Looking Backwards to Move Forwards
*WARNING: LONG INTROSPECTIVE LIFE STORY REFLECTIVE POST INCOMING*
As an aside from the daily exercises and actual songwriting that you don’t see here I’ve taken the plunge and started getting songwriting lessons as a kind of third prong to my attack on my writing process. Apart from a couple of songwriting workshops and little insights from my old guitar teacher at school over a decade ago my entire ‘songwriting journey’ has been just doing it, chipping away every now and then and glacially figuring out what works and what doesn’t. So this one on one learning experience is quite new to me and a little scary since it makes things really feel like i’m starting again, like a fully grown 30 year old going back to high school to study algebra or something. Well, i guess it’s probably a lot closer to going back to uni and getting a tutor, but even that gives off a feeling of going backwards to a part of my life that I’ve ‘moved on’ from.
It might seem like i’m throwing everything I’ve built out the window and starting again this year with my overhaul, but I think its really more so that I am hyper focussing now on something that always had an air of “...and later I’ll put in the work and hone this properly”. That said I think its important to acknowledge where I’ve come from and give my old self a little bit of props despite the fact that I’m mentally burning all the progress I’ve made down, because really, although I hope this ‘reset’ helps improve my songwriting a lot and fixes areas that I have neglected over the years at the end of the day nothing can really erase the instincts I carry in regards to music that I’ve built up over the years. That and theres still a part of me that rejects the notion of putting myself out there as “starting again” when if I stop to think about it, I have actually put in a lot of work over my life so far. Obviously i still feel that I have a fair ways to go, but I thought it would be fun to look back at my humble beginnings and give a rough timeline of musical events that have got me to where I am today, with a rough focus on songwriting.
So basically a TLDR mellofellow life history lesson that nobody asked for but I thought might be fun to do. Welcome to my musical “this is your life”
1998/1999?: My first guitar
Not sure if i was 8 or 9, but at around that age on one of our family trips to my grandparents in Mount Gambier (South Austrailia) my dad bought me a 3/4 nylon string acoustic guitar. I remember he got a good deal on it because when removing the price sticker it peeled off a little section of the paint on the bridge next to the saddle. My best friend at the time was getting lessons and I don’t think there was anything really extra that motivated me to get one, but I have distinct memories of the day we bought the instrument home and I had it sat on the bed at my Grandparents place, blindly pulling at the strings to make sound come out of this foreign wooden box. No idea that this was the start of something that would consume my life in years to come.
1999?-2003: First lessons from a one horse town
I grew up on a farm near a very small town in rural Victoria called Derinallum and went to the appropriately named local school: Derrinallum College. with about 20 kids per year (that always dwindled towards yr 12 due to most people either changing schools or dropping out to pursue farming) it had a pretty small population of about 90 people, but there was still a music teacher who taught everyone who wanted to learn all the basic instruments they wanted to from flute to trumpet, piano and yes, guitar. I remember having a few different teachers early on as people would come and go, the first one showing me my first G chord and giving me a chart for “knocking on heaven’s door” much to my fathers delight, but soon after my regular teacher had started me basically learning single note flute music with letters written under the dots (something that simultaneously gave me a keen ear for picking up melodies but absolutley ruined any chance at sight reading properly). I remember picking what I considered the hardest tunes to play at the annual performance recitals, the melody from “the entertainer” and the bassline from “the theme from Peter Gun” are pieces that stand out in my mind but my biggest claim to fame from this point in my life was figuring out how to play the melody from “all the small things” by blink 182 all by myself by ear. I felt like I was freaking Mozart not needing to be taught or read something and still being able to play it and that discovery gave me those initial inklings of the potential for what I could do with this wooden box.
2004: New school, new lessons and the Led Zeppelin live dvd
So at the ripe age of 13 I had made the big move up in life from Derrinallum to Ballarat Grammar boarding school in Ballarat, Victoria. It was a pretty wild transition from the get go, but musically was initially a little discouraging as at my first guitar lesson (from an amazing human being Laurie) I found out that I had basically needed to start all over again and that the biggest carry over from my entire 4 years of musical pursuits had yielded me the one G chord i still remembered. It was acknowledged that the solo flute lines I had learned were good for training my ears, but really had no real value for the things one would typically learn in a guitar lesson. Laurie had asked me what type of music i enjoyed or would like to start learning and I remember saying that I didn't really had any preference for music, that I liked “anything with a bit of a beat” so I quickly was given my first chord charts in 4 years and it looked like I was going to become a acoustic rhythm type of guy. But then everything changed about halfway through that year when one of my friends got a dvd of a little band called Led Zeppelin... Apparently the year before at the end of year house performance the year 12s had done a rendition of Stairway to Heaven which got my friend to chase up this dvd but oh my god. I have never had such an influential experience as I did watching that live version of stairway. I remember playing that song on repeat for months every morning before class (I’m sure much to my 6 roommates detest) and from there everything about my relationship with my guitar changed. Rather than just putting in a half hours effort before each lesson out of worrying I would disappoint my teacher, I was practicing 3, 4, 5 hours a day for just the fun of it working on my magnum opus of being able to play Stairway to Heaven all the way through. I remember slowly accumulating the entire Zep discography, learning each section of stairway bit by bit until finally being able to nail everything including the solo on my black ashton acoustic. I had made friends with a boy who had a real Gibson electric guitar and remember being dead set on getting a Les Paul of my own, scoping out my dream guitar like Jimmy Page’s on a school field trip to Chapel street in Melbourne and begged my parents for one that Christmas, to which they obliged and I was over the moon.
2005 - 2007: Musical identity and my first songwriting baby steps
With a full back catalogue of Led Zeppelin and my Epiphone Les Paul at my side I flourished musically over the next couple of years, cementing my identity as a “long haired guitar guy” mastering improvising blues licks and the discographies of Zep, Hendrix, Pink Floyd, Sabbath, Queen, Cream and anything else that came from that same vein of guitar centric late 60s/early 70s music up to an unhealthy obsession with Van Halen and guitar virtuosos. I ended up getting school colours for music in my year 11 and 12 for the work I was doing in the school jazz band and by the end of my tenure at high school was expanding my musical repertoire to singing and piano because even though my quick pentatonic blues licks were the cornerstone of what I enjoyed playing I still had some shred of understanding that if there wasn’t also a song behind the guitar solos, things quickly became a little too wanky for my liking even at the time. Van Halen seemed the perfect blend of being able to show off when the solo came, but still ultimately still be servicing the bigger picture of a song. I would print off chord charts from entire Pink Floyd and Beatles albums and sit in the practice rooms and sing them front to back at the piano as a bit of a break from my ruthless 5+ hour guitar practice schedule. Near the end of year 11 my beloved guitar teacher was putting on a songwriting workshop where I learnt the basics of songwriting and started putting together my own really embarrassing silly songs. I remember finishing my first one called “Clayman’s Desire” which was an acoustic folk track in the vein of Queen’s “39′” about a little clay person who goes on an adventure to make friends. Even though there was a huge disconnect between the guitar centric virtuosic stuff i was playing I still felt super proud of it. I had high hopes that just like Brian May in Queen I would find a vocalist who would sing over all the riffs and music I was coming up with, but I would still get a song or two on each album that I would sing myself for variety and a way to show an extra notch in my belt not just as a guitarist, but as a guitarist who could also write songs too. Throughout year 12 I kept a little songwriting book where I would write poetry in hopes that i would turn everything into songs. It was all nonsensical wannabe surrealist kinds of stuff inspired by songs like “I am the walrus” by the Beatles, a band that I was gorging on in between my shred guitar escapades. By the end of year 12 in the holidays before starting uni the following year I made my first “album” of basically demo recordings on a CD i called “The Project”. It included some psychy guitar riff instrumentals as well as some very basic songs that were more or less just vessels for me to put little guitar solos into all recorded either DI or with the one microphone I owned (drums too). Still nothing like the shred guitar i was still all about playing, but uniquely me and something I felt that if i kept at it would eventually get to a point where i could write things that sounded closer to the greats I had admired. Even back then I knew everyone had to start somewhere and even though I was proud of the stuff I had made I still rightfully felt that any dreams of making good quality music were far off into the future and that was okay.
2008 - 2009: College
After school I basically lived in the music room at college spending any time I wasn't out drinking with friends or cramming before tests playing with anyone who would give me the time and forming a covers band but in terms of original music things had already started to die down so early. I was still coming up with riffs and licks that were inching closer to the sound of things i knew i wanted to make but I kind of fell off the wagon in terms of songwriting throughout the semester, it wasn't until the semester break that I decided I wanted to follow up on my previous writing adventures with a focus on mimicking the styles of early Beatles with a little EP I called “Meatlebania” a cringeworthy attempt to focus on imitating the greats and ending up far from the mark. I remember posting tracks on my facebook page and getting criticised by some of my friends who expected something a lot better given my guitar playing abilities that they knew me for. It was pretty disheartening but to their credit looking back it was some of the absolute cringiest pieces of music i had ever made, let alone released. It had all the awkwardness of an 18 year old falling in love for the first time and not knowing a thing about good songwriting that came off as horrendously bad poetry and I didn't even put much effort into the guitar side off things, thinking that I wanted to bring the music down to the level of the songwriting and slowly move the quality of both of parts up together. A little bit of a profound foresight in concept for the quality of the finished product but again I was hopeful that this was still just the very beginning of my journey with music and that I needed to make these mistakes to move forward even if it was a pretty slow process. every step was going to get me closer to making something I could really be proud of.
2009 - 2010: Open mics and Comedy songwriting
After the whirlwind of college came and went I was living in a shared house with some friends I knew from high school. It didn't take long before me and my housemate sussed out a local open mic night and were playing acoustic covers down there every week. It was actually a ‘reunion’ of an original band we started back in boarding school called Alloid (that resulted in some instrumental rock songs that had lyrics I wrote that were very ...not good). We were playing things like Hendrix and Rush acoustically with my housemate on bass and me on guitar/vocals but it wasn't until a few months in that I had a big light bulb moment of bringing a kazoo to do the solos to songs that things really fit into place. We would do things like Lynyrd Skynyrd’s Freebird with kazoo solos that hit all the guitar ones i knew note for note in a kind of over the top silly comedic fashion and with that I had found a new angle for music as a source of entertainment. After a while I started doing the acoustic/kazoo guitar rock thing by myself and phased in some originals that i would introduce with a bit of funny backstory. I remember playing Clayman’s Desire (the first song I had ever wrote) and getting a wonderful reception from the half dozen or so people at the open mic who were very supportive and saw the humour in playing an obviously undercooked song with a bit of charm in the cute awkward stage presence I had started to hone in on. Listening to comedy songwriters like Flight of the Conchords and Tim Minchin I ramped up the writing of quirky songs that i would put together and perform every week before eventually I had my first open mic “hit” with a song I wrote about a man crush I had on the Doctor Who star David Tennant. I would incorporate the shows theme song as the beginning and reprised it as a kazoo solo in the middle 8. It went down well at all the open mic shows I played, which were fast approaching 3 per week. With the disguise of using the fact that songs I was writing were “not serious” I was able to finish a lot of songs and figured out a ton about melody and the fundamentals of writing. I saw this as something I would do to hone my craft and eventually get back to writing “serious music” and apply these skills properly. I was building up a repertoire of comedy songs I would throw in in between over the top ‘kazoostic’ covers of rock songs like Killer Queen and the aforementioned Freebird to a pretty decent reception at the open mics. It was basically a real life meme before I knew memes were a thing. Eventually one of my friends from college was coming to see a fair few of my shows and loved my David Tennant song. She was a drummer with an amazing comedic musical theatre background and I thought I might be a wonderful idea to take our shared love of pop culturey things and start a band together.
2010 - 2012: Blue Turtle Shell
With my pop culture sister from another mister at my side we started an original acoustic guitar/djembe “geek rock” band called Blue Turtle Shell, writing and performing silly songs about videogames TV shows and Movies that would incorporate themes from said pop culture topics into the songs as a kind of expansion of my David Tennant song template. It was so much fun being able to write with someone and to put in all the bells and whistles of vocal harmony and jokes in between songs of our open mic set. At the time i was also busking on the side playing all the pop culture and video game theme songs outside the comic book store in Melbourne raking in a pretty decent amount per hour compared to my bar job and one day I managed to get the band a gig at an anime convention from an event organised who enjoyed what I was doing on the street. We put out an EP as a twosome before becoming a trio with a mutual friend on bass and ended up having some pretty good gigs; getting a residency at the newly opened videogame cocktail bar and even “made it to” the finals of what turned out to be a scammy pay-to-play (well, convince all your friends to buy tickets to play) talent show competition in between open mics that we would play semi regularly that always had a good reception. It felt like we were starting to make traction and form some fans but things eventually faded out as I started realising that I was putting myself into a box songwriting wise. It was amazing to be able to write and play music that was uniquely “me” but I felt that I was never going to be able to do “serious music” so eventually when things died down with the band I just sort of stopped and thought of what I needed to do to get things back on that track.
2012 - 2013: Melbournes hardest working bass player
So after my foray into the musical comedy world I thought it would be best to just put myself out there and play in some original bands in Melbourne. I put out a couple of ads on a musical craigslist site “Melband” offering my skills as a guitarist. After a week of no interest or replies I figured I’d chuck up an ad as a bass player and instantly had my inbox and phone blow up with requests. Within a week I was playing in 3 bands; one unnamed that was starting from the beginning in the process of writing what I would later know to be Mars Volta inspired porggy psych rock, another Middle Eastern Progressive Frank Zappa inspired band ‘Land of the Blind’ that was basically performing pre written complicated charts that would also have long improvised sections and finally a alternative indie/pop band ‘The Story Model’ where I was writing my own basslines and eventually contributing to songs. Each band held up a pillar of skills that I wanted to perfect as a writer and performer, the psych and prog nature of the unnamed band and Land of the Blind were much closer to where my head was at musically at the time but at the same time I knew I wanted to blend that with more of a pop influence that The Story Model had. Things were pretty hectic schedule wise but eventually after a few months the unnamed band broke up due to some pretty crazy intra-band politics -sadly before we recorded anything or played our first gig, but I still have some phone recorded demos of our jams that I look back on with fond memories- but even juggling two bands with regular gigs was a struggle that I rose to the occasion to. I was learning so much musically from this new life as a bass player, even just from my role in the band. As a bassist I had a world of appreciation opened up for me about groove and song feel, I’d always been a fan of riffs but the relationship between a bass player and a drummer is a sacred bond that is so powerful in conveying the musical ideas of the song. As the foundation of the musical cake I could also take in all the musical ideas of the melodic icing from the vocals or guitar leads, it felt like I was finally piecing everything together that I needed to eventually write my own music that would be closer to the things I wanted to write from the start. On top of all the gigs i was playing I also experienced my first proper studio sessions making demos with both bands as well as my first professionally recorded EP that I provided bass and backing vocals on with The Story Model. Eventually things died down and faded out with The Story Model which luckily coincided not long after I was stretching myself a little too thin anyways picking up work with another band that had contacted me on Melband a good year after I had initially posted my ad and forgotten to take it down. They were an alternative psychy rock band with a little prog influence with a bit of a following from Brisbane. The singer was moving to Melbourne to try and ramp things up musically after they had recorded their first album. To me it sounded like a dream melding of the pop sensibilities of the story model with the hard edge of bands like Rage Against the Machine and even some motifs that harkened back to my beloved Led Zeppelin. It was a band called Greefthief.
2013 - 2017: Greenthief and the beginnings of Mellofellow
I juggled Land of the Blind with my new band for a little while but it didn’t take long to see that this was something I was willing to put more effort into since it lined up with so much of what I wanted to do musically, so I quit LotB and became a one band bass player. Things were so musically exciting and intense that there was no other way about it really, Greenthief was rehearsing 2-3 times a week after we found a drummer and had booked a massive 20-something date tour of Australia in support of the debut album they had recorded and were releasing after a month or two of me joining. I bought a Rickenbacker bass and an ampeg 6x10 fridge and set off on my first tour having the time of my life slamming fuzz riffs and writing new material with the band leader. After the tour we would still play a gig or two a week in Melbourne rehearse 2 days a week and usually I would go to the band leaders house for writing sessions once or twice a week on top of that. I loved the bands back catalog but was hungry to get some songs I had helped craft in to the set, I’d be pouring myself into the writing sessions expanding on a lot of my own writing knowledge while picking up a ton about editing down and how to package a hard hitting pop/rock song. While that side of things was amazing it wouldn't dawn on me until much later that while I was perfecting my role in the band writing wise as an editor, I wasn’t actually landing much of the finished product of songs from my actual musical ideas note wise. Structure and direction absolutely, and I knew I was a great soundboard for floating ideas to, but in terms of how many melodies or song sections in the new material that I had actually contributed and stayed in to the final product when it came time to perform the new tracks at gigs there was a bit of a disconnect between the 10s to 100s of hours I had put in to the little bits here and there that were uniquely me. That said I wrote 80% of my own basslines (and interpreted the other 20% in a unique way) and was changing a lot of ideas of the leaders that would have been a bit different had I not been there, but the bulk of the initial ‘heavy lifting’ writing wise was not mine and thats before you take into consideration that I had nothing to do with any lyrics. Luckily there was one track I had demoed that the leader liked enough to add to the set and it actually became the lead single and opening track of the first album I made with them, although I always had a discouraging sense that it was more of a meta move of the leader that he could sense that I was getting a little frustrated that I hadn’t really had much input in major song sections, but this could have just been a projection of my own self doubt (and i was always told that was not the case). Still, on the side of things while we were putting together our first release I was a part of ‘Tremors’ I was upping the ante of writing for myself as a way to demo things to the band but also with the idea that things that didn’t fit would be fair game for me to use for a kind of solo project. When the band’s musical direction moved a little further from my psychedelic rock interests in hope of chasing that holy grail of being played on Triple J, I ended up with a fair batch of psychy demos that wouldn't fit Greenthief that I would listen to each day on my commutes to work and then edit when I got home before rehearsals. Not a lot with lyrics but entire songs with melodies and riffs soley penned by me. Tame Impala had exploded a year or two before and I would see a lot of obvious knock off bands on the bill at Greenthief gigs with the idea of “i could do that” every time there was a washed out riffy set, so i did. I did do that. The plus side of having such an obvious direction helped when it did come to lyrics, keeping things psychy after being around so many psych bands at gigs I knew the basics of what their lyrics are written around subject wise and interspersed that with the influence of the bands I had grown up loving. A friend I had met through Greenthief had a pretty good home studio set up and I eventually took the plunge and recorded my first Mellofellow single with him on the first of January 2017. The weeks before I had hyper focussed on drumming since I knew that was my weak link musically although i had picked up a hell of a lot first and foremost as a bass player listening to the amazing drummers I had worked with. The resulting track “Journey to the Centre of Your Mind” was something I was hugely proud of and finally scratched the itch of being something I had written that was not a joke song but also got pretty damn close to what I was wanting to do musically in terms of my goals all those moons ago to have something that was on the level of quality that I wanted but could never achieve when I was starting out. Really that goal had already been filled earlier with the recordings I had done with Greenthief, but this time it was also my 100% my own writing. All my friends that I had made playing in bands as well as some that weren’t seemed to like my track and although I didn’t really have the means to push it to many people who weren’t in my immediate circle, that was ultimately the goal. My musical peers’ respect was all I could have wanted from a track that was solely my own and I could have so easily not done something like that with how hectic my schedule was at the time. It was at that point that I had to make the decision that I knew was going to be the final nail in the coffin for Greenthief when I went back to uni to get out of the dead end job that I had in retail. As a band we still played a lot, we had a 10 week residency at one of the most known rock venues in Melbourne, kept touring with releases and put out two albums in my tenure but the last of which I was a bit more checked out contributing a little less than I had on Tremors due to the lack of time I had juggling work, uni and the band. Though at the time I wasn’t too discouraged and was a little annoyed that I could put in so many less hours to writing sessions and still end up with nearly the same amount of contribution to the record musically as I had on the last record -though this was partly because there were some tracks on Tremors that were fully completed before I had joined on- I didn’t have any stand out songs that had started from my demos but there were a few that had main riffs that were my own and I think things just flowed a lot easier letting the band leader take more of the reigns and since we had been together for a few years things naturally came together with input from everyone more quickly than they had on the last record. Unfortunately I had to move to Mildura for placement as part of my degree and had technically played my last gig with the band before the release of that album ‘Mirror Lies’ but in the couple of weeks between finishing the sessions for that album and uprooting myself from the city I booked another session with my friend and followed up Mellofellow’s single recording my first release (technically too long for an EP but a pretty short album). Without being in Melbourne/with Greenthief a few less people got to hear the record than would have heard the single but it was still such a creatively fulfilling thing to be able to put out more of my music. It was a high that would keep me going through my year away from the city. To top things off I even had an made a record from start to finish over a weekend with a mate who had his own solo project Steve Tyssen (actually one of Greenthief’s previous drummers from before I had joined the band) who I had been playing with on the side over the last couple of years whenever he had a new album to release -the dude has made like 7 albums to date now its insane- but apart from that everything musically died down when I had moved out of the city. Still not a bad way to finish it all out, 2017 saw me drop 3 records in the one year!
Oh yeah, and in December 2017 I put together a line up for Mellofellow in order to have a proper release gig for the record at a festival held by a friend of mine that was another amazing experience but ultimately the only time I have ever performed any of my tracks with a band.
2018-2019: Slowing down and songwriting revelations
So after my whirlwind musical year of 2017 everything got a bit quieter. When I got back to Melbourne I was still playing in Steve’s solo project on keyboards and had slowly been working on tracks for a follow up to the first Mellofellow record, but Greenthief had disbanded while I was away after they released Mirror Lies with a hired gun bass player. I suppose things needed to die down though since the last semester of my course needed to be pretty much my sole focus. I actually started playing open mics again when I got the time, doing acoustic versions of Mellofellow tracks but I’ll admit that it more so confirmed my suspicions about the holes in my songwriting ability. It might have been from seeing Steve’s solo tracks work so well in an acoustic context, but there was an obvious drop in quality in the stuff I had written that was taken out when you removed the drums and guitar solos. While a couple of tracks worked alright stripped back, the majority of them failed to have the same punch without the groove of a full band rhythm section and with the focus being placed more on the lyrics I felt awkwardly naked and could see that at the end of the day my songwriting fundamentals left a lot to be desired particularly on the lyrical front.
So I started trying to write songs primarily acoustic first with the goal of performing them at things like open mics and maybe even booking acoustic gigs with the knowledge that the songs could easily be expanded into full band tracks when it came to recording. This turned into more of a transitional period than I had hoped, partially not helped by the fact that after graduation I had to move back to rural Victoria for the first job I got out of uni in my chosen profession, which is an amazing but time demanding gig.
So I’ve got another 10 or so Mellofellow tracks in the chamber ready to record from the last couple of years that I’m heading in to the studio with next month but I don’t feel like I totally stuck the landing with the transition I was hoping to make, there are still a couple of tracks that wouldn't really work acoustically and if anything my realisation of my room for improvement lyrically has lead me to second guess a lot of the lyrical choices on these tracks to the point that I just want to finish them acknowledging their flaws and move on to the next record that I will make now that I am undertaking this whole process of honing my songwriting craft. That said there are some tracks I’m getting ready to record that I’m most proud of as a songwriter, songs that I hope are a sign of things to come. Either way I am excited to clear out my bottom drawer of songwriting to see what lies ahead. I’ve already made some big changes to the ways I write and I know things are going to get better.
