As Heard On TV

You might have noticed that the perennially on tour Jeff Lang has been a bit quiet on the old gig front the past few months. It's unusual when you consider his most recent album, Carried In Mind, won him the Best Blues & Roots Album gong at the 2012 ARIAs, the perfect excuse to get out there for one more victory run. “I've spent the last few months doing a TV scoring job for an upcoming ABC drama series called The Gods Of Wheat Street,” Lang explains. “They thought that what I do naturally would work – you're kind of writing by proxy in a way.”

Lang has a little home studio set up he's obviously used for his scoring sessions as well as his own recordings, but it's also become something of a hub for local roots and blues artists, with Sean McMahon, Susannah Espie and Hat Fitz & Cara dropping in to record their albums there, Lang engineering or producing the sessions. “I've known Fitzy for such a long time,” Lang says of his work on Hat Fitz & Cara's Wiley Ways album, “that I just basically put a bit of a boot up him and went, 'Come on, man, for once approach it as a bit more than just a lark'.” As for sitting on the other side of the desk, he finds it all quite creative. “You wouldn't think it would be, just watching meters and hitting play and record,” he laughs, “but I'm actually quite enjoying it – probably because I'm doing my own thing as well. It's like a Busman's holiday.

“What working on other people's records has brought home to me is the importance of just enjoying the process of recording, which I always have but to watch other artists sometimes struggling with it, other times not, and you see the result and basically, if you enjoy it, the end result does actually benefit from that, I think.”

You can expect something of that experience and sense of fun to filter into Lang's own next album, which is already taking shape, as it happens. “I've been writing stuff and next thing is running through it with the line-up and getting an approach in mind, which I kind of have – I've got the idea of maybe incorporating more percussion, maybe getting Greg Sheehan to play on a bunch of stuff, which would be good because he's sat in with us a few times – I did a gig with just he and me at [last year's] Inland Sea of Sound Festival in Bathurst. I've also got a loose idea to have an instrumental project come out, like a side project thing, and plus maybe even a collaborative thing at some point, which I've sort of started work on but it's a little early to talk about. There are a few things on the go.”

One collaboration Sydneysiders were privy to recently was his joining forces with John Butler as part of the final performance of TEDx at Sydney Opera House, which saw the pair composing two songs together. “We were laughing about it,” Lang admits. “We kind of approached it like a backwards gig. Usually you write material and record it and then you go and do the gig. This was one where we booked the gig and then wrote some material for it. The easiest thing would have you jam on this one of mine and I'll jam on this one of yours. It was nice having this idea of getting together for a couple of days where we will write 15 minutes' worth of stuff to play at this thing – and it worked.”

And if the pair book four more two-song gigs, we might see a completely different Jeff Lang collaborative album.