Imogen Clark is a young artist with a very stable and realistic head on her shoulders. Having released her second album back in April to universal critical and fan acclaim, her career and profile have reached greater and greater heights with each passing week. At the same time, this success has far from gone straight to her ego; she is the first to realise that the music industry is tough and there is still a long road stretching out ahead of her.

“It’s such an incremental process, building more fans,” she states modestly. “Even if every gig you pick up a couple more fans, I love that; I love that it’s just another little stepping stone. Every time you do a gig you’re ticking off a little item on your list.”

Something else she is highly rational about is the fact that, as a currently self-managed artist, as her notoriety grows and grows, she may at some point have to hand the reins of her career to someone else, someone who manages artists like herself for a living. “It’s good having that control of your career,” she opines, “but something I think about is wanting to build my team up around me, and have the right people around me.

“Having said that, I’m definitely not against having management, my mantra has always been that I’d rather have no management than the wrong kind of management. But it’s got to a point now where I’m so busy on the road and with everything else associated with being an artist, doing the whole management side of things is getting a little bit harder now. So when the right person comes along I’ll absolutely be willing to hand those reins over.”

Clark has already taken great steps when it comes to putting that great team around herself. She tapped the great Mark Lizotte, aka Johnny Diesel, to produce the latest record Collide, having toured as a support artist with him on multiple occasions over the last couple of years, and the sound he helped pull and the results he produced are nothing short of stunning. Collide is one of the sweetest sounding alt-country/folk-rock albums you will hear this year.

“My ultimate goal is for every record and every tour to reach more and more people.”

“He is such a top bloke,” she states in admiration. “I really have just developed such a great working relationship with him, from the very beginning. How we got together is that we’re both on Harbour Agency and they got us together for a couple of gigs out in regional New South Wales. We just got along so well from the first night; we’ve got so many of the same influences, Joni Mitchell, Bruce Springsteen, Tom Petty. The next morning I woke up to an email asking me to be the support on the whole tour, it was so beautiful.

“Cut to two years later, we’d done another tour together and Mark offered to produce the album, and I, of course, said yes. I loved working with him because he just helped me to become so invested in it, it was just the right choice.”

Is working with Diesel something you’d be up for doing again? “We have not talked about it, but I am absolutely open to that,” she says, “because I had so much fun making this album and I could not have been happier with how it turned out. We’ll see!”

At the ripe old age of 23 and having released just her second album, Clark really is at the very start of her career. However, the longer term future is something she thinks about and plans for a lot, and getting herself beyond our shores is high on her list of goals. “I’m always thinking about the future and what sort of long-term goals I have,” she says. “I want to go overseas more. I’ll never ditch Australia because I love it here. I love the people here that I’ve built up as a beautiful support network, but doing more overseas touring is a big thing on my list.

“My ultimate goal is for every record and every tour to reach more and more people.”