Totally Spent

Melbourne-based songwriter/producer Tom Spender is no stranger to the music scene – his list of conquests include being a part of Offcutts, followed by a stint as a member of Custom Kings – however, for the last few years he's been keeping his head down, focusing on production. This refined knowledge of music production, paired with some originally crafted songs has brought Spender to a new apex in his career: the release of his debut solo EP, Modern Pest.

This extensive experience has led Spender to form an impressive network of musical contacts, demonstrated by the collaborations with Wally De Backer (Gotye) and Clairy Browne on Modern Pest. On these relationships, Spender admits, “I am such a proud member of a musical community, one that a lot of musicians probably don't recognise they're a part of. It's like you're a taxi driver, and every lunchtime when you're waiting at the airport for a flight to come in and you just sit around and you're like, 'We're all cab drivers and we're all in it together'. There's an important solidarity there.

“I really wanted to feature my songwriting and production [on the EP],” Spender continues, “and the best way I could think to do that was to have a great singer perform the song for me – it sort of takes me out of the equation. I knew Wally's range and his voice in falsetto was really going to spruik the song [Hotel Home], and it was the same for Clairy; I know she has this real sassy, growly, juicy sound to her voice that's really suited to the track [Peace Of Your Mind].”

On his recent collaboration with Freemantle's own roots chanteuse, Mama Kin, for the song One Night Upon A Cold Rooftop – which is not featured on the EP, but was rather a musical experiment – Spender explains, “Mama Kin is one of my best friends and we've always wanted to sing together, and this was something we could really sink our teeth into. For me the collaboration was more about filming our performance together with the choir and a pianist; it was really important to show the community coming together.”

Spender is now set to share the stage with Clare Bowditch for her Winter Secrets tour: “Clare's a great guitar player so I'm looking forward to merging [our] sounds into one, which is one of my favourite challenges in music – I love the sound of two people sounding like they're one,” he says. “I'm also going to be doing a half hour set of my own material, where I'll be bringing along a few different instruments and creating a bed of music on the fly with my computer and then singing and performing over the top of that.”