LA Confidential

25 August 2014 | 12:54 pm | Michael Smith

"I was told you really need to give your music an identity, unless it’s pop and falls across all of them"

Mid-July, Foundation Room in the House of Blues on Sunset Boulevard, and a young Australian named Tim Wheatley, who’s moved to LA from Melbourne in order to build on a musical career that began a decade ago first with The Sparrows, then Rushcutter before kicking off a solo career as Crooked Saint, strolls onto the stage with his acoustic, kick drum and a harmonica to launch his debut US release as Tim Wheatley, the Crooked Saint EP. Not that that was his original intention.

“I’d recorded a full-length album back home,” Wheatley explains, “but then, upon bringing it here, the general consensus is you don’t just throw everything at them ‘cause it’s most likely gonna fall on deaf ears for some time while it simmers here and people get to acclimatise to you. So we shortened it down to give everyone a taste of what is to come.”

"Sometimes you feel like you’re banging your head against a wall and nothing’s happening"

By the time Wheatley moved to the US, Crooked Saint had evolved into a four-piece band, at least for recording purposes, featuring old friends Michael Badger on bass, guitarist Johnny Grant and drummer Troy Ramaekers. While, like the rest of the forthcoming album, the EP’s lead track was originally produced, engineered and mixed in Melbourne by Paul McKercher, Burning The Midnight Oil was remixed in the US by Niko Bolas, whose credits include Neil Young and Johnny Cash.

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“It was a suggestion of a few folks over here to really give it an identity... There are so many markets here – there’s the country music market, the rock market, the indie scene and stuff – I was told you really need to give your music an identity, unless it’s pop and falls across all of them. I love the previous mix but it was neither definitively country nor definitively rock, so the idea was to sort of dirty it up and I gave it to Niko, who’s an old friend and no one can make a track filthier than him!”

This EP is his third in the three years Wheatley has been travelling as Crooked Saint, and, along with two singles, continues down the alt-country route he’s pursued since leaving Rushcutter. As for the choice of venue for the US launch, well, Wheatley scored himself a residency there a couple of years ago, so it was the obvious pick.

“It’s really, really fucking hard, if you want my honest opinion,” Wheatley chuckles regards establishing himself in the US. “There are so many people over here doing the same thing and chasing the dream, so you’re trying to sell ice to Eskimos sometimes. Sometimes you feel like you’re banging your head against a wall and nothing’s happening. Some of the shows that you do here, you could be playing to five people – and a lot of the time I am – but you never know who those five people are, there in Hollywood, and some opportunities have arisen like that.”