How A Psychic Predicted The Songs Daniel Reeves Would Write

Growing up in a little place called Violet Town off the Hume Freeway, Daniel Reeves jokes that music didn't help him win any popularity points. "When I was young my parents had a lot of records and I would listen to them all, and people would come over after school and I'd be like 'ah, let's hear this record!' and they'd be like 'nah, I don't want to listen to records, I wanna kick the footy,'" he laughs. "I was a bit of the odd one out."

"She goes 'Oh wow, in a couple of days time you're going to have to pull that car over and I see a flood of songs coming…"

While his fellow country folk may have not embraced much music initially, once they put on the Violet Town Arts Festival "the town started changing. All of a sudden artists were given an opportunity, the festival ran from 11am to 11pm and there wasn't enough performer slots, there was music everywhere!" he enthuses. The Violet Town Arts Festival in 1996 saw both Ella and Jesse Hooper of Killing Heidi - then 13 and 15 respectively - and a young Reeves both cut their teeth.

But by 2013, Daniel Reeves had been touring for so long he had lost a lot of his motivation. "I'd been doing the music game for quite a while and it was at the end of my national tour and at the end as an artist you're quite exhausted from the travel," he laments. "You have the incredible highs and you have the times of self-doubt - you just can't ride high all the time emotionally, I just don't think it's possible." Seeking inspiration, a friend recommended that he see a psychic - maybe there was a sign from the universe that would renew his vigour? "I was a bit cheeky. I gave out no information the first time I [saw] her, and she just picked every single thing I did. So I was like 'Okay, you're real'," he laughs. "She goes 'Oh wow, in a couple of days time you're going to have to pull that car over and I see a flood of songs coming and you're just going to have to drop everything in your life - it won't matter what's happening - and you're gonna write all these songs.' I was thinking 'Yeah okay, I can't really drop everything 'cuz I've got shows on."

Driving back to South Australia from Sydney following the consultation, he noticed something was wrong with the car. "I was driving along thinking 'oh my God what's that smell?'" and all of a sudden "there was just oil everywhere". "So I was in a little country town and I had to wait for parts, I ended up having to cancel shows, but that's okay because the people in this town - oh they were so polite, they invited me out for dinner - and I just had this time to sit and write, and I wrote like 11 or 12 songs in five days. I was there for a total of eight days, but I ended up using six of those for the album [In A Moment of Chaos]," he smiles.