluesfest draws closer, Rudd is at pains to emphasise that his own coordination is but one small part of the endeavour. The true credit, he insists, goes to his bandmates’ astonishing spirits and stories stretching across continents, bringing them all together – their United Nations.
“I’m just excited to get it out; it’s been in the making for a while. It’s a pumping band, and that’s what I called in. It needed to be right. Musically, spiritually, physically. All of these things needed to line up, and it was the right time. It’s a greater force than just me.
“I really feel like I said the right prayers and put the right karma out there, and it’s like all of the ancestors of all of these fabulous people with all of these powerful stories came together, had a cup of tea and decided, ‘Alright, we need to put this crew together.’ That’s not such a surprise, because I’ve understood that kind of spiritual activity in the past. But it’s a massive thing. There’s no doubt people are going to dig it, the album is groovy as hell. This whole journey is very, very powerful, and I’m very humbled by it – very grateful, and I try to just hold faith in the strongest way I can; to honour it in every way.”
Nanna out Friday March 13 through Salt X/Universal.Xavier Rudd & The United Nations appear withYeshen atMetro Theatre onSaturday March 21, and atBluesfest 2015, Tyagarah Tea Tree Farm, Thursday April 2 – Monday April 6.
