Finding Out About Success In LA The Hard Way

When Tim Wheatley answers the phone there's a moment of disorientation as we work out the logistics of technological time travel — an issue that makes coordinating his career in Australia from his home in LA "pretty chaotic". "It's yesterday, but I'm seven hours ahead," he explains as the clock in NSW hits 11am. "Trying to coordinate even a phone call like this — will it be 6pm my time or your time, and is it Friday or Thursday? I don't know, where are we?"

Living in LA for the past four years as a triple threat — writing music, acting and modelling — has caused more than just scheduling issues for the soloist. But like many musicians Wheatley draws on hardship as creative fodder — that is until rejection almost got the better of him.

"Everyone here has turned their hand to some sort of acting or modelling, but I found it quite taxing given that I didn't really, really love it."

"To be criticised and rejected for something that you don't really want to do became crippling for me. Everyone here has turned their hand to some sort of acting or modelling, but I found it quite taxing given that I didn't really, really love it. And rejection is a brutal thing — I'm happy to be rejected musically because I'm passionate [at] what I do, so if you want to write a bad review then so be it."

He found that after the first month of moving to LA "everyone disappeared". He was no longer "the life of the party. I think people get freaked out by that and turn home after a while — I know a lot of Australians have. It's hard finding your people and finding your friends."

The single 78 Benz from his debut LP Cast Of Yesterday was both the sum of his struggles and his salvation. "When I was writing 78 Benz, that morning I had decided I was going home. I guess it was a moment of honesty — is this where you wanna be? — and the answer was 'yes'," he explains. 

The writing process for his follow-up album "has been a completely different beast," Wheatley confirms. "I've been looking over my notes since [Cast Of Yesterday] has been out and they're so fragmented; it's almost schizophrenic. I think that's reflective of the modern age; everyone getting their 15 seconds of information, bites of this and grabs of that. And I think I've become like that too, you can definitely see that my attention span has shrunk in the last year and a half by looking at the things I'm putting down."

It's not all disillusionment and shrunken attention spans in LA — the country music scene supports Wheatley in a way that is not as widely spread back home. "[America] has people that have built careers in between country and rock'n'roll, in between country and pop, in between country and folk. I just find that in Australia when I go there, there's Tamworth, and then there's the rest of the country when it comes to country music."

There's also the car that acted as a metaphor for his escape in 78 Benz. "It was this beautiful white convertible that we picked up on Craigslist and it had no roof, so that's why it was convertible," he laughs. "No radio, no air conditioning, it barely had four wheels! But it was one of the fun parts about Los Angeles for me. Driving it around brought smiles and that's the LA that I'd imagined."