The Queen’s Birthday long weekend gives students an extra day’s respite from academic concerns. And what better way to take advantage of the free time than by getting expert insight into an industry that formal education doesn’t provide easy access to?
Indent, the leading network for all-ages music events in New South Wales, has partnered with Vivid Ideas to put together Feedback – a music conference for 12-to-25-year-olds that will feature guest speakers and interactive sessions.
One source of wisdom appearing at the conference is legendary Australian producer and engineer Wayne Connolly. Connolly has sustained a career in the often volatile industry for two-and-a-half decades now, but getting into music wasn’t always a straightforward option.
“When I was young there was pretty active discouragement from people,” he recalls. “It was like, ‘You don’t want to waste your time doing that.’”
The ratio of people with momentary music industry success to those tenacious enough to turn it into a career is drastically out of balance. Widespread approbation won’t guarantee a long-term income, but fierce determination goes a long way.
“A lot of the great bands that I’ve worked with – Husky, Boy & Bear and Paper Kites – they tend to be just very focused on what they’re doing and they’re not really hedging their bets at all,” Connolly says. “The same with You Am I – Tim Rogers was always just like, ‘This is what I’m doing. I don’t have a day job. I had one in a record store once and I’m never going back to it.’”
Connolly’s own unflagging motivation led him to adopt the studio as his place of business in the early ’90s. Since then, his accumulated credits and accolades are extensive enough to wear out anyone’s larynx, but ARIA Awards for producing and engineering records with You Am I, Youth Group, Josh Pyke and Paul Dempsey are among them. He actually became interested in working behind the scenes at a very young age.
“I was just as into recording music when I was really young. One of the first things I bought was a cassette deck and headphones, because I just really wanted to have a great hi-fi experience even when I was 13 or 14.”
Through the years the Sydney-based producer has maintained a sideline writing and releasing his own music. He was a central member of respected ’90s alt-rock outfit The Welcome Mat and continues making quality records with the shady-pop group Knievel to this day. Despite his esteemed songwriting talent, Connolly had to make a firm decision about which pursuit to prioritise.
“The production thing took over at a point in the mid-’90s where [The Welcome Mat] got signed to a record label and we were getting American producers to fly out and investing a lot of time and money into that. It was at exactly the same time I was asked to go to the US with You Am I and do their first album with Lee Ranaldo from Sonic Youth, which was something I just couldn’t turn down.”
Ambitions to cultivate a career in the music industry are still commonly met with disapproval. But Connolly believes it’s no longer regarded as the deviant folly that it once was.
“A lot of people who are doing well are the ones who had really encouraging parents. That’s a very common thread, I think, with a lot of artists. Plenty of parents still listen to triple j and go to gigs. I don’t think the generation gap is quite what people beat it up to be anymore.”
Indent Presents Feedback: A Music Conference For Young People will be held at the MCA as a part of Vivid Ideas on Monday June 9. Also appearing are AJ Maddah, Josh Pyke, Winston McCall and more.
