Out Of Time

Fraser A Gorman is cooking up a storm on a cold
mid-week evening. With his classic spaghetti bolognese simmering away on the stove, the downright friendly, frizzy-haired singer explains his prowess in the kitchen. “I'm good at cooking pasta,” he says, “but that's about it. And when I say 'good', I mean 'I can do it'.”

Gorman grew up in Torquay, attended school in Geelong and these days calls a sharehouse in the city home. While currently performing as a solo artist (with a very talented band behind him), he used to front a great garage group in Geelong called Revolver & Sun. This band dissolved when he moved to Melbourne, which is when he began his new project, and with this he wanted to bring, as he describes, “some really serious country influences” into the sound. He did, and the music he is making now seems to hark back to an older time. He names Bob Dylan and Elvis Presley as big influences too, but his love of old music goes far deeper than these American music icons. “I've always been a massive follower of really early blues musos like Lightnin' Hopkins and Muddy Waters and stuff,” says Gorman, “and early [Johnny] Cash and Hank Williams, all that kind of stuff [is] part of what makes the sound of the band.”

But Gorman doesn't want to make music that is defined and restricted by this old-fashioned style. “We're not really trying to nail the authenticity of the sound, like some acts do, or play a character or anything. I guess I want to be free to take the genre where I want to go and not be pinned down to do something the same way as someone else did it. We're just about making, or trying to make, timeless music,” he laughs, worried by how this might come across, then adds, “That's a big statement. Just say that we like timeless music.” 

Gorman's new self-titled EP features the upbeat and romantic, doo-wop-inspired track Hold You, which shows off Gorman's great vocal character and is sure to get toes tapping and hips shaking. In contrast, the beautiful Take Me To Your Grave reveals a storytelling sensibility and a poetic turn of phrase, presenting Gorman as a songwriter who works hard on his craft. He talks about an old singing teacher whose ideas on the importance of a story in a song still resonate with him when he's writing now. 

“When I was young I had a singing teacher. This was kind of pre-voice-breaking, when I used to sing like that. And my singing teacher had this book of all The Beatles songs with all the chords and stuff. So she used to play guitar and I'd sing along. When I only just began to write songs, she said to me, 'If you really want to write a song, the only thing you have to do is tell a story.' And that's really what I took from that. That's kind of been in the back of my head – it's always been in the back of my head. Whenever I'm halfway through writing a song or coming up with something, I'm like, 'What is this trying to say? What kind of story are people going to get from it?' When you listen to Dylan, he's not really just a pop songwriter, he always writes songs which are pretty good stories.” 

Gorman's debut EP was recorded with renowned local producer, Nick Huggins. The record sounds fantastic, and Gorman and his band made for an efficient bunch in the studio. “We recorded the whole EP in a day, and did a bit of extra vocal tracking the next morning before we mixed it,” he says, then adds cheekily in a classic Aussie drawl, “and then bloody off ya go!” He and his band have also been playing gigs flat out recently, including a support slot touring with Graveyard Train. On his live show, Gorman is appreciative of the talent of the musicians behind him, who help bring his songs to another level with extra guitar, violin, upright bass and vocal harmonies to burn.

“Our band's pretty versatile,” he says. “We concentrate on really good harmonies, so we've got a lot of slower songs that have good harmonies and are really nice to listen to, I guess. It's good because we all sing in the band, and because we don't use pedals or anything, the instrumentation is pretty thin, so the harmonies add a whole 'nother element. And then we've got a lot more rock'n'roll kind of songs that are fun to dance to, so it's good like that.” 

He will launch his EP this weekend, and says he plans to begin recording an album at the end of this month. With all of this work ahead of him, the talented (and hungry) Gorman will need all the 'spag bol' he can get.