Dan Sultan is in a philosophical mood on the day he speaks to Fly, musing like a Buddhist monk on the attention and accolades he has been receiving since the release of his third album, Blackbird, in April 2014.
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"Yeah, a Buddhist monk that swears and smokes cigarettes and sleeps in til ten o'clock in the morning!" laughs Sultan. "I think generally, if you don't really care then it doesn't really matter. And basically you've gotta put it in perspective as well, there are some people that know who I am but there are a hell of a lot more people who don't and who will never know who I am and at the end of the real end of the day, in a hundred or two hundred years, nobody's going to care what they think or what they don't think. I'm a good person and I do good things and I look after my family and my friends, and whatever. It doesn't matter."
2014 was a massive year for Dan Sultan, the year his third album Blackbird was released, and garnered him more attention, accolades - and emails - than he has ever received in his life, including an ARIA award for Best Rock Album. The success, he says, is not so much a justification, "That would imply that there's an amount of defensiveness to it, and I don't feel that way, " as much as a reward for the hard yards he's been putting in for years.
"I feel I've been working really hard and it's paying off in a lot of ways, so it's good, it's good."
From his first album, 2006's Homemade Biscuits, which was produced with the help of John Butler's Seed program, Sultan has always attracted attention. His first single, Your Love Is Like A Song, won 2007's Deadly Award for Single of the Year, which paved the way for the even bigger success of his follow-up album, Get Out While You Can, released in 2009, the same year Sultan made his screen debut in Bran Nue Dae, with Geoffrey Rush.
Throughout it all, Sultan has maintained a distinct humility and disinterest in the hoopla of the industry.
"I just choose not to engage," he says. "People can take what they want out of your music and out of your performances. I just try to get on with it and that's OK generally. I take it pretty seriously but at the same time it's a balance, you've got to be able to let go and not take yourself too seriously as well. People can take it or leave it and if a lot more people leave it than take it, then that's the way it is, it's fine."
Sultan recalls fondly the days before Homemade Biscuits when, as a teenager, he'd hitchhike up and down the coast, and sleeping in the bush with his mates. "I definitely look back at those days and sorta wish that I was there again!" he laughs. "But then again when I was there I was looking forward to days like today, wishing that I was here."
DAN SULTAN
When: March 18 and 19, 8pm
Where: The Street Theatre, Acton
Tickets: $44, available from thestreet.org.au
