On The Up

This past year, since the release of his latest album, All The Little Lights, recorded in Sydney with a core band that included Boy & Bear drummer Tim Hart, jazz bassist Cameron Undy and keyboards player Stu Hunter, from Katie Noonan & The Captains, the young UK singer-songwriter Michael Rosenberg, who travels as Passenger, has seen his career break out dramatically, in part courtesy of his friend Ed Sheeran, with whom he recently toured Australia, a country that has become a second home for the Brighton-born troubadour. 

“I've been touring with Ed round the States and Canada and Europe and the UK, and now I'm supporting here as well,” Rosenberg explains, “and that's just changed the game really, exposure-wise, just playing to thousands of people instead of busking – it's a very different thing,” he understates. “And yeah, it's bizarre, Let Her Go, which is a song on the album, has done really well in bits of Europe – in the Benelux countries and Germany and Scandinavia and stuff. It's all gone a bit bonkers; good fun though.”

That song has done better than really well – it's topped the charts in those European countries – Holland, Belgium, Sweden, Ireland – quite the coup for a guy who still sees himself as essentially a busker, though he's had to forgo the busking for much of the past “bonkers” year. Of course the friendship between Rosenberg and Sheeran significantly predates the latter's success.

“We met in a little basement in Cambridge, playing a tiny little gig together,” he recalls, “when he was about 16 or 17, and I think we both just really liked what each other were doing musically, and had a beer afterwards, and since then we've tried to play a couple of gigs together every year depending on where we're both at. And then he obviously exploded a year or so ago and he's just been amazingly generous as far as taking me on tour and tweeting my lyrics and all this kind of stuff. He's really been amazing.

“I've been gigging round the UK for ten years and, you know, building it up very slowly – every year I'd have three more fans at a gigs – so obviously, I played, like, 30 dates in the UK with Ed, and that meant the whole of my [own] headline tour sold out. It was very different – you know, just wonderful to play, for example in Brighton, which is where I'm from, there's a venue called The Concord, which I'd been going to see bands there since I was 14, and to be able to headline a sold-out Concord was pretty emotional actually – quite an incredible feeling.

“So much has changed in such a short space of time, things that I didn't think were possible,” Rosenberg admits. “When I started music, when I was a kid, you know, you have all these dreams of being number one and all this crazy shit, and over the course of time you just kind of let go of a lot of that stuff because you realise that, actually, I play kind of melancholic folk music that's probably not going to get to number one, you know. So for it then to happen… I don't think it's really sunk in yet to be honest. It happened months ago but it's still bizarre to me.”

As it happens, while he's not topped any charts here, Rosenberg/Passenger has built things up from busking through tiny gigs and an album he recorded here that included a variety of local guests, including Lior, Josh Pyke, Katie Noonan and Kate Miller-Heidke among others, 2010's Flight Of The Crow, to headlining theatre tours.

“I've been coming here for three or four years now and spending a lot of time here – sort of six months here and six months in the UK generally in a year – and just built it up really, really slowly in Australia, and I love it here. I still think of it as my second home. I'm not sure if I'll be able to spend six months a year here anymore, which is upsetting, but yeah, it's wonderful coming back and seeing familiar faces.”

He might be doing theatres right now, but Rosenberg is committed to getting in some busking when and where he can.

“For my own tour, we've sort of built in a bit more time, and if the weather is okay… I really miss busking to be honest. You know, it's not just something I did to… It was great because it grew a fan base and it allowed me to fund my records and all of this kind of stuff, but actually, I realised when I stopped busking for a few months that I really miss it, I really actually enjoy that way of life, connecting with people in that really honest format.”

It was also an important part of Rosenberg's songwriting process, as he admits: “Massively, yeah, massively. So many of my songs have come from… 'Cause ultimately all you're doing is you're travelling around, going to hundreds of different cities, and standing in the middle of 'em and watching people. You're playing songs and you're concentrating on what you're doing but a lot of your day is just spent watching people, and there's nothing better for a songwriter I believe.

“I went through a spell of not writing for two or three months just 'cause it was so busy on the road and promo and everything else, so suddenly you have less and less time to just sit with a guitar. But songwriting is a funny beast, you know – I didn't write for months and then wrote four songs in a week I'm delighted with. So it comes and goes, but I think it's something I'm trying to be very aware of, is to allow myself time and space to go and sit and write.”

Of course, having an album finally breakout and for it to do so progressively across a number of territories means that Rosenberg has suddenly found himself having to “live” with All The Little Lights for a lot longer than he might otherwise have done, though, as he admits, “it's a pretty good problem to have, you know? Left to my own devices, if All The Little Lights hadn't done what it's done, I would have probably released something [new] around now. I've got the songs ready – I've recorded the bulk of the next record. But there are still territories that we're yet to release the album in, go to radio with and whatever, so, yeah, it is going to be a little longer between records, but I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing.

“I'm doing this Sunday night video thing at the moment. Every Sunday I put up a new song, a little video with a collaboration, on Facebook and Twitter and stuff, trying to feed people new music as well, for those people who have had All The Little Lights for a year and are kind of impatient to hear new stuff.”

Passenger will be playing the following dates:

Tuesday 2 April - Conservatorium Theatre, Griffith University, Brisbane QLD
Wednesday 3 April - Conservatorium Theatre, Griffith University, Brisbane QLD
Saturday 6 April - Enmore Theatre, Sydney NSW
Sunday 7 April - Enmore Theatre, Sydney NSW