Rory Ellis has just released his 2nd
album “Road of the Braver Man”, the followup to the critically acclaimed “Ride”.
Rory spoke to David McMillan on the program Big Wednesday, on 88.3 Southern FM.
D: Congratulations on the new album, what I’ve heard
so far sounds fantastic.
R: Thanks very much
D: It must be two years since your first album Ride
was released. Was this the difficult second album?
R: No, it wasn’t too difficult. The material
sort of accumulated over two years of being out and about, on the road a
fair bit.
I had most of it pretty much there before
we went in to record, and when you set a bit of a deadline for yourself
for recording, you tend to come up with about half a dozen more. The writing
process was fairly easy on this one.
D: So are you a deadline person, like when you know
you’ve got the studio time booked?
R: Yeah I like to have like you’ve got to
set some sort of a deadline, otherwise it’s the project that carries on
for three years, and in the third year that product that you recorded two
or three years ago becomes pretty stale.
It’s gotta be done at the moment, I think that’s the meaning
of the word record really.
D: Exactly, and obviously
you were out touring the other album around and playing lots of different
venues and festivals. It must have been difficult to tie yourself down and
actually say “Well I’m gonna do it...”
R: Yeah it is. It’s like, you can’t do it
all on the road, you’ve got to take yourself off the road for a little while.
You know it’s also having the pen and paper there and sitting down and recording
bits of it. I’ve got a little unit I use at home, just a little notepad,
8 track type thing. I like to pop it down on that
and have a bit of a listen and see if I like it a couple of weeks later.
D: That really makes a difference doesn’t it, I
mean how you feel about it a couple of weeks later.
So you went into the studio and did this
album live, with Stu Speed on bass and Dave Steel…
R: Yeah Stu Speed
and good old uncle Dave… at a little studio down in Braeside called ‘Strawberry Fields’ owned by a fella by the name of Dave Holloway, and a good friend
of mine Harry Willems recorded it for us. And
it was literally, we just set it up in the room like they did in the fifties.
D: Like the old Sun Recording Studios?
R: A few mikes around the room, and off you
go and start playing, press record and let’s hope for the best at the end
of it, which is what we did.
D: You recorded the album over three days?
R: Yeah, three days…
two and a half in fact. We went in there with 15 tracks thinking ‘Oh yeah
we’ve got 15, hopefully we’ll catch about 10’, but we decided to keep the
15 because we sort of liked the whole lot of them.
We recorded a couple of versions that we
thought were up to speed, made the decision on those and that was it.
D: I last spoke to you around September last year
(02), and you were hoping to have the album out around that time. Obviously
it takes a while in the post production.
R: It does. It’s actually quite interesting
mixing a live recording. It’s a little more difficult than you’d expect,
as you’ve got far less control over things.
If you isolate everything…, I mean there’s
two ways to do it. You can isolate each other and put each other in booths
while you’re recording, and I think that takes a bit of the interaction
out of the recording
So we decided to go the other way and not
do that. So, then you’ve got the problem of, if you decide to put a bit
of EQ into the guitar mike, it’ll change the sound of the bass because the
bass is picking up some of that.
So it’s a process you know. An interesting one. A very interesting one. You
certainly learn the pitfalls.
In the end we got there. We had a couple
of ‘Car Park moments’ Harry and I, but it was great. It was good fun.
D: So, the genesis of the songs on this album Rory,
a lot of it I understand dates back to experiences that have happened for
you over the last 20 years or so?
R: Yeah, absolutely. I guess it’s in many
ways picking out some moments, things that were really apparent to you, or things that were important to you… places I’ve
lived, places I’ve worked… Yeah all those sorts of things,
things that have happened.
D: I did have a look at your website (www.roryellis.com) and your lyrics are posted up there. They seem to me
fairly dark. You’re certainly not pulling any punches with your lyrics in
terms of the material.
R: Yeah, I mean there’s
a few songs. I mean like the song ‘Big Picture’ which is actually fairly
self-reflective, and maybe humorous for want of a better word, sarcastic
maybe. And then there are songs like ‘Union Hotel’ which was actually a place
I used to work at in Ascot Vale, I used to do some security work in the dark,
distant past… and it was a rough old hotel you know.
D: So it’s another side of life. They’re not pretty
love songs.
R: I’ll leave that to the pop stars mate,
they’ll do a better job than I’ll ever do of it.
D: That ties in to how you describe your music as
‘Urban Folk’. It’s folk music that tells stories
of the people, and experiences you’ve had.
R: It is. It’s the day to day stuff you know…
going to hotels, or living in places that are local… things that are familiar
to us.
There’s a song on the album called ‘Railway
Parade’ which is about a place I used to live in Dandenong, an old boxing
gym. So it’s all, a lot of it is fairly local.
Like the track ‘Hear Me Now’ which is my
little version of what’s going on in the world today and just my little protest,
without getting too political. So there’s a bit of everything in there
D: And a bit of personal philosophy as well, perhaps
reflected by the title “Road of the Braver Man” which seems to be about
how it’s not always the easy decisions that matter.
R: It’s about… It’s written for my daughter.
Like when they ask you what they should do with their life, I always say
you’ve got to be true to your
heart, and if you take the difficult decisions, it’s not always the easiest
road.
D: Not the most comfortable…
R: The braver road is the one you get the
most out of…and that’s what the song is essentially about.
D: About being true to yourself
R: Yeah, well that’s what the albums about
too.
Rory plays ‘Union Hotel’ Live in the studio and it sounds fantastic
D: You’re really there in the blood and guts of it…
R:Yeah it’s funny I spose,
it was driven by…I was watching the television and there was a case being
brought forward on the murder of a Melbourne underworld figure named Alfonse
Gangitano and there was a fella there by the name of Jason Moran who’d accused
of doing the deed and he used to drink over at the Union Hotel when I used
to work there…so that was the reason for the song.
D: Yeah I remember years and years ago when I first
moved to
R: Don’t we have fantastic names for pubs
too…The Royal Exchange…The Criterion… The Commercial
D: I think people went missing
from The Royal Exchange, never to be seen again.
R: Oh they do… yeah yeah
people used to go missing from the Union Hotel as well. But it was good
if you had a bet on the races. You would get a lot of the strappers coming over for a drink
.. was always good for a bit of a tip
D: So a lot of the songs on this album written from
experiences like that and Railway Parade is another
one. You lived in a Boxing Gym for a while?
R: Yeah I lived in a boxing gym in Dandenong many years ago and that was an interesting
place , lot of people used to come in and out
of the house. It was quite a thoroughfare for want of a better word.
D: Did you do any fighting yourself?
R: I did a bit of boxing yeah, had a couple
of stoushes.
D: When I was a kid I went to boxing training at
the local RSL and the guy that was training us used to go and drink at the
RSL Club, then about 5 or 6 o’clock he’d come in and beat the crap out of
us, and that was our training
R: I believe there’s still one going around
here somewhere, old Harry Martin’s Gym, used to be down behind the Sandringham Police Station back many years .I believe
it’s relocated now, down behind the Bowling Centre or something. So it still
exists somewhere out there in that dark underworld.
I always thought it was safer than football
personally.
D: I probably got less whacks
in the boxing ring than I did on the football field.
We then went on to discuss Rory’s touring schedule for the next few weeks.
Rory’s daughter Carly sang
‘Overture Curtains Lights’ live to air and we went out with Rory playing
‘Railway Parade’.