Interview with singer-songwriter Angharad Drake

             Brisbane, Australia singer-songwriter Angharad Drake on her latest album, Ghost, shooting for longevity through unabashed authenticity, side stepping the temporariness of fashion and sticking to your guns. "If you want to be a musician you're already setting yourself up for a lot of failure. It's a tough business." The songs born of determination and honesty often are the strongest, most durable things. And if poetic authenticity is any measurement of success, then Drake's Ghost is certainly a hit from those higher planes where true art unravels, a place where we can "listen and decide for ourselves what is good." 


AHC: What has this journey in music, so far, been like for you, the highs and the lows, and what life lessons do you feel you've picked up along the way?
 
Angharad: This is a hard question to start on. To be honest there have been a lot more lows than highs, but I think being a creative in any art form is going to be tough. It is all subjective and half the time you're at the mercy of the big dogs who decide whether it's good or not. Always at my low points some one will come up to me and say something cliché like “never stop, just keep going”, which always helps. A friend of mine once said that we should never compare ourselves to others because we're all on our own paths. I like that and try to keep reminding myself that when I get jealous of others and down on myself. I'm at a point now where I'm liking how my music is sounding, I think my style has developed a lot and i'm enjoying the changes.
 
AHC: What first drew you to music and what was your early musical environment like growing up? Were there pivotal songs for you then that just floored you the moment you heard them?
 
Angharad: Both my parents are musicians and played in various folk/Irish bands when I was a kid. There were always a lot of band practices in the lounge room and lots of different folk festivals and gigs to attend. I have a lot of memories falling asleep while listening to some band or going on family camps to music gatherings, which I absolutely loathed. My parents tried to get me into a lot of instruments through primary school, like the violin and piano, but I could never really get my head around sheet music and found being in orchestras and doing eisteddfods uninspiring. I have always sung though. I loved singing in the primary school choir and getting little solo parts to sing in front of the school. I started teaching myself the guitar in year 7 but had a discouraging music teacher who turned me off the idea. Late in high school I started singing again, my teacher Mr. Roberts was really supportive. He made me sing my own songs at assembly which was deathly terrifying but I loved it and it got me excited about writing and performing.
 
Unfortunately my taste in music wasn't the greatest during early highschool. I listened to a lot of Simple Plan, Good Charlotte, Avril Lavigne and Greenday. I also listened to a lot of my eldest brothers CD mixes on my walkman and that contained a lot of 50 cent, Jay z and Eminem (who I still really like to listen to). Luckily for my 13th birthday my aunty got me tickets to see Simple Plan live. I went with my Dad and about halfway through the show I had the sudden realisation that this music was not that good and we left early. After that I took down all the posters in my room and got into my parents record collection where I found Joni Mitchell, James Taylor, Neil Young and Leonard Cohen and fell in love. 'Tiny Island' by Leo Kottke is one of those pivotal songs that floored me.
 
AHC: Do you remember the first song that you ever wrote or played? Or that first moment when you picked up a pen and realized that you could create whole worlds just by putting it to paper?
 
Angharad: There is a tape somewhere of me playing through some songs that I wrote in year 10 and they are terrible. However the first song that I finished and recorded myself was called 'Sunshine'. I wrote it when I was about 13 so it's a bit daggy. I tried to record it in secret but my Dad is nosey and he showed Mum and they really encouraged me to write after that. I wrote another song shortly after called 'Not Yours' which I sang at a school awards night. The mum of a girl I wasn't that close with wrote me a long letter filled with glitter about how much the song meant to her and to never give up on it.
 
AHC: Which musicians have you learned the most from? Or writers, artists, filmmakers, teachers/mentors etc? 
 
Angharad: There are so many it will be hard for me to name only a few. There has always been some author or musician who I get fixated on throughout each stage of my life. The notable novels and authors who have really inspired me over time are Kurt Vonnegut, Dostoevsky, Solzhenitsyn, Oscar Wilde, Tove Janson, William Faulkner, 'Riddley Walker' by Russel Hoben, 'To Kill a Mockingbird' by Harper Lee and so many others. Reading books always inspire new songs. My song 'Sword' I wrote after reading 'Anna Karenina' by Tolstoy (don't watch the movie it's terrible) and 'Nobody Believes' was written after reading 'The Brothers Karamozov'. One movie that I love and can watch anytime and basically know the whole script to is 'Little Miss Sunshine'.
 
AHC: What do you think makes for a good song, as you're writing and composing, is there a sudden moment when you know you've found the right mix, that perfect angle of light, so to speak? 
 
Angharad: Sometimes, very rarely, I will write a song and think “I really like singing this”. The lyrics always seem to flow out of nowhere and sound just right, it's kind of stream of consciousness and I get frustrated when I can't do it again. Sometimes I just have to wait until I get a feeling that I need to write a song and often that's when those songs happen. Other times I force songs out, sometimes I like them, sometimes I really hate them but other people like them, or i'll come back to them months alter and decide they're okay and finish them off or record them. More often than not I get over a song pretty quickly and there is only two or three that I actually enjoy singing over and over. Songwriting is a funny thing and it's different for everyone. For me there is no one way to go about it, I just wait until I feel like writing and them see what happens. As an artist I always find my creativity will shift from my music to my art. Sometimes I'll feel a sudden urge to create something and in that time I find it hard to write music, then it will switch and find it hard to create artwork but I'll really be enjoying writing. Other times I stop both altogether and sit around like a sack of crap.
 
AHC: Do you consider music to be a type of healing art, even if only partially, an imperfect vehicle through which to translate the taste of a particular feeling, a state of rupture/rapture, hope lost and regained? Does the writing and creating of the song save you in the kinds of ways that it saves us, the listener?
 
Angharad: Yes I think that is a good way to put it. Everyone has a different way of communicating how they feel and what they think. Some people are very good at articulating their ideas, like my eldest Brother. I really admire this and wish I was good at it but unfortunately I'm pretty hopeless and songwriting seems to be where I express my ideas and feelings. If I try to debate or explain what i'm thinking  everything turns to confetti in my brain.
 
AHC: What are your fondest musical memories? In your house? In your neighborhood or town? On-tour, on-the-road?
 
Angharad: Any gig where the audience was dead silent has always stayed with me. For my last three releases I held a launches in my old backyard and they were all my favourite shows. Lots of fairy lights and a quiet audience is how I like it! Also recording my last album at my friend Keo's house, that was really fun. We had a sleep over and I brought my cat.
 
AHC: When you set out to write a song, how much does 'where the world is' in its current moment, culturally, politically, otherwise, influence the kinds of stories you set out to tell?
 
Angharad: I never really paid that much attention to world issues so they never played much of role in what I wrote about. However, as I get older I find that I'm becoming more and more interested in the things happening in the world. I'm steering away from just watching the mainstream news and believing everything that is put in front of me and trying to read and listen to people who are hushed and heavily criticised by mainstream media. I'm starting to see that myself and everyone around me are stuck in the same bubble of thought and any idea that threatens that way of thinking is really looked down on. People don't want to be friends with you if you don't think or say exactly what they do and it's scary. It's made me even more aware of things that people don't want to think about or talk about and I think that it's starting to have an influence on my songs.
 
AHC: Do you have any words of advice or encouragement for other musicians and singer-songwriters out there who are just starting out and trying to find their voice and their way in this world? What are the kinds of things that you tell yourself when you begin to have doubts or are struggling with the creative process? Or what kinds of things have others told you that have helped push you past moments of self doubt/creative blocks?
 
Angharad: That's hard to answer because I'm not a hugely successful musician, so I don't know if my advice holds any weight. But I will say that you have to keep going and push on through all the rejection and disappointments. If you want to be a musician you're already setting yourself up for a lot of failure. It's a tough business. One thing that I have seen in successful musicians that I admire is that they have always stuck to their guns and have just kept going. Don't bother doing what is fashionable because fashions change. If you're after longevity then do something original that is true to yourself and nobody else. I think people can see originality and truth, even though half the time it doesn't seem that way. It's easy for people to be told what to like and harder for them to stop and actually listen and decide for themselves what is good.
 
AHC: You just released your new album, Ghost, could you talk some about this record, how long it took to write and record and what the specific muses are for you on this one?
 
Angharad: The first song that I wrote for 'Ghost' was 'Baby'. I recorded it with Samuel Joseph half at home and half at Empire Studios in Brisbane. I intended to do the rest of the album with him but only ended up finishing one other song which was 'Bullet'. He's very good at what he does and is a sought after guy, so I had to find another way to finish it. I ended up recording the rest of the tracks at home with my husband Alex who did all the mixing and also all the bass. Our friend Declan, who also plays the slide and saxophone on the record, lent us some of his recording equipment and our house soon turned into a little ramshackle recording studio. If you listen carefully to some of the tracks you can hear my birds in the background or my cat's bell. I really enjoyed recording this way and it has got us excited to work on a new set of songs. Although working with a professional producer has been good, it's hard to be totally free with the song. I found that being alone I wasn't so embarrassed about trying things out. I had a timeline with 'Ghost' so it was very rushed towards the end. For the next album I want to allow a lot more time to experiment and really add some new elements to the tracks.

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Ghost is now available via angharaddrake.bandcamp.com/
For more visit ​www.angharaddrake.com/