Game On!

"I'm just getting to the final stages of that now. I feel like I've sort of come out of the other side, which is a nice feeling.”

He laughs self-effacingly as he delivers what could be a very throwaway line, but for Pez (born name Perry Chapman) it's been a hard slog. A well-documented fight with Graves' disease and watching his bros 360 and Seth Sentry rise to national stardom all while dealing with his own internal issues second guessing his own potential, have really put the brakes on hard for an artist who, with the release of the smash hit, The Festival Song, was ready to become one of the biggest names in Aussie hip hop.

Fortunately, one of his strongest traits as a writer is self-reflection and analysis. Like so many artists, he has used his music as a means of dealing with his own private issues – making them not so private anymore. His candidness comes through strong on The Game, a track he says he wasn't even originally going to release at all.

“I think The Game helped me get to a point where I was believing in myself and helping me get enough confidence to get something together. I was pretty terrified about putting that out – I pretty much hated it – and then the label stepped in and said they really liked it and wanted to do something with it and I nearly had a panic attack over that, but they took it and triple j seems to like it and has supported it so that has helped me relax a bit and I realised maybe I should just shut up and get on with it!”

It's strange that he was so negative about the track at the time, and he says over-analysis played a part in that, but also he had a lot more personal investment in the track than usual.

“I think it was because it was the first song that I actually produced myself from start to finish it gave me a lot more things to find wrong with it. If you just get a beat from a producer and just add your stuff on top, you've already decided that you like the beat so it's different. But because I had the idea in my head and was trying to build it all from scratch, it allowed me to really pick it apart and kind of find nothing but fault in it. Now that it's come out and I guess I've let go I've started to see the beauty in it and there's certain things that I really like and I'm quite proud of now. It was quite a cleansing experience to learn to let go and start to enjoy it again.”

After talking to M-Phazes to get the drums that he wanted, Pez set about trying to get the ideas out of his imagination and onto the track. Not an easy process by any stretch, but he's confident that the process has allowed him to grow as a musician. 

“It felt like a pretty old-fashioned way of getting a song together,” he admits. “I pretty much wrote the music, I had an idea of a rough progression in my head and so I sat with a guitarist to work it out and it was doing his head in. It was ridiculous but eventually we got there and it's helped me communicate what I was hearing in my head. Sometimes trying to get that across to a musician is not the easiest thing to do. It was a good process to go through but it was a very tedious process as well and I don't think I'll be going through that again in a hurry.”

While he hasn't let much more out of the bag about the new album, there's one little nugget we can confirm. It also involved an unconventional way of going through the process of getting a song together, especially by hip hop standards.

Not that collaborations are anything new in the hip hop world, but this one in particular heralds something of a brand new direction, not just for Pez but for one of Australia's most loved songwriters. It's also something unprecedented that's sure to surprise a lot of fans of both artists.

“I went to a birthday party for a friend's dad, it was his sixtieth birthday and I went along to play a song to wish him well and all that. So I rocked up and I found out Paul Kelly was there. At first it was just a rumour he was there and I thought it was bullshit, but my mate came out to me and said 'Dude I just met Paul Kelly and he said he bought your album.' I was like yeah fuck off mate, and I said 'if you're joking I'm gonna kill you.' But I went and talked to him and he said 'Yeah I have actually bought your album,' so I said 'Well if you ever want to work with a rapper I'm your guy, let's do this shit!' And he said yeah! So I went to his house a couple of times and showed him some music and looked at his CD collection, which was so eclectic, from like old classical stuff to Snoop Dogg and shit. So yeah, he started playing around on the guitar and we got an idea and got a concept and some lyrics together. A lot of it flowed really effortlessly, so we got his stuff down real easy and then I just shit myself!”

Given his already perfectionist nature and the self-acknowledged over-analysis on everything he does, it's easy to see how daunting the idea of working with such a dead-set legend of Australian music must have intimidated him.

“Yeah, I was like oh fuck now I've got to write lyrics to this song because it's Paul Kelly and I can't fuck it up,” he laughs. “So I started it and I put it off and then I started again and I put it off and then I just thought I can't even bring myself to calling him because he's gonna think I'm crazy – wondering what the fuck I've been doing because I just disappeared. And then just recently, a few months ago, I had to play a showcase around the ARIA's and he happened to be there. Everyone at the label made me go and talk to him and he was cool, like whenever you're ready, so that was the kick in the arse I needed, so I just went into a studio with him in Canterbury and he recorded his vocals and guitars and it all came together. It's fucking insane.”

Pez will be playing the following dates:

Thursday 11 April – The Brewery, Byron Bay NSW
Friday 12 April – The Coolangatta Hotel, Coolangatta QLD
Saturday 13 April - Live It Up Festival, Brisbane QLD
Saturday 13 April - The Wharf Tavern, Mooloolaba QLD
Sunday 14 April – The Normanby Hotel, Brisbane QLD
Wednesday 17 April – UTS Glasshouse, Sydney NSW
Thursday 18 April – Waves, Wollongong NSW
Friday 19 April – Woy Woy Leagues Club, Woy Woy NSW
Saturday 20 April Sussex Inlet Tavern, Sussex NSW
Wednesday 24 April - Mona Vale Hotel, Mona Vale NSW
Thursday 25 April – Harp & Fiddle, Katoomba NSW
Friday 26 April – The Roxy Hotel, Parramatta NSW
Saturday 27 April – Groovin' The Moo, Maitland NSW 
Sunday 28 April – Groovin' The Moo, Canberra NSW
Thursday 2 May – The Yarra Hotel, Geelong VIC
Friday 3 May - Kay St Entertainment Complex, Traralgon VIC
Saturday 4 May – Groovin' The Moo, Bendigo VIC
Sunday 5 May – Groovin' The Moo, Townsville QLD
Friday 10 May – Amplifier Bar, Perth WA
Saturday 11 May – Groovin' The Moo, Bunbury WA
Sunday 12 May – Indi Bar, Scarborough WA