Phil Jamieson“Port Lincoln was an experience, I'd never been there in three decades of touring. I've got a whole chapter of a book about that trip.”
Well before the formal release of Phil Jamieson’s sophomore album 10Charlie, the Grinspoon frontman and more recently stamped solo artist started touring his latest just to work out the inevitable “teething issues” early on in his mammoth 44-show PJ Air tour.
Jamieson is obviously no stranger to touring after more than two decades in the biz, but even the little things still throw themselves into the paths of seasoned troubadours.
“There were hotel issues, check-in issues and all sorts of weird little things happening,” he explains. “At one point I was just laughing at the absurdity of touring.
“You can either throw your toys out of the cot or lean into it, and I chose to lean into it.”
Leaning into fresh creative pursuits is what saw Jamieson step fully into the spotlight once again following 2022’s solo debut Somebody Else. For 10Charlie, he was unequivocal about his desire – personally and professionally – to get the new songs out on the road and into the ether as early as possible ahead of its release.
“The new material is going down great from my perspective,” Jamison offers.
“It's horrifically selfish to say, but I'm doing a lot of it for me, and if I'm connecting with it, I've got a theory that the rest will follow and people will connect, too.
“But there's nothing like stage time with songs. Sometimes you need to push the tempo a little and learn their intricacies live.”
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Working again with producer Oscar Dawson (of Holy Holy, whose producing credits alone include Alex Lahey, Teen Jesus And The Jean Teasers, The Vanns, and a whole lot more), Jamieson dove deep into the highs and lows of life unfolding around him in the past few years for inspiration to pen 10 Charlie’s nine tracks, and pulled in pals and creatives Davey Lane, Rob Muiños, Ben Edgar, and Soph Ozard.
What came out in the wash is a multifaceted album that rouses with bright, brash rock splashed with meditative crooners. Compared with Jamieson’s debut, these tracks also firmed up quicker.
“For me, it takes your whole life to write your debut,” he admits. “The first record came out in 2022 and some of those songs were 15 years old. They were really just the best songs I'd accumulated over years.
“This album was written over the past two or three years. Get It was written during the Somebody Else tour at soundcheck in the Gershwin Room at [St Kilda’s] The Espy. I remember writing it there and thinking, ‘I think this might be good’.
"Reading Keats In Byron Bay came from a melody I wrote while sitting at traffic lights on Hoddle Street in Melbourne. I was lucky enough to collaborate with Ben Edgar on a few songs, including Reading Keats, Blue As The Sunlight, and Eager Beaver. Davey Lane also helped with songs like Weekends and Get It.
“The Soft Return is probably my favourite song on the record. It's meditative, long and a little ambiguous. That one was written on a farm on the Mid North Coast.
“The songs were written all around Australia. They're deeply personal, but I didn't want the album to be filled with self-pity. I wanted it to be upbeat, hopeful and enjoyable.”
Even after decades fronting Grinspoon, the songwriting muscle doesn’t flex in a predictable way for Jamieson when it comes to his own material.
Despite the band kicking down figurative industry (and, let’s be honest, perhaps literal) doors from their humble Lismore base in 1995, touring nationally and overseas alongside household names and headlining their own shows, racking up the ARIA wins and nominations, and producing a solid eight-album catalogue, songs still arrive in unexpected places for Jamieson.
But as long as they keep finding him, he'll follow them wherever they lead. Some are just always meant to be written on the fly.
“Put it this way – if I write songs at traffic lights, I catch them where I can,” he laughs.
“There are writers who can sit down at nine in the morning and work all day. I'm not really one of them. For me it's more like catching lightning in a bottle.
“It's weird because I didn’t really write with Grinspoon. We generally bring songs to the table individually, so the processes have always remained somewhat separate.
“I'm not particularly good at writing for specific projects. Songs tend to become whatever they're going to become.
“And I loved writing these songs, so I felt pretty confident about putting them out. I'm quite hard on myself and pretty critical, so if I wasn't genuinely happy with them, they wouldn't have been released.
“The main difference with solo work is that there's no one else to blame when you're standing up there. That's why I put so much effort into preparing for the tour and making sure the arrangements, equipment and everything else were right.
“More than anything, though, I was excited. I'm incredibly grateful for Grinspoon, the eight records and everything we've achieved, but I'm grateful for this project, too. It beats doing almost anything else.”
However, Jamieson admits it’s hard to beat taking the songs on the road. As he spoke to The Music, he was hard at work as part of his extensive PJ Air tour, which launched in June and was to see him on the road until mid-September.
“Ultimately, I'm having the best time,” he shares. “Looking back at writing the record, recording it and now playing it, it's the happiest part for me.
“Whether there's 30 people, 300 people or 3,000 people, I'm overwhelmed by any audience. Sometimes those little 30-capacity shows are actually the ones you remember most.”
However, just a week before his 10Charlie record was to arrive, an onstage accident at The Deck in Traralgon, Victoria saw Jamieson hospitalised, necessitating the cancellation of his remaining tour dates after fracturing his L1 vertebra.
“No-one is more bummed about this than me, but I can’t stand up let alone play a gig at the moment,” Jamieson told fans, explaining that PJ would be “in my pjs for the foreseeable future”.
However, while 10Charlie is still on track for its release this Friday, that appears to be what matters most to Jamieson – even if he’s unable to take the music directly to the people. It’s clear that he hopes that the record will resonate despite his absence from the stage.
“For me, the song always wins,” he tells The Music. “Whether it's 1995 or 2025, that's still the thing that matters.
“It's not about money. It's about playing the songs and connecting – firstly to myself and then hopefully to other people.”
Phil Jamieson’s 10Charlie is available for pre-order ahead of its August 14th release date. Stay tuned for further updates on his return to the live stage.
This piece of content has been assisted by the Australian Government through Music Australia and Creative Australia, its arts funding and advisory body
