Q ’n’ A: Wes Carr, Buffalo Tales

Wes Carr has rebranded as Buffalo Tales and released the impressive and personal Roadtrip Confessions; with second single Puppet Strings now at commercial radio, Carr caught up with TMN to talk Tambalane, the Idol machine, and about getting back on track.

Let’s start with the name change. Was the impetus just to start afresh: a new project, day one?

Yup. It really is just a rejuvenation for me: creatively, emotionally, everything. It’s kind of a clean slate. It’s that thing of, I suppose, when people get sick of their job, and think ‘I might have a seachange’ and do something different. For me, it was mainly just to remove all preconceived ideas about who I was originally in the public eye, because I’ve always been into what I’m doing now. It’s new material for everyone else, but to me, it feels like putting a pair of old, very comfortable gloves back on.

Stylistically, you sit very far from what the likes of Idol usually pumps out. What was it that made you decide to enter Australian Idol?

Frustration [laughs]. I think you’ve got a small window, especially in Australia, a real small window of opportunity as a songwriter, and I think a lot of it’s luck, and a lot of it’s opportunity, being in the right place at the right time – and all those clichés. For me, I’ve been in bands since I was 12: playing in and around clubs in Sydney and everywhere; in and out of A&R rooms since I moved over from Adelaide. I’ve heard a lot of different ideas and stories as to where I should be heading in my career, what I should be doing, and who I should be working with, and I did all of that. I was in a band with Ben Gillies – Tambalane – and we did a whole bunch of touring, and that was my first taste of being in the public life, in a very small way, but still being involved in a story that was huge in Australian music.

And you were tagged at a Silverchair side project, even though stylistically it was completely separate.

I suppose for Ben it was an outlet for him, because he hadn’t written an album since the first two [From Neon Ballroom onwards, Daniel Johns took over sole songwriting duties for Silverchair] and for me it was a great opportunity to work with somebody I’d admired when growing up. It was more of collaborative experiement which survived around our belief in the songs, and not around getting together and making any drastic statements, it was just about writing together.

How did you meet?

He originally would come to my gigs. I was playing at the Excelsior in Glebe years ago, with Bertie Blackman and Andy Clockwise, and all these people on the scene, ten years ago; it feels like we are all the ancients now, but back then it was more like a bohemian hang, we were all living on people’s couches. It was great, Ben and Paul Mac and a few other people would come down on a Wednesday night, and we were the regulars there. I’d known Watto [John Watson, Silverchair’s manager] for a long time, too, so he was ‘you should get together with Wes and write some songs.’

We did an album, which was well-received, but this was before Facebook and everything too. It was on the cusp, the industry was going down the drain, everyone was freaking out as to what to do. These days it is a lot easier, we’d be social networking the shit out of it, and be on the road and people could follow up. At the time, it felt like everything was dying around us, and we were trying to be this new band. A lot of new bands around then were really good, but nobody was investing money, because nobody was sure where it would all end up.

And then between Tambalane and Idol, what were you up to?

I went back to Adelaide. I’d spent all the money I’d saved up on Tambalane, went back to Adelaide and was like, ‘Oh fuck, what do I do now?’ and just started playing in bars in Adelaide. I lived with my friend, and played gigs in pubs, and kinda built up a little following, which was unintentional, but people started coming to my gigs. Adelaide always has a scene going, even if it is very small. It’s an arts-based city, and a lot of people don’t know that, because it’s conservative as well. I moved back to Sydney, and started doing that same thing – playing around – but I was going nowhere, because all the gigs that you get are covers gigs. I really wasn’t getting anything out of it, aside from 400 bucks at the end of the night – which is a good week’s wage, but I didn’t go into music just to be an RSL covers gig guy. It just felt wrong, I felt like I was in the wrong place, and that was the first time I had felt like I was in the wrong place. Even though I was doing half of what I wanted, it just wasn’t fulfilling. And also, you can get stuck in that for ten years, and be that guy at the bar drinking whiskey going ‘my dreams are all shattered, because I didn’t get off my arse and do anything.’ So I think the frustration really got to me and made me think, “fuck it” because it seemed like those shows [Australian Idol] were the only thing people were talking about.

And they do work in regards to exposing talent.

Exactly, they get you in front of people, and for me, the thing was that I went in there thinking I can do what I want – and I did – but afterwards, when you don’t have that captured audience every week, that’s the hard part because then you’re [seen as] this one thing, and no artist is just one thing. But when you are told you are this thing, forever, it’s really hard to thrown that off, or get that off your chest and show them, “I’m this, and I’m that.” It was an interesting one, because I think I was the first musician with a back story to go on one of those shows, and come out of it, and go ‘Oh, now I get it’, because beforehand, you just have no idea. You can only have that public knowledge of it, but when you go in there, it’s a completely different world. For me, I’m very grateful for it, but also, it’s time to move on from it, and basically do what I’ve wanted to do since I was 12.

And you can move past the Idol tag, as numerous artists have shown.

And every artist changes. To do the same thing for twenty years, to me that seems insane. You’ve got to keep evolving, and challenging yourself, because at the end of the day, all you have is your own personal evolution, no mater what you do.

Musically speaking, is there anything from the Idol days you’d like to erase? Or any time you felt coerced?

I was never coerced, at least I didn’t know about it [laughs]. But I was never pulled aside and told, ‘You can’t sing that song’. It always felt like I was an outsider, even in that arena. It felt like I was under the radar enough. I was like, ‘Well I’m never gonna win this thing, so I may as well sing a song that I like.’ I think the only thing I regret, when I look back on some of those things – which I never do – is that people still show it to me. They do! When I’m on a train, people Google me, and go, ‘Hey man’, showing me my own video. Thanks, I remember. But I don’t have any regrets in regards to decisions.

Well, you went in fully-formed. There wasn’t a sense of ‘My friends tell me I can sing, so I may as well enter.’

Yeah, I think the biggest regret, I suppose, was letting my ego take control over me in a certain way. I’ve learnt a lot about that personal ego thing, that you’ve gotta reign in so you don’t get lost in your own bullshit. For me, I was young enough to be able to just go ‘rahh’ and then think, ‘Maybe I shouldn’t have done it that way’, but everyone goes through that.

What type of music informed Buffalo Tales? It sounds a lot like the music which is popular on commercial radio at the moment, which is handy, but obviously this album isn’t informed by The Lumineers or Mumford and Sons.

No, no, no. Some of the songs are like, fifteen years old. I would have written this record anyway. I think the sentiment of Amsterdam, the lead single, is if there’s something you need to do, do it, if there’s something you need to get off your chest… I think without even knowing it, it’s become the mantra of the album. This is what I wanted to do, I didn’t want to be writing hits, because it doesn’t last, anyway. For me, it’s about creating a body of work and something that my friends can listen to, and go, ‘This has helped me here’ or ‘This has made me sing in the car’ or whatever it may be. So, that’s the inspiration behind it. I suppose Roadtrip Confessions sounded good when I thought of it, and to be honest, it really is a confessional album. Every song has a weight behind it that I needed to tell people; I couldn’t sit down and just tell someone, so I had to do it through the music.

It’s ironic that your most confessional work is under this banner of Buffalo Tales, which in itself makes it one step removed from you.

Yeah, it is ironic, but I suppose I stepped out from under the Wes Carr umbrella and into a different thing. As soon as I decided to change the whole project into something completely different and call it a new name, all of a sudden it was like a physical thing, things stripped away and I ended up writing eight or ten songs those first few weeks. It all felt really powerful for me. There were no expectations: gotta write hit songs, gotta be on the radio. I was becoming more of a celebrity thing, which is fast, fast, fast, gotta do this and that; it felt like I was becoming more embroiled in all that, rather than just writing songs. It felt like it was too much, too much bullshit going on for me, and I really needed to remove myself from it, and sit back; clean slate, clean canvas, and write something from the heart, rather than from the head.

Roadtrip Confessions is out now. Puppet Strings is at radio.