ALBUM PREMIERE: Pete Cullen & The Hurt – ‘High Tide’

Wild Heart

Wild Heart was the last song I wrote for this album, it’s pretty much an open letter to myself. Sometimes you can you find yourself in a bit of a rut, disillusioned, selfish, not liking parts of yourself or where you’ve ended up in life and blaming other people or situations for all the above. The great thing about being in this place is realising that it’s not too late to change yourself and also allow other people around you change. As I wrote the lyrics to Wild Heart I felt an outpouring of emotion and relief of this fact. 

Peace Love 

This song is interesting as I first wrote the chorus in 2005 in the band The Daybridges, it’s completely different now!. It’s funny how songs can be put in a vault and come out years later. Reading opinion pieces in the news and also reading social media opinions and comments (and or at times writing comments) really was getting me down. I read a quote by Martin Luther King: “I have decided to stick with love. Hate is too great a burden to bear”. The quote gave me a reality check and inspired me to lose the chip off my shoulder and think about how I react to situations and how I needed to take responsibility for my own words and actions before pointing the finger.

Destroy It All

I feel really fortunate to be born in Australia, we are the lucky country but sometimes I question where we are headed as a nation across a number of issues. The song Destroy It All came to me in late January 2019 when I was reading stories of farmers facing drought in Australia for another song off the album called Muddy Water. Around this time a natural disaster hit north Queensland. One week farmers where feeding their stock just to keep them alive in drought and the next week they were seeing them washed away in floods. Living in the city is sometimes hard to fully fathom the reality of these heartbreaking stories and how it effects rural communities. For example, over the past few years it's been too easy to buy a $1 litre milk to save a buck from Coles and Woolies without giving a thought about the supplier’s livelihoods. It's too easy to forget about the Aussie farmers, families and communities facing financial oblivion and remembering where our food supplies come from when you can walk into a supermarket and buy whatever you want when you need it at discounted prices. 

Easy Money 

Easy Money is kind of a reply to the track Bank Robbers off the album. It’s a bit tongue in cheek but explores the reality of living on very little money in our expensive society and the temptations of scheming to get a quick buck. Killer riff, I don’t know how I came up with this one but Rupert Jenner, my guitar player, took it to the next level. 

High Tide 

High Tide was inspired by reading about school kids protesting about the environment and climate change. I find it hard to believe that shock jocks can come out and vilify kids when they are taking a stand on their future. Is it bad that youth care about the earth? So I tell a story about a father saying to his son “Boy it’s getting hotter” and the son replying “Daddy, the teacher told me”, the father brushing the son off as though the teachers know nothing. The son grows up, the world has changed, the son asks the question “What if Daddy listened?” did he leave the world dragging the chain? Environmental catastrophes usually are associated with cyclones, bushfires or earthquakes that you see devastation within 24 hours. It’s sometimes hard to believe in climate change when the change is slow a build up over time that you can’t really see it happening. "Rain never hurt nobody when the river is slow to rise. It's lapping on the levy, devistate on the High Tide".

Muddy Water 

Last year I was reading a heap of interviews about farmers facing crippling drought in Australia. Nearly every line in this song was something that a farmer had seen, said and was facing. Farmers are going deeper into debt, losing breeding stock, and face the reality of losing everything. The mental stress must be unbearable as the drought continues. 

Captive To No Man’s Beat 

As a songwriter and musician I work a lot by myself. You can feel very isolated, question what you’re doing, and have a lot of self doubt. Muso’s often get asked “What do you do for a living?” followed by “Yeah, but what’s your real job?”. Although punters are asking these questions with the best intentions and are really surprised and inspired when you reply “Nah, I just play music for a living”, you can feel the burden of thinking you have to fit in with societal norms. So I find I have to make conscious decisions to “break off the shackles and chains” that can mentally trap me and not be a captive to anyone else’s beat but my own. 

Bank Robbers

Bank Robbers was inspired by reading about The Banking Royal Commission and the blatant robbery and abuse of peoples’ hard earned money. I wanted to write a song to contrast the difference between famous outlaw bank robbers from the wild west like Butch Cassidy and the banks and financial institutions today. The old stories of bank robbers tell tales of the poor stealing millions from the rich, these days, it’s the rich stealing billions from the poor. Who are the bank robbers now?

Scarborough Hotel

I grew up in Scarborough and have fond memories of frequenting the Scarborough Hotel. The song started out nostalgic, a different style, basically a song for my mates who I grew up with. I delved into the memory bank, the hard luck stories surrounding the pub started to outweigh the good times. So I decided to tell the tale of a character who had a tough up bringing, found suburban fame, lived hard and found a home playing music at the Scarborough Hotel. The factual part of this story is a huge storm hit the pub, developers said it would cost too much to repair and it got bull dozed for apartments. I often wonder where the patrons who I remember slouched over the bar every day ended up after it closed. The character in this story dies when the pub was hit by that storm as did a part of everyone who had sculled a beer at the bar of the “Scarby". 

Crazy Horse

I love old western movies, cowboys and Indians. In the movies the cowboys always win so I thought I would tell the story from the losing side, the story of the legendary American Indian Crazy Horse. History is always written by the victors and we don’t have to look too far from home to see the realities of the fact. 

Rose Of Sorrow 

Rose Of Sorrow was the first song I wrote when I decided to write another album in November 2018. I stopped and poked my head up for just a moment in time and just couldn’t believe what I was seeing around the globe. I don’t know if it was personally the place I found myself in, but there seemed to be a sorrow in the wind. I realised there was not much I could do in the big picture but examine myself, I didn’t (and still don’t) have all the answers. I thought about a rose, the beauty, the life, the fragrance, the colour and joy it brings when you give or receive one. To me life is like a rose, sometimes the thorns can hurt you, but I would rather endure some pain to admire the majesty. Rose of sorrow, rose of dreams, rose of life, rose of peace.