Some say Blues comes from the heart & others say you need to sell your soul to the Devil. The former is most certainly the case for Victoria-based Blues n’ Roots guitarist and singer/songwriter Mike Elrington, who over the last four years has been writing & recording his nineth album ‘Aftershock’, which is released on 18th September. During those four years Elrington had to endure the pain & sadness of a marriage break-up but used these lonely depressive times to help create his most honest & intimate release to date, using the process in a therapeutic way to help get him through one of the lowest times of his life.
‘Aftershock’ is a wonderfully open & honest twelve song collection of Blues/Roots music, with Elrington experimenting with various ideas, as he toys with differing genres that at times take him outside his comfort zone, but that all work so well. The Rockpit had a long and meaningful chat with Mike as he explained his journey & writing processes, talked about the magic of Nashville and the pressures of playing with The Doobie Brothers…
Sean: Great to talk to you Mike. Congratulations on the new album. I’ve had ‘Aftershock’ on for a few days now and it’s fantastic. Four years in the making and I also read of a lot of heartbreak and emotion that has gone into this album. People do say that some of the best Blues music comes from deep within your soul while going through the tougher times of life, so how did this record come about?
Mike: Yeah, you’re definitely right. With this album and with the Blues n’ Roots music from a writing perspective I find it easier and more natural to write about things that I’ve experienced, so this album was really influenced by the breakdown of my marriage and the separation from my ex-wife with her leaving with my kids. We have a peaceful & amicable relationship now and I still get to see them every week but that whole time was definitely very hard and probably the most painful experience of my life that I can remember. It certainly wasn’t what I wanted at the time and I experienced lows & depression that I had never felt before. I had just started writing a few rough ideas for some new songs so having that to focus on certainly did help. I look back on it now and don’t think I could have come up with all of this if I hadn’t gone through all of that. The songs did flow a lot quicker and easier from a writing perspective, but they did take a long time to record & mix. That took years.
I’m not the most disciplined songwriter in the world. I’m not a songwriter who has a plan to complete one or two songs a month or a week and I really admire people who can do that. I put myself on the spot too and I’ve never done this before with recording, but I put extra pressure on myself. I would book a bunch of sessions in the studio with my producer Sean and I would literally wait until the day of the session to write something and about four or five of the songs were born like that. Up until about five hours before the start of the session I had nothing and then on the way to the studio in the car I would start humming a riff. The third song on the album ‘Broken’ came together like that. I was listening to that old Mississippi chanting kind of Blues, that “call and response” kind of thing and that repetitive line, which became the inspiration to that song.
Sean: Even just the song titles alone tell a part of the story of the journey you were on. Songs like ‘Broken’, ‘It Still Burns’, ‘There is a Light’ can certainly pick up the feeling of pain and of healing. Some artists who write albums with songs that are very open about things that have happened in their lives, find it part of the healing process but in years to come it’s still very much out there for all to hear.
Mike: I’m definitely someone who likes to be open. That helps me and I fully understand that not everyone is like that. A lot of people are a lot more private on a personal level with what they go through and might find it harder to write songs that they want to share publicly but for me it just feels natural to do that. We all go through pain at some stages of our lives and for various reasons and one of the most common causes of pain is our relationship breakdowns. Let’s be honest, most songs we hear are about that these days and that is across all genres just about. It’s a topic that certainly can get a bit cliched and repetitive after a while but it’s still a big talking point and I guess if you find different angles to come at it so you’re not saying the same thing every song that’s ok, and that’s something I tried to do with this record.
Sean: There will be people out there going through a similar journey and this album may very well help them, which is one of the magically qualities music has.
Mike: As an artist that is something that is very rewarding. If I can create a song or bunch of songs that has that soothing or cathartic effect on a listener, like it did with me when I was writing them and especially recording them, then that is one of the most rewarding things you can have as a songwriter and as an artist, to make music that has that deeper and profound effect on people. It certainly helps you keep going. Let’s be honest, it’s a tough business especially at the moment. It’s never been tougher especially without gigs. I’m certainly finding it challenging, not just from a financial & economic perspective but going further beyond that, just no gigs. I’ve been a performer for twenty years – it’s just what I do. It’s certainly challenging to go without that for five months now.
Sean: Where are the nearest live venues to you where you are?
Mike: Well, I’m down in Lakes Entrance in Victoria. We have a couple here but obviously they are closed at the moment. They are just pubs. There aren’t many venues around me. I’m in a part of East Gippsland. Bairnsdale is probably the closest bigger of the towns near me. There are about thirty or forty thousand people that live there. There’s only around five thousand that reside here in Lakes Entrance where I live. There really aren’t that many venues around for music, sadly. There are a few pubs that have the corner of the room type pub gigs and stuff like that. Most of the action normally is up in Melbourne.
Sean: You’ve managed to amass a fantastic list of artists that you have supported over the last few years. How does it feel to get to share the stage & bill with some of this country’s best artists such as Diesel & Russell Morris?
Mike: It’s great. That sort of stuff only really started happening for me around three years ago. Prior to that I barely got any of those sorts of gigs so it’s still kind of new from me but I’ve been lucky to do a few of them for some high profile Australian artists and also The Doobie Brothers up in Brisbane a couple of years ago. It’s very humbling but also great because it puts you on another level when you get to meet those sorts of artists and see how they work. It’s obviously a lot more professional to what I had been used to prior to that. It’s inspiring to see how they work, how they function and just how seriously they take their craft. You can learn so many things.
Sean: Does it put pressure on you to find that next level as a performer?
Mike: It’s definitely there. I remember the Doobie Brothers gig, that was the biggest gig I have ever done, in front of fifteen hundred people at the Tivoli Theatre in Brisbane and it was probably the most nervous I’ve ever been. I felt a lot of pressure before going on stage. For someone who’s used to playing small little bar gigs to fifty people or less, to go to that level was incredibly nerve racking. That crowd were jam packed in there for over an hour before I even started, so I would be walking out to have a look from my little dressing room and just freaking out [laughs]. As soon as I got out on stage though and picked up my guitar it felt great. When you’re not used to playing that sized venue, with that size of crowd and with that level of band there’s always that little bit of self-doubt in the back of your mind.
You think to yourself, “Do you really deserve this?” I just had to talk myself out of that and be confident and reassure myself that I did deserve to be there and that I was there to give the crowd a great show. It was by far the single best gig I’ve had in my entire life and career so far. It was only a half hour set but to play in front of that many people and know that I pulled it off… I sold the most CDs in one night than I ever have. After that one gig alone all my online numbers spiked and the exposure I got from that brought in a whole heap of new fans. Some still come up to me when I get to play up in South East Queensland and they say, “I got to see you play at the Doobie Brothers gig a few years ago” and that’s great. It’s so really nice because one of the hardest things in this business is to keep in people’s minds and stay current.
Sean: And you can add to your CV that you were a backing singer for the Doobies during the show too [laughs]
Mike: Yeah, I try to mention that [laughs]. That was totally unexpected. That was amazing. It was kind of like winning lotto ten times [laughs]. It’s been great to do a few shows with some of those Australian artists like Russell Morris who is great, also Diesel, Jeff Lang, Daryl Braithwaite, I even did a few with Shannon Noel, totally different artists to who I am. The good thing about those sorts of acts is they pretty much sell out where ever they play so it’s good to get used to playing full rooms in good venues with great PAs. It would be great to do some more of those shows and eventually to do them myself as a headliner. That’s the ultimate goal.
Sean: Going back to ‘Aftershock’, something I noticed is that there are a few tracks where you have experimented with different genres & sounds.
Mike: Yes, the last single ‘Don’t Give Me a Dime’ is one of those where I’ve merged Blues and brought in two rappers on there. There’s enough elements of older Blues Rock in there and it has got the big riff in there and the big chorus too. I’m singing the first verse then the two rappers come in and I just thought it made sense to do that and I’d love to hear more of that going on. It’s something they do so well in hip hop. The collabs are incredible. There can be four or five MCs on it. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t like all hip hop, but I love that collaborative nature about it, and I feel there could be more of that happening in Blues & rock n roll.
Sean: There was one track I wanted to ask you more about and that is ‘The Mirror’. It’s one of the albums highlights for me. Such a beautiful song.
Mike: Thank man. I appreciate that. That was the first song I wrote when I was in Nashville. I went to Nashville for the first time about three years ago. I just got such an amazing vibe there. I don’t know if you’ve ever been but it’s just such a songwriter’s town. It’s the type of place that if you weren’t a musician or songwriter or involved in music somehow you would feel a bit out of place [laughs]. Everyone is a songwriter – it’s just what you do there. There are guys that live there that are professional writers. They just write songs. They don’t sing, they don’t play, they just write lyrics and some of them have been fortunate enough to get some big hits recorded by other artists and these guys are millionaires by just sitting at home and writing lyrics. They don’t go on the road or in the studio, they just write.
So with ‘The Mirror’ I got to the hotel, I’d been awake about thirty hours because I had to fly Melbourne to Sydney, Sydney to LA, LA to Nashville so it was a long trip and I got in to Nashville at about one o’clock in the morning, slept for about ten hours and then got up the next day and the first thing I did was write ‘The Mirror’. It’s a pretty simple form. It’s got that one-four chord progression going on, but I’ve always wanted to do a track like that. Something a little simpler arrangement-wise but focus more on the lyric. It just came naturally to me. It’s basically about facing up to your own bullshit by looking at yourself in the mirror. It’s something I’ve been trying to do a lot more in my older years I suppose.
Sean: Something we should all try to do a little more. Mike, I don’t want to take up too much more of your time but if I could finish with a few of my regular questions that would be great.
Mike: Yeah, sure.
Sean: If you could have three guests from the musical world, dead or alive, to join you for a glass of wine over dinner for a few hours who would you invite?
Mike: Oh, that’s a good one. Mick Jagger would have to be one of them. I reckon he would be interesting. Hendrix but I think that he’d be hard to talk to because he came across as quite shy, but he would be really interesting if you could get him to talk openly & freely. Who else? He’d be a wiry old bastard, but Clapton would be good to have there.
Sean: Clapton & Jagger are two new ones to join the table. I’m sure I haven’t had them before.
Mike: Clapton, Jagger & Hendrix… let me think of one other. There’s so many but I’d probably choose Buddy Guy, even though he’s an older artist. Buddy Guy was one of the first Blues artists I really fell in love with musically. I’ve met him a couple of times and he just came across as a really lovely guy.
Sean: How cool. So, what was the last album you listened to?
Mike: The last album I listened to… it was actually a podcast called “The Working Songwriter”, it’s on Spotify. An American folk/roots artist, a guy by the name of Joe Pug runs that and I listen to it religiously. Probably the only podcast I listen to regularly and he just interviews all these songwriters some of which are big, high profile & well-known and others are a bit smaller but still got careers and touring experience. He spends about an hour with them on the phone. The interviews go pretty deep about their history, the creative process and their life & times in music. So, I listened to one of the albums today and it was called ‘Asterisk the Universe’ by John Craigie who’s a sort of folk roots artist and that’s his most recent album that he has brought out. It’s pretty laid back & acoustic but I really love the tunes. There are so many artists I’ve discovered these last few months just from listening to that podcast and I would never have heard about them any other way.
Sean: I’ll check it out. Always on the look out for new music. So, the easiest of the lot to finish with. If you could be credited with writing any song ever written, which song would you choose?
Mike: Wow, no one has ever asked me that. I’d have to say ‘Hurt’ by Nine Inch Nails but the Johnny Cash version. Every time I play that song, I just never get sick of it. It’s been a regular of my live shows for many years and I recorded a live version of it on my last album ‘Live at the Flying Saucer’. I had a full seven-piece band on there; strings, backing singers, a much bigger set up than what I normally have, and I just love playing that song. I can relate to it and as you might have noticed I like songs about pain and hardship [laughs]. Not that I like to just whinge all the time [laughs] but I find it kind of cathartic to touch on those deeper topics and that’s one of the songs on there that does that.
Sean: Well, it’s been great to talk to you and I can’t thank you enough for your time Mike and a big congratulations for the new album. Being one of the lucky ones to hear it before release I must say it’s fantastic.
Mike: Thanks mate. I really appreciate it.
Sean: Cheers Mike.
