Songs from the Dime. Peter Blakeley. The National Film and Sound Archive, Friday, November 20, 6.30pm. Tickets: $35 Bookings: nfsa.gov.au. See: peterblakeley.com.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
Musician Peter Blakeley will perform an acoustic set of old favourites and songs from his forthcoming album at the National Film and Sound Archive of Australia on Friday.
Blakeley has enjoyed impressive success in the charts and won an ARIA award in 1990, for his song Crying in the Chapel, from the album Harry's Cafe De Wheels. He is well known to a generation of Australians as lead singer of The Rockmelons.
His forthcoming album, Songs from the Dime, references the area in downtown Los Angeles where he lived for some time. The new album expresses the poetry of urban life, observed in the interactions of Blakeley's fellow city dwellers.
Blakeley has significant associations with Canberra and recently described how the national capital and his earliest musical experiences shaped his career.
"My earliest musical memory was singing Christmas Tree at the Hughes Primary School and from this early point I decided I wanted to be a singer. My earliest musical influences were the Carmichael Twins [also from Hughes Primary] who had a great duo together. I learnt my first song from them [Simon and Garfunkel].
"I also had a love of the Everly Brothers from an early age: one of my fondest experiences later on in America was having the opportunity to meet Warren Zevon, who was the Everlys' musical director, and incidentally the person who first introduced me to downtown Los Angeles."
Having built his early career in the Sydney music scene, on a national tour with Eric Clapton, and later in the US, Canberra is perhaps an unlikely source of inspiration.
However, Blakeley says Canberra is a "sophisticated place that one is now drawn to, rather than a place to be free from. As a friend of mine once opined, Canberra has everything you need and the space you need to think."
Blakeley has been described by the founder of Atlantic Records, Ahmet Ertegun, as "the finest white soul singer I have ever heard."
His early training began in homely surroundings.
"My singing style developed sitting in my bedroom at Hughes listening to a lot of country music on my little AM radio while I was growing up, and [to] what became my sound – the sound of country soul."
In his next ventures, Blakeley will investigate more traditional forms.
"I plan to record a collection of original hymns. My voice has changed somewhat, but my sound and influences are still the same. There was a time when I thought that I had to invent a whole new sound but I realise now that this is not the case. Really, the aim for any singer or artist is to be true to something that is authentic."
Finding places that encourage creativity has been vital to Blakeley, whose new album follows a lengthy break from recording. He found inspiration in the National Film and Sound Archive, where he was encouraged to record in-house, in live performances using historic audio technology such as wax cylinder and lacquer disc recording apparatus. There is no option to rerecord and edit out errors, so the performer must focus – in contrast to the modern recording studio experience. This is a thrill for the audience and exciting and challenging for the artist.
"It's wonderful to be involved with the NFSA, any time you become involved with a place with this type of authenticity, it can only help to free the creative process. And I'm particularly looking forward to recording some new material on the Thomas Edison wax cylinder recorder, which I believe is the only one in the southern hemisphere. This was in fact the very first device ever devised for recording sound.
"We are currently sifting through a lot of new material ahead of a planned album in early 2016."
In an era in which digital media and the internet are changing the landscape of music-making, Blakeley is striving to create an album that says a lot very simply. He aspires to spacious arrangements in which the emotions he explores will resonate.
His music heroes point the way forward: "The relaxed style of Chet Baker (both trumpet and vocals) has been something that has given me a lot of comfort and inspiration recently.
"I feel that we are entering into a new phase of music with a lot of opportunities for cross-pollination. Although many tout the demise of the music industry, I feel very optimistic about this stage of my career and the new horizons which are available. After all, it all comes back to being about the music, and that will never change."