For The Record

I'm a bit of a split personality,” Parkin begins as he explains how his third album, Steve Parkin III, came into being. “There's a side of me that loves pop music: I love the craft. I'm signed with Universal Music and I do a lot of co-writing with people like Gossling and Eskimo Joe, and there were a couple of albums I put out where you're talking about being in a really sleek studio and spending all this money trying to craft radio-friendly tunes. There's another side of me though who is a real music nerd: I love the crazy jamming that just captures the moment, and I've got to the stage where I realise with things like Bandcamp and stuff that I can just upload something I really like and it's no big deal. If people listen to it and like it, they can buy it, and if they don't like it, they don't have to.”

Parkin has been in amongst Australia's music industry for two decades, and in that time he's produced music for contestants on The Voice, won two APRA Awards, won the International Songwriting Competition and been nominated for two ARIAs. His two previous albums, Sandytown and Mighty Big Light, incorporated his stance among the major labels with super-polished alternative pop tracks you'd most certainly hear on a commercial radio station if they played new Australian music. The new album, however, features an eclectic collection of tracks spanning across acoustic stylings, live electronica collages, experimental psych tracks and indie-folk-pop. To Parkin, this is the change of direction he felt he needed. “I've had one of those years where I just needed to pick up my guitar or sit at the piano or just get a loop going and just exorcise my demons. It's been recorded everywhere over two years all over the place, and I decided I wasn't going to edit it or place any effects on it – I was just going to get it out there. Some of the tracks are just sounds or collages, or bits and pieces that just have feelings or vibes. There are others that are deeply personal. The other thing too is that I think people find me quite hard to peg; it's like 'Well, he's won a couple of awards but he's not really famous or anything. He's been in a mini supergroup but, like, what does he do?' I wanted to do something that would change a few conceptions. I once had a record company person chat to me while doing my last album about really trying to hit the market and he said to me, 'Steve, you need a persona. You need a name like Flume or someone, you know, just be a mysterious rock star.' Unfortunately, I'm a dag; I'm never going to be that guy. Over the years, I've built up this harddrive of songs I love, and they've been recorded in studios or on the fly or with other musicians, and it mightn't be something you can just take into a commercial radio station, but I reached a point where I realised it didn't have to be that way.”

Parkin also has another project. The Newport in Fremantle hosted its first of hopefully many Record Club nights recently, a night that sees a different artist or band perform a 'classic' album of their choosing. Parkin saw a similar set-up when he worked behind a bar in Melbourne and knew it had to be done in Perth. “Julia Stone and her band came down one night and did David Bowie's Let's Dance with violins and stuff, and it absolutely fucking blew me away. It just made me think, 'I don't think anyone in WA's done this!'” Last week saw locals The Date perform Lou Reed's Rock N' Roll Animal, while this week, The Wesley Goodlet Jamboree Scouts are recreating David Bowie's The Rise & Fall Of Ziggy Stardust. Parkin can't believe how keen people are to play. “It's out of control. I've got a bit of a mailing list of musos and friends and stuff after 20 years in the industry, so I just put the idea out there to them by email, and I just got a flood of people getting back to me like 'Yeah, we do!' It was crazy. I've always loved the Newport band room and now that we've got all these bands in on it, it's gonna be great. Each ticket is going to be ten bucks regardless of who's playing, so it's basically just a big thing for music lovers. My whole aim is to just have punters walking out of there with a big grin on their faces.”