The Travelling Man

“It's kinda weird doing a six-track EP, I can never seem to do a proper size EP, like just three or four tracks – I find it hard to stop. But it's a real signature of my time in Dublin; it's Dublin musicians and it was recorded just outside [the city] in a little seaside town. I just wanted to put something down to capture it, just what it was to be there.”
Cooney is talking about Sea Sky Horizon, a release that has seen the troubadour extending his musical breadth, simplifying song structures and getting a bit more direct in a lyrical context. The Queenslander calls the EP a parting gift to the friends that he made during his three-year tenure in the Emerald Isle capital, but also a little present to himself, which is something we all undeniably need at various stages of our lives.
“Definitely, [it's a gift] to the musicians that played with me [in Dublin] and to my friends. But I think it was actually more for me than anybody else, because I hadn't recorded anything for a while and it was just about time to get back in the studio and give it a go.”
Not that there was some sort of intense, burning desire for Cooney to create, but you can probably tell that from the gorgeous, melancholy melodies that dot the release. For the songwriter, the need to make music is something that develops slowly before enveloping him whole. “Mine's more of a slow burn, but it's one that just keeps on coming and every month something comes along and I feel like I'm not really doing anything and then all of a sudden I've got twelve or thirteen songs that want to be recorded, and it takes its own momentum after that,” he expands on his working process.

Usual Cooney is an island. He typically doesn't jam songs as a band, preferring to dictate individual parts on his own. But prior to making Sea Sky Horizon he realised that he'd perhaps been stopping people from expressing themselves creatively and inadvertently harming his music. This EP was less run sheet, more platform, his playing partners given the opportunity to bring new and exciting ideas into the frame, the resulting music awash with the warmth of the creation process.
“It was a weird coincidence – well, it's always a weird coincidence – but I went to a coffee shop, talked to a guy and got along with him,” he recalls. “He said someone owed him a favour and he was playing a gig that night so they put me on as a support act, and the main band [that night] liked my music and offered to play with me. It was completely unnatural and I felt a little bit uncomfortable, [but] then as soon as we all found our relationship with each other in the band it was like second nature after that, it was great.”

The whole story of the release sounds incredibly romantic and quite exceptional. But ask the long-haired lad and he'll tell you that it's fairly par for the course when you're a roaming musician. Things might be spontaneous in Tom Cooney's world, but there's some sort of consistency in that.

“Yeah, you say it's rare, but then you look back over your musical relationships and realise that they all happen in a very, very strange way,” he reasons. “People pop up out of nowhere and it can be strange and beautiful or strange and difficult, but more often it's beautiful.”

Tom Cooney will be playing the following dates:

Friday 11 January - Jet Black Cat Music Store, Brisbane QLD
Sunday 13 January - Black Bear Lodge, Fortitude Valley QLD