Pressure Down

Just reading the Tim Richmond bio might suggest he's some Melbourne music scenester. His first self-titled 2008 LP featured Declan Kelly on drums; his latest, Dot, was recorded with Nick Huggins and features Kishore Ryan (of Kid Sam and Otouto) on drums. His newly-assembled live band features Ryan, Tim Harvey (Clare Bowditch), James Cecil (Super Melody, Architecture In Helsinki), and Mark Monnone (The Lucksmiths, Monnone Alone). Yet Richmond doesn't seem himself as an insider, but an eternal outsider.

“I feel like I've done this entirely in isolation,” says Richmond, of his part-time, slow-moving musical 'career'. “I don't feel like I've existed in a music community at all. I've been a cook and a chef, and recently a business owner. As much as I would've loved to have been this part of a local musical community, in a more public sphere, it hasn't happened that way. I've done this in my own little world. It's only now that I've made this album that I feel like I can engage in the music community.”

Richmond's distant backstory is, however, filled with rock'n'roll. As a 15-year-old, he formed his first band, a Sonic Youth-inspired alt.rock outfit he declines to name. “I was only 15, but I was always playing in bars,” he recalls. “I was gigging every weekend. Then I stopped when I was 18, and didn't play for almost ten years.”

After moving to Melbourne, Richmond spent his time working as a chef. Even though he kept writing songs, he just never performed them; and it was only when he, fortuitously, ended up as Kelly's housemate that he was coaxed into making a record. After the release of his solo debut in 2008, Richmond again put his musical career on the backburner; instead throwing all his time and effort into establishing Long Play, the North Fitzroy bar he co-owns.

Yet he persisted, still working away at songs that he'd been holding onto for years. “I've drawn on material I've written over a decade, essentially,” Richmond offers, of the jams collected on Dot. “You could say it's a portrait of my 20s, my late-20s; my whole adult life, in a way. I've always spent part of my life chipping away at writing songs, with the idea that one day – as has happened – I'd be able to record them properly with a good band.”

Yet, as much as Huggins and Ryan colour the songs on Dot, there's still a sense of their original isolation throughout: in its stark, arcing guitar lines, the simple plod of its drums, and in Richmond's hesitant, gentle singing, which makes him sound unsure of every sentiment. “There's definitely a sense of isolation in the songs,” says Richmond. “But in my 20s I was experiencing literal isolation: isolation in relationships, or not having relationships. In the songs, I address that in that poetic kind of way; you're writing around that, not directly addressing that. I feel like it's too personal too divulge the specific stories behind the songs.”

Those songs, Richmond says, “are more like vignettes”; each “different in their own way”, each the product of a long, slow, patient “crafting process” in which Richmond slowly sculpts on his own. Previously, taking them out live, the songwriter “didn't feel like [his] set was very entertaining”; but now, in front of a five-piece band of Melbourne all-stars, the outsider is feeling a little less anxious.

“With the first album, I probably would've only done eight sets live,” Richmond says. “It was really hard for me, because at the time I was putting pressure on myself to try and make a living out of playing live, which was pretty delusional. I've got a bar now, and a successful bar, and I've got a big, full band on stage with me. So now I feel very relaxed.”

Tim Richmond will be playing the following shows:

Sunday 28 October - Northcote Social Club, Melbourne VIC