Clare Bowditch Interview

Clare Bowditch

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Interview With Clare Bowditch By Chris

Clare Bowditch is proberbly one of Australia best singer
songwriters right now.
When this interview was done she was independent, now she has a record deal and doing really well for herself.

Clare
Website

1. How has the response been to the last
album?

The response has been unexpected. There are so many great
Australian songwriters around at the moment – I didn’t
expect people to notice Autumn Bone. The fact that it’s
taken us seven times around Australia in the past twelve
months has been cool.

2. How did you go about making the album?

Marty Brown recorded the album in our project studio on
one-inch analogue tape. I wrote the songs, he produced and
engineered the thing. We asked guest musicians to play
along, and a few of them stayed. It took us six months or
more to do, mainly because I was very pregnant at the time
and a little slow off the mark most mornings. On top of
that, most of the songs were only half-finished, so I was
doing my best to stall proceedings as much as possible. We
funded the recording with a grant from Arts Victoria, and a
little help from Centrelink.

3. How is the recording process going for the new
album?

Once again, we’re recording on analogue tape, but this time
the studio is a little less like a T.V. room and the songs
and the band are familiar and we’re all ready to go. The
work is a stylistic mish-mash based loosely on the theme of
grief. Some of it will be obscure and abstract; some of the
songs will just be some straight-out stories. Arts Victoria
is once again miraculously funding the recording, but this
time we expect it to take no longer than three
months.

4. Has it been different since the last album?

Recording you mean? Yes, there’s been more forethought this
time, but it’s still like a mini-breakdown every time we do
it. I find it kind’ve hard being in a room trying to come
up with something brilliant on cue. It’s like going on a
Vispassana retreat for ten days and not being allowed to
leave. It’s hard being confronted with yourself like
that.

5. Is it hard to be an independent artist in
Australia?

To be honest, if I’d really understood in the beginning how
much work it would take to even begin to make a name for
myself as an independent artist; I probably would’ve
buckled in fear and signed the record contract when it was
offered. Not that that would’ve made things any easier – it
just holds to illusion of making things easier, and that
can be attractive sometimes. So yes, it is hard work being
an independent artist in Australia. But I imagine it’s also
hard work being a “signed” artist in Australia. Signed
artists are usually just as poor as us, they work just as
hard as us, and they’ve had to make incredible compromises
along the way. My compromises have only really been
financial or ego-based ones, things along the lines of “I
accept that I will probably rent for the rest of my life”,
or “I accept that it will still be forty years until I am
nominated for an ****Industry Award****”. Things I can live
with. And in exchange, I get to have a diverse and
self-directed career. I get to choose the topic and style
and length of my albums, and I get the freedom to develop
my music any, which way I please. I get to live like a
gypsy, and I get to live without the external pressure of
having to look or act or be a certain way. And I get to do
all of that, and be a mother as well – now that’s freaking’
cool. That’s what independence has given me. It’s not for
everyone, and one day, it may not be for me either. But
right now, while I’ve still got the energy, it’s
brilliant.

6. Having a distributor like MGM has that
helped?

We used to put CD’s into stores ourselves and then forget
about them. If it weren’t for our distributor we’d still be
doing that, and be in a spot of bother. Yes, they have
helped very much.

7. Who has helped you out the most?

Marty Brown has helped me out the most, no two ways about
it. He records and mixes my albums, and he keeps me feeling
loved up. Danny Rogers, my manager, has also helped
enormously, just by getting our music out into the broader
world. But to be honest, so many people have helped us out
in so many ways – it’s been incredibly heartening. I’m
talking about people from community radio and local
newspapers, people who funded our recordings and friends
who did our artwork and made our film clips and came to our
shows and got the ball rolling.

8. What has been your favourite gig you have
played?

Supporting Cat Power at the Seymour Theatre in Sydney last
year. That was a watershed moment for me. The audience were
so incredible that night. My second favourite gig was
playing at St Jeromes in Melbourne.

9. How did you get into music in the first
place?

I just always liked singing and making sense of things by
whacking them into song-formats. Listening to and writing
music just made me feel a lot better about being a
sensitive human.

10. What are your view on file sharing and the MP3
format?

I don’t own an I-pod, so naturally, I think unauthorised
file sharing is fucked. Theft. Unfair. Disrespectful. When
I do eventually get an I-pod, however, I’ll think it’s
brilliant, incredible, amazing. Personally, I prefer to pay
for my music – it makes me feel good that I’m helping the
artist make his or her living.

11. Do you think the Internet has helped you in getting
your music out there?

Very much so.

12. What are your view on realty TV and more importantly
the talent shows like Idol?

Well, it seems to me that shows like Idol somehow encourage
contestants to minimise themselves for the sake of
popularity, and I’m not into that. Not at all. They
encourage mimicry, which is boring. They also seem to
encourage people to buy into that ridiculous exclusive myth
that “There can only be one winner”, and again, I’m not
into that. It’s bullshit. Such thoughts and fears are not
in the interests of inspiring or creating great or unique
music, and are instead in the interests of making great
fortunes, and not necessarily for the contestants
either… If this hippy Acapella girls-group win
X-Factor though, I’ll be willing to adjust my hypothesis.
And admittedly, I was addicted to series 2 of Big Brother,
but that could be because it came on during the week we
bought a TV, after having never had one before. And then we
bumped into Friesie at an airport, and Wesley in a hotel,
and Knowlsie on a plane, and Marty and I got all stupidly
star-struck, and it was funny.