It is hard to believe that it is twenty-five years since Taxiride made it’s mark on the music world. Back in 1998 a clamour of the world’s top record labels descended on Australia all vying to sign the band, with Warner coming out on top and releasing a double Platinum-selling debut album in ‘Imaginate’. It was an album that spawned hit singles like ‘Get Set’ and ‘Everywhere You Go’, the former winning the band an ARIA for Best Break Through Artist – Single. The success continued with their follow-up album ‘Garage Mahal’ which also went Platinum and which led to the band’s biggest hit single to date in the form of ‘Creepin Up Slowly’.
To celebrate this milestone anniversary frontman Jason Singh is embarking on a national tour, playing across six of the country’s states to take the music of Taxiride back out to the masses. We dragged Jason away from the mundane job of painting his house to have a candid & in-depth chat about the tour, the early days of the band, as well as what he has lined-up for 2024 and beyond…
Sean: Jason, how are you?
Jason: I’m good, mate. How are you doing?
Sean: Thank you so much for taking some time out on your Saturday afternoon for me.
Jason: Yeah, no problem at all, Sean. I’ve been painting the back of the house, so it was a nice way to get out of doing it [laughs].
Sean: [laughs] You just tell me how long you need me to keep you away from getting back at it. It’s great to talk to you because back in 2000 I was here on holiday from the UK, years before I finally emigrated. And when I was here, I grabbed a copy of your CD single for ‘Everywhere You Go’, and it was just a song that just hooked me in straight away. And I used to do the announcing at a little soccer club in England, and when I went home I played that track every match day.
Jason: Did you really?
Sean: Yeah, I did and I wanted everyone to hear it. So it was only a local club. We used to get about 120, 150 people. But people used to come up and go, “Who’s this? This is great.” And I’d go, oh, it’s just something I picked up in Australia [laughs].
Jason: Do you remember which one it was? What B-sides were on it? Can you remember?
Sean: I can’t. It was a red one. It was definitely a red cover. I’ll have to dig it out. It’s still in a box from when I moved.
Jason: Red? I think it would have had ‘Stone in the Ocean’, maybe. Awesome. It’s good to see you’re still playing our music, mate.
Sean: Still sounds so fresh Jason. Well it’s fantastic to see such a huge run of shows. We hear so many bands in Australia say they’re going to do a national tour. And then either Tasmania gets missed out, or WA gets missed out. But you’re covering almost every corner of the country.
Jason: Yeah, except Darwin, unfortunately. And at that time of year, when you live in Melbourne, it’s nice to go up north as much as possible and get some sunshine. But, yeah, we’ve gone to almost every state, which is great.
You know, because it is – when you’re touring a big band, we’ve got five of us and my manager and sound guy and all that, it’s expensive. But, yeah, it’s great to get over to Perth. So, hopefully, the people over there can jump on board and support. And that’s how we can keep playing and touring. And, you know, it’s been twenty five years. I want to go and play my music to everyone. So, the further I can go, the better.
Sean: Well, of course, you’ve played three shows already, I see. New Year’s Eve and a couple in January. How were they? What was it like to finally get back out and to play this whole back catalogue of 25 years?
Jason: These few shows that I’ve done are kind of warm-up shows for the main tour. So, the one that we did in Echuca was pretty much the first show that we did. It was out of a rehearsal room and onto a stage. So, you know, I’ve never stopped playing the songs after all these years. It felt normal to me, which is good, you know, because I’ve continued to play the songs since you came out in ’99 and got yourself that CD single. It’s a big part of my life and I celebrate it whenever I can.
Sean: Let’s have a little talk about what you’ve got with the band because obviously you’re coming over with a full band. You just touched on the expense of getting it around the country. How have you formed that band?
Is it a team that have played with you much before?
Jason: Well, one guy, Brett Wood, who is also the support act on the show, I’ve been playing with Brett for about 12 years now. When I put out ‘Humanniquin’, which was my debut solo album, I met Brett – funny story, actually. I had a guitar player. I was doing gigs at the time and he couldn’t do a show. So, he gave my number to Brett, who was a young up-and-comer. And I’ll never forget the phone call… I was on the toilet and my phone rang. [laughs] So, I picked up the phone. He’s like, “Hi, my name’s Brett Wood. I would really love to come play.” And it sounded like – really cute, obviously – so, it sounded like some kid saying, “I want to come and play with the big boys”, you know. So, I sort of brushed it off a little bit at the time. And then that week, someone fell ill and I rang him back and I said, “Mate, we’ve got a spot. It’s tomorrow night. Do you want to come and do it?” And, mate, he’s a mother of a guitar player, mate, let me tell you. He’s better than anyone I’ve ever met. He’s incredible. So, we formed a friendship way back then. I’ve been trying to encourage him to put his own music out for a long time. He was actually here at my house yesterday and I was helping him mix and edit some recordings that he’s going to release. So, it’s taken him ten years, basically, working with me to finally have something to come out with. So, that’s one guy in the band.
That’s Brett Wood on lead guitar and Jeremy Diffie, who is playing keys and saxophone and singing. He’s kind of the MD for me and all my shows that I’ve got going around. But we met through the Heaven’s Greatest Hits Shows that I put on through mutual musicians and stuff like that. And, mate, he’s just got a work ethic like I have. He just works his butt off every day. And we formed a friendship and, you know, I can just go to him and throw these crazy show ideas at him and he can come back with some music for it, you know. So, he’s doing it.
Andy Silvio is on drums. I’ve known him for a long time. Years and years and years. And we’ve always said we’d love to do something with each other. He’s a great rock drummer. And when I wanted to go down the rock road for this tour, I called him up. And Simon Fissenden is on bass. He plays with Pete Murray and he plays with Brett in Pete Murray’s band as well. So, I pinched a little bit of Muzz’s band for this [laughs]. But, you know, we’re forming into a band of brothers and, you know, every day, Andy, we’ll see him. He’ll send me a track. He’ll send me a message like this. What did he say today? (Jason looks at his phone) Andy Silvio. Today’s song on high rotation. Oh, yeah. You know, he just sent me songs like that. So, he’s sort of, oh, we hang out, you know. And today’s hit on high rotation, ‘Forest of the Trees’, you know. That’s what he sends on a daily basis [laughs].
You really have to submerge yourself in these kind of tours, even me. Like, going back on a tour. Going back on the whole catalogue and, you know, trying to play it as authentically similar to what the audience remembers them to be. That’s my mission. But, yeah, I sort of learnt about that submersion stuff into a project when I was doing a David Bowie tribute with Dale Ryder. And he turned me into like a super fan of Bowie. But it took that much knowledge and that much study to formulate an impressive show about David Bowie. And then I did that with Heaven’s Greatest Hits. And then I’ve done that with everything. And now my band’s actually doing it with my music, which is pretty cool.
Sean: What always amazes me with Australia being so isolated over the years, is it always took something really special for a band to get noticed worldwide. And Taxiride got that identity with, you know, you played Europe and supported the likes of Tina Turner, that’s just huge. And playing Wembley Stadium. Just incredible And for an artist label like Warner to prick their ears up and hear you initially must have been so surreal for you guys back then in the early days.
Jason: Looking back on it you’d kill for those kind of opportunities then. I mean, I really would. It was just a sweet spot in the music business that we found ourselves in. And we knew we had to do it. We had something great. We knew we were good. We worked for three or four years before we even did one show. And what, you know, I was driving 150 kilometres a day to go to the studio and every day. So I just worked every day. And, you know, we knew that we had something good. As soon as it happened, we were like, “Okay, we’re ready”. And our management and our producer, Pete Dacey, took over. And Keith took out our demos. And somehow along the line, someone played then to Seymour Stein, who signed Madonna and the Talking Heads in New York, they played him one of our demos at a New Year’s Eve party. And he got straight on the phone, called Warner Brothers here, because they’re affiliated, and started a bidding war, basically. As soon as that happened, I mean, we had eleven record deals, eleven record labels come to us at the same time all trying to sign the band.
Sean: That’s incredible.
Jason: It really was. We had Sony and their contractors over here. We had Warner Brothers contractors there, we had EMI here, we had Universal here, we had Mushroom over there. We had every record label you could think of, all laid out, all these contracts. So it was nuts, you know. But they were also flying people in, like Ahmet Ertegun, who signed Led Zeppelin, you know what I mean? They flew in from London to take us out to lunch, and took us out in Hong Kong, and Randy Jackson the bass player from New York, from American Idol, flew all the way from New York to take us out to lunch. And yeah, I mean, in hindsight, we should have tried to take it all in a little bit more than we did.
Sean: That’s crazy. It led to some huge opportunities for you guys. I mean, we see the big bands like INXS and ACDC, and bands like that who conquer the world, but for a young band from Australia, releasing a debut album to get out there and hit these massive shows in America, especially getting into the States and places like that, it was just an incredible chapter for you all.
Jason: It really was. When we finally signed with Warner Brothers, who we really signed to the personnel there, it wasn’t like anything except that we really wanted to work with the people that were working there.
They made us a worldwide priority on the label. And the rest is history. We went everywhere.
Sean: Wow. So obviously, ‘Imaginate’ was the huge stepping stone for it all to start, with the album reaching double platinum but what was the pressure like then after that to continue writing? You’ve signed with Warner, you’ve had a major hit with the debut album and suddenly comes pressure to put the second album out, which is always the one, and what was it like putting the songs together for that?
Jason: Well, for me, it was like the coming of age of the band. For me, ‘Garage Mahal’ is like where the band is. We were killing it right then, you know what I mean? And it was also about taking all the… I always said in interviews early on, you get your whole life to write your first album and three months to write your second album. But luckily enough, we had so many experiences in that couple of years that I could start really writing about that, and I sort of stepped up more in the writing area of that album. And yeah, we had some big moments on there as well and ‘Garage Mahal’ has our bigger single on it, ‘Creepin Up Slowly’, which was just a monster.
Sean: Did the label give you a lot of freedom?
Jason: They probably did give us a lot of freedom, it was more about just how much money we were spending. It’s expensive to record in America for three months. It’s expensive to hire Ocean Way out at $5000 us a day. We were there for months you know so we learned all that on the second for the second album. I guess and by the time that came around we were a lot smarter about how to record this record.
Sean: So moving forward from the band, what’s the different experiences with recording the solo work you have found? Is there as much financial backing out there now as there was back then? Are labels willing to invest as much into an artist now?
Jason: There is still a lot of money in the music business but you know it is a different experience and for me it was a necessary thing to go through. ‘Humannequin’, I don’t know if you’ve heard that record but I’m hugely proud of it as I think it still stands up today and that’s all you can really ask for when you’re making a body of work is that it doesn’t date and it still sounds really good to me. I’ve recorded with a great producer in Charles Fisher who did Savage Garden and 1927 and Air Supply. He had a hand in some huge songs and so he had great ears which was really good for me because he could pick out parts of my demos that that he thought were really strong and I could work on those so it was still a process for me to be able to do that but there was just no fighting about percentages and all that which was great.
Sean: Do you have to really apply yourself when you’re song writing or is it something that just comes naturally to you when your maybe walking down the street and or you see something in the news or on tv?
Jason: I really should be doing more of it but I’m a “walk down the street” kind of guy. I’ll be in a Chinese restaurant or something like that and I’ll hear music in the background or like you’re walking through Coles and you sort of hear a key from the music that’s playing in the store above you and a little bit of a beat and a little bit of a jazz vibe and then when you’re least expecting it it triggers an idea for me and I’ll just record it into my phone and then I’ll come home and work on it.
Before COVID, before everybody sort of jumped on the online performances and stuff like that, I did a thing called the Jason Singh Project where I wrote, recorded, produced and released six songs in a year. So six songs in a year or six songs in six months? I can’t remember what it was. It could have been a year. But every eight weeks I put a song out and it would always start with an idea and regardless of where the song was up to, when the timer clicked, the song was released at that time, which is a great thing. And every Wednesday I would do this kind of stuff with the fans online and just talk about where I was up to. But like I said before, one of the songs called ‘Your Love’, which is online, I started writing in a Chinese restaurant. And you could see, if I could find the audio, I’d play it to you. But you could literally hear the lady cooking in the wok and flipping the noodles and you could hear them yelling at each other and the sizzling and stuff. And I’m recording it in my phone going and also I’m in a crowd of people, so I’m trying not to sound like I’m mentally troubled, you know what I mean? So I had to put my phone to my ear and go, (sings) “I need your love, your love, all of your love, I need your love.” And you could hear all this stuff in the background and then pretend it was a phone call. [laughs]
Sean: How’s the song writing going now? Have you got much lined up?
Jason: I’ve been working with Pete Dacy again, who is the original Taxiride producer. I decided to go way back to the first studio I ever went into and I played him a few of my new songs and he wanted to record them. He was like, “I have to record these vocals.” So I went there and recorded a few songs with him and they’re almost ready to be put out. And I was hoping to put out a full-length album this year, but my schedule’s pretty tight and it’s hard to find days these days, but they’re coming. I’ve got one song mixed and mastered. I’ve got one track that just needs some vocals put on it and it’ll be mixed and mastered and ready to go. I was hoping by this month. I’ll probably just put them online. People can have a listen and then expect to hear them at shows. You know, I’m a performer. That’s what I want to be known as. So I like writing songs too, but I like playing them for people in front of them.
Sean: Let’s take you right back before Taxiride, before Mudd. Where did that energy of wanting to become a performer come from? Obviously growing up in Melbourne as a young kid, what were you listening to back then or what could you hear around in the house music-wise?
Jason: I was a massive Prince fan. That’s come from my sisters. My sisters are very different. They’re still very different. And I remember if I go back to 1981, we were overseas and my dad bought us all a Sony Walkman, right? And we could buy one album. I bought ‘Arrival’ by ABBA because I was six and they had a helicopter on the front [laughs]. My eldest sister, what did Sandy buy? She would have bought something like some Prince album. She would have bought a Prince record, for sure. So that was where my sort of funk influences came from. And then my eldest sister bought ‘Back in Black’.
Sean: Oh wow, that is an eclectic mix of music.
Jason: Most definitely. ‘Back in Black’ was actually the first song that I heard on a set of headphones. I started crying. I started crying because I was blown away. Yeah, so… My mum was a massive Elvis fan, but she also liked Skyhooks. She liked that 70s vibe about it. And then my dad listened to Indian music only. So that’s where that sort of Indian influence came in through ‘Garage Mahal’ and even ‘Get Set’, you know, with the sitars. That’s where that sort of came from. And I loved recording songs on my tape deck. And when ‘Total Eclipse of the Heart’ came out, I remember just waiting for that piano and the guys talking over it. I’m like, shit, I have to wait till next Friday to get this song. You know what I mean? And I remember going to Brashers and picking up, you know, the first compact disc I ever bought, which was Prince ‘Sign of the Times’ double album. Actually, no, it wasn’t. It was ‘Love Sexy’. And I ended up taking the album back because if you know that album, it’s recorded as a double album but it’s recorded as one song. If you go to iTunes and buy ‘Love Sexy’, you get the whole album. But it’s one continual track. So I took the CD back. I was like, there’s something wrong with this CD. I can’t skip through the tracks [laughs] but that’s off topic. But, I’ve always been an avid listener of music. And I didn’t really make the connection to being a performer until high school, I’d say, when I went to school with a lot of very talented people. And I sort of stood in the background a little bit until I was singing at a bus stop one day when I thought I was by myself. I was singing ‘Man in the Mirror’ and a kid named Simon, who was a gay kid that went to school in the 80s, very, very tough for someone who got picked on a lot more so than me, popped his head around the side of the bus stop. And he had this big, crazy hair. And he said, you’re a really good singer. You should be a singer. He said those exact words. “You’ve got a really good voice. You should be a singer.” Wow. And that was the first time that someone said I was good. And I went, yeah, OK, I’m going to do that. And I still actually still speak to him to this day.
Sean: Oh, really? How crazy. All those talent scouts out there and it was Simon from school.
Jason: Well, it’s the sliding doors moments, you know what I mean? And if you can read, you know, if you can read the universe, it’s sort of guiding you down a pathway. And you just got to just listen. You know what I mean?
I was born to do this and I’m going to continue to do this till the day I drop off.
Sean: Isn’t it crazy that Simon’s positive words have just put you in that mindset that, yeah, I can do that?
Jason: Absolutely. Especially when he was going through a lot worse stuff than I was. You know, it was life changing. Just one sentence. He was actually in the audience on September 27 at Palms last year when I was doing Heaven’s Greatest Hits to over 900 people. And he was right in the front.
Sean: I can see in the back corner, you’ve got a decent vinyl collection there. What’s hidden in that? Any guilty pleasures?
Jason: Oh, mate. Well, that’s one guilty pleasure. [laughs] There’s me right there. Look at that. (Jason holds up a vinyl copy of ‘Garage Majal’)
Sean: Beautiful. I didn’t even know that was on vinyl. I think I should be grabbing that for my vinyl collection.
Jason: My guilty pleasures. All right. Let me have a look here. What have we got? Well, I’ve got, this is my Prince collection. This is all Prince here. Everything he’s done.
Sean: Clearly Prince and his music have been a huge influence for you but I could ask you my restaurant question to find out maybe a few more? You can invite three musicians dead or alive to join you for dinner one evening, who would you have sat around the table with?
Jason: Oh wow, I’ve got a heap to choose from. Can I just bring everyone? [laughs] Yeah, just have the whole restaurant.
Sean: It’s a big restaurant.
Jason: It would need to be. Well, Michael Jackson would be amazing. Freddie, obviously amazing. Yeah. I’d love to sit with Tupac and people like that, too. And, you know, they’re all such huge influences on me. That’s why Heaven’s Greatest Hits, you know, I put so much into that show and it became such a beast. It was to, like, pay tribute to all these artists that we’d lost. So they’ve been as big an influence on me as some of my family, I think. You know, especially Prince.
Sean: What was the last album you listened to?
Jason: I listened to ‘Grace’ yesterday, from start to finish, because I’m doing a Jeff Buckley show in August and September. It’s going to be another national tour because it’s the 30th anniversary of ‘Grace’ this year as well. That’s one of the most influential albums for me, too. And I think on music in general, without even realising it, it was that important to the music business in the 90s and just all the bands that came after them, Coldplay and, you know, all the bands. All these bands that happened after them, I think, and Jeff Buckley. Yeah, so there’s a few that I turn to like, ‘Down on the Upside’ by Soundgarden, which is a really good start to finish record. Obviously, Grace. That’s a great start to finish album. There’s so many. I mean, I can watch movies like I listen to music. I can watch movies a thousand times. I think it’s maybe because I’m on the spectrum of some sort, I don’t know. But I love this documentary that came out, The Defiant Ones.
Sean: Oh that was just brilliant. I couldn’t turn it off. I think I blazed through all four episodes in one night.
Jason: I reckon I watch it every day. I’m not even joking. It’s incredible. Just to watch two guys from Hell’s Kitchen, just strive and work and grind people out of the way. You know what I mean? One of Jimmy’s (Iovine) famous quotes is, “I can outlast anybody.” And some of the things in that movie are, I lived it by then. They’re my mottos in life. I can outlast anyone. I guarantee it. Good mantra. Not even just in a documentary. It’s just good for your soul. It’s like drumming into yourself. I look at Taylor Swift and all. I mean, people say, oh, the music business is dead. No, it’s fucking not. She sold 300,000 tickets in Melbourne, man. Yeah. You know what I mean? It’s not dead. It’s just different.
Sean: How did you go about picking venues for the 25 Years of Taxiride shows?
Jason: We really tried to find the right venues for this tour, you know, and I came out of, like last year, we played Palms and at the Opera House. And big theatres like that with some of my bigger shows. And looking back to reflect on 25 years of Taxiride, you know, we started in pubs. So I wanted to go back and bring some kind of theatrical show to small pubs and bars and clubs. But they can’t just be, drink your beer and grab a bite to eat type pubs. I wanted things like Lyrics Underground in Perth, you know, underground, secret, that sort of vibe.
Sean: Well both Mojo’s and Lyrics are wonderful venues – both very different but both have a great atmosphere.
Jason: Yeah, wicked. I’m hanging to get over there and it’s the last weekend of the tour. So, I mean, we’ll be firing by then.
Sean: I’ve got one final question, saving the easiest for last. If you could be credited with writing any song ever written, what song would you choose?
Jason: Why do you do this to me? [laughs] Wow. Let me see. Give me a minute because there’s some brilliant songs, mate. I would say, mate. I would have loved to have written ’46 & 2′ by Tool or ‘Arthur’s Theme’ by Christopher Cross, or something by Hall & Oates or Elvis or Michael Jackson or Prince or Bowie, you know. There’s so many. I would have loved to have written ‘Paranoid Android’ by Radiohead. You know, there’s way too many. Way too many.
Sean: …or something from ‘Grace’?
Jason: Oh, yeah. I mean, it’s magic, you know. It’s just like dealing with a magician. And maybe it’s like if you could steal one magician’s trick, which would it be? It would be all of those answers right there. I don’t know. I have so many songs that are favourites. I couldn’t pick one. ‘Sign of the Times’ by Prince, all right? There we go.
Sean: We’ll go with that. It’s yours for 24 hours. Next time I interview you, there’ll be a different song, I’m sure.
Jason: There’s one, one song I can never remember what it’s called. It’s a classic old song because it’s about Vincent. Oh, I love it. “Starry, starry night.” (Jason starts singing)
Sean: ‘Vincent’ by Don McLean. That was Suzi Quatro’s pick when I interviewed her last. She’s a published poet and thinks they are some of the best vocals ever written.
Jason: When it starts, I start crying. I can’t help it. It’s incredible. It’s funny but as soon as you asked that question, that’s the first song I thought of, but I can never remember it’s called ‘Vincent’.
Sean: Jason, thank you so much for your time. It’s been a chat I had been looking forward to for a while. Look forward to catching up when you get to WA.
Jason: Thanks for the support mate. I really appreciate it. We’ll catch up in Perth for sure. Hey, and while you’re at it, go listen to ‘Humannequin’ as well. Love to hear what you think.
Sean: Will do. Mate, thanks ever so much. Pick that paintbrush up – you’ve got plenty to get doing. There’s loads of daylight left [laughs].
Jason: Thanks for reminding me [laughs].
