Rambling Man

Through sludgey rock and lingering folk, rolling alt.country and vulnerable balladeering, Ben Salter has managed to wear plenty of musical hats over the past 15 or so years. Be it with Giants Of Science, The Wilson Pickers, The Gin Club or as a solo performer, the Brisbane musician has had no shortage of inspiration throughout his career and has spread his wings wide across the domestic scene, versatile and open-minded, the song always winning in the end. So it's no surprise really that Salter's latest collection of songs under his name have come from a life less ordinary.

European Vacation is exactly that; Salter's journey across the continent, captured through music. With Government backing via a New Work Grant, his adventures saw him crisscross Europe for five months: collaborating, writing songs, performing – living it.

“It was a million times better than what I imagined,” he gushes about the experience. “On paper it all sort of looks the same [as I'd planned originally], but when you get down to the actual experiences and actually being there and doing these things and writing the songs and being away for just such a long time... the last few times I went over I was away for about three months, but I was never by myself, so travelling for that long just by myself was really exhilarating; it was really amazing.”

Afforded with an expansive schedule, Salter was able to really “get to know” places. He bunked down in Berlin for roughly a month, London for about the same, Paris for a few weeks. Salter also took some roads rarely travelled for a foreign musician, leading him throughout the Brittany region of France, the eastern side of Germany, southern Italy, the Galicia area of Spain, even Iceland and Lapland in the northern reaches of the continent, the latter location inspiring the first song on the EP, The Prophetess.

Add that to time in England for The Great Escape and Liverpool Sound City, and you've got one hell of an epic undertaking, European Vacation standing as an incredible musical snapshot of his experiences on the road.

“It's amazing in that respect,” Salter agrees, “and that was really one of the big things that drove me to keep doing it, because I'm sort of lazy, I never want to spook the songwriting process. I don't sit down and write lyrics every day, I certainly don't sit down and play guitar every day. When I feel like writing a song I do, but because I was doing this thing I sort of had to, and those moments when you're sitting by yourself and you go, 'Oh, I'll just watch TV, I'll just read a book', and you go, 'No, I'm here to write songs so I should pull out the recorder'. And I'm one of these people, if I'm going to write something I may as well record it.”

Yes, there were moments of soul searching; Salter was on his own after all. However, the times of introspection – usually caused from too much of the local drop – were far outweighed by experiences more positive. He was surrounded by amazing people, and throws out a ballpark figure of “twenty or thirty” when it comes to the number he collaborated with. “I think I only said I was going to do about ten [collaborations], but I ended up meeting heaps of people,” he reasons.

“I would have an idea or a song title, and I'd go to... some of the people, they'd done heaps of collaborations before, some of them had never done it before. And I'd say to them, 'Okay, we've only got this much time, what's the first composition you've got?'.”

This brought about results which stretched Salter's songwriting in every direction, and gave the musician a glut of material across projects not limited to his own. He wrote swampy rock in Berlin with Melbourne band Bitter Sweet Kicks and expects that to turn up on a release of theirs, and he did an electro rap track with New Zealander Dominic 'Tourettes' Hoey which has ended up on an Anigozanthos album, the electronic-based project he works on with Dollar Bar's Chris Yates. In addition, Salter penned a load of other tunes that he says will be on a second solo record in the near future, too.

“You just don't have time to think too much. Thinking is the death of creativity a lot of the time, you've just got to turn off that conscious mind and just do it. Like Michael Jordan said,” he jokes. “But I really believe that, you've just got to not think, 'Oh, this is naff or this is silly'.”

And the resulting EP, European Vacation, is nothing to laugh at. A warm record that reflects the pursuits of the individual but also the joy that comes from new friendships, it shows that music removes the idea of being a stranger – it's the language that anyone can understand.

“[You] meet locals in a way that you just wouldn't do if you were a tourist, so I'm really grateful for that,” Salter reflects, obviously humbled by the entire experience. “But my expectations aren't very big – I'm just happy if there's twenty people there and they enjoy it and I get a couple of free beers. You go over to Europe and their attitude towards artists is just so different – they really think what you're doing is totally worthwhile – there's never a moment of, 'Oh, you're just a musician – get a real job', it's like, 'Wow, you're a musician, that's really special'. You can stay at their house and they give you dinner and they really look after you, so that's a nice thing for someone from Australia...

“[Here in Oz], everyone in society has this attitude of like, 'C'mon mate, you're nothing special, you're not any more important than the rest of us',” he relates. “And I don't think that's a bad thing, I think that's just the way Australians are, and it's a product of where we come from. But it's still nice to see the way the other side live. I guess my experiences of not expecting anything and trying to be as humble as I can as far as being a musician in Australia translates pretty well when you go overseas because you don't have any expectations, so when you get a free meal and somewhere to stay you feel like a king.”