A Fortunate Life

It's a pretty good life here in Australia for the music fan. With so much amazing and varied talent to choose from, we're incredibly lucky. For the artists themselves … not so much. Our lack of population generally means the majority of acts don't get anywhere near the recognition or financial rewards they deserve. Melbourne-based singer-songwriter Kerri Simpson is one of those artists. She's often dubbed a blues singer, but her discography proves she's much more than that, having dabbled in many genres. She can sure as shit belt out a tune, that much is certain, and when she ventures into a New Orleans-style voodoo vibe, Kerri can scare the pants off you too. I offer track 3, Howl, off her new album, Fortune Favoured Me, as evidence.

The new album is the second in a trilogy of recordings (the Knockin' At The Backdoor series), made possible by a grant she received from Brunswick's Thirty Mill studios. The generous grant allowed Kerri to record up to 50 songs, from which she then grouped tracks into either the country-flavoured Maybe By Midnight album, the new blues/roots-tinged Fortune Favoured Me or the yet to be complied jazz and gospel-style record. For Fortune Favoured Me, Kerri called on a bunch of guitar-slinging guests to stamp their personality on a track or two. Contributions came from Geoff Achison, Shannon Bourne, Matt Walker, Jeff Lang and Charles Jenkins, some of Australia's finest musicians. “Each song was a bit of an essence of each guitar player involved,” Kerri explains. “Not necessarily about their nature or character, just trying to capture a little bit of the ambience of the artist. Geoff Achison's song is about being out on the road and missing his beloved partner. With Pirates Are a Girl's Best Friend, I was sitting around with band members Dean Addison (bass) and Ben Grayson (keyboards), talking about the Caribbean and Cuba and different rhythms.”

Matt Walker shone his fretted light on the track Silver's Last Stand. “He came and put all those beautiful ambient guitar lines down, so it was really just a matter of running a vocal and not doing too much to it. All the guys put down a lot of tracks and we could edit what we wanted and leave bits in or take them out. With Howl, Jeff Lang's track, there was much more layering and editing and manipulating of sounds. Matt's track is untouched and Jeff's we played with a lot more. With Geoff Achison, he put down several guitar parts and we turned the song around after he had left. Geoff did it in one groove and Colin and I turned it into another.”

Shannon Bourne played on three tracks and co-wrote Insatiable with Simpson. Bourne's dirty fuzz tones compliment Simpson's dark, soulful vocal perfectly on this track. “We both share a great love of very dark heavy music and sounds,” Kerri says of her musical relationship with Bourne. “He knew the vibe I was going for … the spooky, haunting psychological thriller. Shannon and I have known each other for a long time and we can play off each other and match each other's moods in terms of feel and intonation. He gets where I'm coming from and I tend to explain things more in imagery and sound rather than technically.”

The brief Simpson gave the guitarists was quite basic: come in, jam with her band and do something roots-based. There was rarely a rehearsal before the record button was pushed. The state a song begun in wasn't necessarily how it turned out. “Jeff Lang's track started off as a Delta blues thing and ended as Howl, which is the most full-on track on the album. It started almost as an acoustic blues thing.” Howl features an intense scream-like vocal, so I wondered if the emotion may have come as a result of a bad day at Kerri's day job as a librarian. “Ha, no. I was sort of thinking about the Marianne Faithful song, Why'd Ya Do it. I was thinking about the intensity of the vocal. By the time we got into the studio Langy just ramped it up and I had to match that intensity.”

Simpson plays guitar too and owns an impressive sunburst tone Epiphone Sheraton guitar as well as an Ovation 12 string. “When I first started playing on stage, I got a 12-string because it filled out the sound a bit and hid the fact that I couldn't play solos. When I started playing with great bands, I just needed something to play rhythm on.” Kerri doesn't own any microphones but in the studio used an AKGC12. She was also thrilled to be the first guinea pig to test the studio's new desk. “At Thirty Mill they just installed a new Neve desk, Custom series 75. Neve made it to Colin Wynne and Mark Opitz's specs. It's like a world first they're trying out for Neve, which is pretty exciting, we got to finish the mixing on that.

“I'm not big on technique. I just love anything that is heartfelt. Australian artists, I love Chris Wilson. In full flight nobody goes near him. Any blues or soul singer, he can match. There's a myriad of female vocalists I work with … Nichaud Fitzgibbon, Kylie Auldist, Monique Brumby and Rebecca Barnard who are all incredible.”