You’ve been very busy with Big Hearted Business ('a resource that exists to teach creative people about business, and business people about creativity'), and I believe there’s an album in the works too and another season of Offspring has come to light. That’s all been shot hasn’t it?

No, Offspring is still one that’s in discussion and of course I’d love to be part of it again. Most of my time has been spent working on album number eight and bring this incredible band that were bring to Perth.

The Royal Jelly Dixieland Band? Do tell...

It’s a nine-piece, and it’s members of the original Feeding Set and the Royal Jellys who are an incredible good times band. It’s really quite exciting and there's also Tommy Spender who’s an incredible solo artist and music maker in his own right.

So they’ve been involved in your albums before?

Yeah, they’ve been involved with most of my albums but we’re actually putting this band together especially for this show in Perth. We haven’t been there in a while and we wanted a very special and big sounding show. And you don’t get many opportunities to play on a wetland stage in WA!

So where are you at with the album? When did you start writing it? The Winter I Chose Happiness (2012) and all your albums are a big thing evolution-wise, but certainly that had a really lovely theme about it and a lot of depth.

I feel like every album becomes a bit of PHD for me. In 2012 we chose winter, but in 2013 I thought we should do this little love project that was Big Hearted Business that was very much about creating a conversation between creative people and how to amplify their voices and being able to make a living doing what they love without giving up on their ideals and understanding that we needed their voice in the arena, and it really took off. 

I’ve never had such a big gap in between albums. So, I made a pretty conscious decision to give Big Hearted Business two dedicated years to get the community up and running. But, in the meantime I’ve been clocking up the songs, I never really stop writing songs. So when it came down to deciding ‘what is album eight?’ we sat down with nearly 150 or so sketches, so now were probably halfway through recording the album and we’re looking to release it the middle of next year. But I’m looking forward to trying out a few new songs in Perth.

Originally published in X-Press Magazine