Shane Nicholson

It’s best known as the birthplace of Aboriginal landscape watercolour artist Albert Namatjira and home to the renowned singer-songwriter Warren H Williams, but to eight-time Golden Guitar winner Shane Nicholson, Hermannsburg will forever be a place of salvation and rebirth; the catalyst for his fifth studio album, Hell Breaks Loose.

“I now see my life as divided into two parts: pre- and post-Hermannsburg,” Nicholson smiles. “It wasn’t just an artistic reawakening I found there; it was quite a strong personal one, too.”

Nicholson has been a fixture on the Australian music scene for more than two decades, both in front of a mic and behind the scenes. He started small, recording his own songs in his bedroom in Brisbane, but has since gone on to release several critically acclaimed albums, including two with then-partner and country artistKasey Chambers – the chart-topping and platinum-selling recordRattlin’ Bones (2008) and Wreck & Ruin (2012). Despite his success, Nicholson remains refreshingly down to earth. “When I read my own bio – which is not often, I promise,” he laughs, “I think, ‘Oh, that sounds kinda cool,’ but then it just makes me feel like I’m getting old, you know?”

As a multi-instrumentalist, it’s no surprise Nicholson also feels at home in the producer’s chair, and has been recognised as Producer of the Year by the Country Music Association of Australia on three occasions. However, in 2013, after the breakdown of his marriage to Chambers, he found himself staring into the creative abyss, unable to do what had once come so naturally.

“Before that trip to Hermannsburg, I hadn’t written a song for six months,” Nicholson says. “I was producing albums for other people at the time, but inside I felt all music-ed out. I didn’t really feel like writing, although I had a lot to write about – I couldn’t get my head in the right space.

“Then a friend of mine, Warren H Williams, the indigenous country singer who I’ve known for many years, started calling me. He kept insisting I come to stay with him out there. I think he saw that I needed a change of scenery and some perspective with everything that was going on in my world at the time, so he just dragged me out there [laughs], and it was quite incredible. I think he knew all along that I’d get something from it and I totally did. That trip kick-started the whole album. Something magical happened, and I wrote the song [‘Hermannsburg’] sitting next to the church. Then I wrote two more songs that week. It was like the floodgates opened and I couldn’t stop writing. It was a truly pivotal time for me.”

The guitar-driven hooks on ‘When The Money’s All Gone’ are another result of Nicholson’s time away. “That was one of the songs that came out in a bit of a gush. It’s essentially a song about knowing who your friends are, who’s on your side, and taking stock of things in your life. In Hermannsburg, everything around you is so vast, it’s impossible not to get some sense of perspective about your life back home. I enjoyed the simple things like sitting around a campfire drinking black tea and just talking about nothing in particular. It was really special.”

Although it’s abundantly clear that a little time to sit back and reflect was exactly what Nicholson needed to fuel his creative juices, his son Arlo Ray and daughter Poet Poppin were never far from his mind, and became the inspiration behind the touching ballad ‘Single Fathers’.

“That song was directed towards my children, although I was in two minds about including it on the record because I was concerned that it could be taken the wrong way because of the line, ‘There’s no mothers / Like single fathers’.It’s not anti-single mothers, it’s pro-single fathers, and I just wanted to highlight the fact that each parent offers something different in the nurturing of a child. I wanted to say that and I felt it needed to be said.

“My kids have heard the song – they know it’s about them and they sing along. My daughter actually thinks the line is, ‘There’s no mothers / Like singer fathers,’ because I’m a singer. It’s very cute.”

Nicholson’s feelings of satisfaction from the record stem from knowing he made a wise choice to hand over production duties to good friend Matt Fell (Tim Freedman, Josh Pyke). “It was a real holiday for me,” says Nicholson. “I live on the Central Coast, so I’d ride my motorbike down to his studio [Love Hz in Sydney], then I’d sing all day and jump on my bike to ride back home. It felt like there was no work involved. I was just letting it evolve without me steering the ship, and I loved it.

“I feel like Hell Breaks Loose is a turning point, like the other albums I’ve done have been practice runs. This one seems like a line in the sand from an artistic level, and I feel like I’m finding a new voice after 20 years.”