Mad, Bad And Dangerous

As Carrie Henschell prepares to launch her self-titled debut record at Dowse Bar this week, the local songstress who uses a powerful vocal to connect country, blues and folk recalls how music became a part of her life. 

“I've always written songs, like I started writing songs from a very young age. My mum used to have to drive me from the farm to play gigs when I was fifteen, in the big smoke…” laughs Henschell of her trips from Scrubby Creek into the metropolis of Toowoomba. “I started off kind of writing what I would think are folk songs, and I played acoustic guitar.”

Gigging around Brisbane for the past couple of years, Henschell's backing band The Cut Snakes have taken many varied forms, with the assortment of personalities and styles having a big influence on how their sound developed.

“It would depend on the guitarist a lot; that and what their influences were,” Henschell explains of the style transformation of many of her songs as other commitments changed the outfit's membership. “There's really great things about having a flexible line-up that changes. We've just got a fiddle player onboard, so we've gone from a four-piece to a five-piece, and when you kind of have people coming and going, you're more open to your sound changing and developing, and it seems to happen I think quicker when you've got new people coming in and bringing their influences. You're always challenged to look at the sound that you're developing and the arrangements because you're going through it with a new person each time.”

A shiny new purchase also had the Brisbane songwriter open to growth. 

“I think there is a kind of country base which we didn't realise was there; I was writing country songs and I didn't even know it!” Henschell chuckles. “I always kind of saw myself as this girl with an acoustic guitar playing folk music, and then when I got an electric guitar, that changed everything a lot too. When I started the band together I bought an electric guitar and I'm like, 'Yep, it totally changed the dynamic!'”

As Henschell worked through the trials and experimentations required to understand the form her sound should take for her debut album, she also took the opportunity to lyrically process her formative years of adulthood.

“I guess generally it's very much about reflecting on just life experiences in that kind of 20-year-old time period,” she muses. “There's all sorts of things from grappling with the fact that we're all gonna die and what kind of meaning we're making in our lives while we're here and what our relationships mean to us in this time in our life as well.”

Closing the album, Henschell covers Sound Of Silence, the song of a local anarchist Andy Paine who uses stories of child exploitation to highlight the importance of speaking up about social injustices. It's a fitting touch considering Henschell's day-job as a social worker, and complements her personable and honest style as a lyricist.      

“I give a shit about people; I care about people, and that song really talks about acting, like not just sitting back and just going, 'Oh well, you know I care about people but what can you do?' It's saying how silence, that's really a destructive kind of response and there is more that you can do than just to be silent to other people's suffering.”

Carrie And The Cut Snakes will be playing the following dates:

Saturday 23 February - Royal Mail Hotel, Goodna QLD