Why Mitch Power Owes A Lot To KISS

"It was really nice to just do something where, you know, I could work on things at one in the morning, or one in the afternoon, or whenever it was," Mitch Power recalls on creating his debut solo EP, No One's Waiting Anymore. He's been a busy bloke playing in other people's bands and shares, "I've done backing vocals in like, Kylie's band." Whaddayamean Kylie's band!? "Yeah, oh! Kylie Auldist not Kylie Minogue," he laughs before adding. "In my world Kylie is Kylie Auldist, she's the only Kylie... I just assume that everybody knows who she is 'cause she's fucking Kylie Auldist! So I say, 'Yeah, I used to play in Kylie's band'. 'What? You were on tour with Kylie Minogue!?' It's like, 'No, no, no, no, no, no, no,' the other one."

"In my world Kylie is Kylie Auldist, she's the only Kylie... I just assume that everybody knows who she is 'cause she's fucking Kylie Auldist!"

You wouldn't pick it from listening to his tunes but, when asked what inspired him to start making music in the first place, Power reveals he was "a giant KISS fan". "I cut my teeth playing guitar and learning how to play KISS songs. I stayed home sick from school one day and there was a movie on TV called Detroit Rock City about, like, four dudes in high school getting to a KISS concert, and it's a pretty awesome movie... that movie was, like, the first time I'd ever seen or heard of this band KISS and it was just like, 'What is going on here? This is amazing!' So I'd been playing guitar for a couple weeks at that point and as soon as I saw that I was like, 'Alright, I'm gonna learn to play every KISS song I can get my hands on'."

Power singles out Deep Street Soul's European tour as one of the highlights of his musical career to date ("playing at Glastonbury, that's definitely gotta be on top of the list of things that I've done through playing the guitar") and rates his No One's Waiting Anymore EP as his "biggest solo achievement by far", largely due to the "people that [he] got on board to work with", including Jeff Lang who produced the release. With Lang at the helm, his wife Alison Ferrier was also on hand for BV duty when required and the couple loaned their stunning pipes to add layers to this scribe's personal favourite EP track, Underneath The Stars. On the inspiration behind aforementioned track, Power explains, "I was working full-time and I was gigging, like, five or six nights a week and my girlfriend was working heaps at the time as well, and we were just kinda never seeing each other. And then one night we were just lying in bed and just kinda fantasising and romanticising about how good it would be to not have to go to work and just drive off into the sunset and just run away from everything so, yeah! The next time I got a chance to sit around and play guitar for myself, that song just kind of came out."

He decided to take a break from work to focus entirely on his music for a month or so and Power chuckles, "I got to sing a song about quitting my job on the day that I quit my job!"