Tamas Wells: Smokin’.

Tamas Wells plays the Brunswick Street Mall rotunda on Friday, the Railway Hotel in Byron Bay on Saturday, The Alley Sunday afternoon and Ric’s Café Sunday evening.

It’s hard to put on a copy of Tamas Well’s Cigarettes A Tie & A Free Magazine and no be moved by the stirring lyricism of the disc’s title track. Once it’s delicate melodies and catch your ear, there’s a fair chance it won’t be letting go until songs end. This weekend the Melbourne based performer hits town with band in tow.

“I failed my first grade piano exam when I was ten years old and my career in classical music was suddenly doomed,” he explains. “But after I stopped having lessons I started really enjoying playing and then took up the guitar as well. It is a big step going from playing songs in your bedroom to standing on a stage in front of a microphone but I suppose in the end it is feedback and how art affects people that is what really matters. That is probably what drives us to perform and write as well.”

How indicative is Cigarettes of the directions you’ve taken on your soon to be release Stitch In Time EP?

“The new EP is very chilled out, I love melody so there is still melody lines happening but our producer Mark Lang who is a contemporary dance soundscape artist took it in a slightly more spacious ambient direction, so I suppose it is a combination of acoustic songwriting with a soundscapish edge to it.”

Do you look at your music more as a soloist or from a band perspective? Do the band have much input into the writing process, or do you come to the band with a complete song in mind?

“It definitely operates as a band. I kind of see it like Grant Lee Buffalo or the Pernice Brothers, as a solo artist I’m not much of a control freak so that lets the creativity spread a bit broader. So practically it works that I come up with the lyrics and most of the melody lines but the other guys have heaps of input in how it all happens.”

What was the first album you ever bought, or the most influential album you’ve ever bought?

“I won a colouring competition in Grade One or Two and was given a Brashs music store voucher so I bought a compilation tape 1982 With A Bullet. It had Cliff Richard and that song Mickey by Toni Basil, so I guess that was the first album and probably the most influential as well.”