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“Industry Insights”
@ SAE Melbourne

An interview with
ALEX LAHEY and GORDI
19th April, 2021

Interviewer – Rebecca Martyn

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ALEX LAHEY // Photo – James Hornsby

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Breaking into the music scene can be an arduous task for young Australian musos but what’s more difficult is navigating through it once you’re in.  Alex Lahey and Sophie Payten who goes by the stage name Gordi, dished the hard truths and the fun tips of the Australian music scene at their Industry Insight session at SAE Creative Media Institute last month. 

Both are incredibly established singer/songwriters and the pair have reached milestone after milestone, from quitting their day jobs to international headlining tours.

I was lucky enough to have spoken to the two musos about their collaboration on their newest track Dino’s, as well as the development of their music careers. 

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GORDI

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Let’s talk about the collab.  I heard it was about 2 years in the making.
Gordi:   Pretty much, yeah.  We started writing in 2018, we were in Nashville and Alex was writing her second record. 
I was just writing songs, working shit out.  We spent a day in a little writing room, and we’d been going to this place called Dino’s which is a dive bar and we really loved it. 
It was just one of those places that had a real vibe and very inclusive and accepting and fun and it’s a bit of an institution in East Nashville.
So, we started writing a song and we ended up writing it about two people being in Dino’s whilst the cast of colourful characters were raging on around you.
From there we both had heaps on and we’d kind of come back to it periodically: change the lyrics, change whatever.  Then finally, last year, we decided to record drums and piano properly and everything else really was from the day that we wrote it in Nashville.
Then we had Oscar Dawson from Holy Holy mix it for us.  He did a beautiful job, and then it was out in the world. 

What’s your relationship like, did you always know you wanted to collaborate with one another?
Alex Lahey: I think we’ve always known that we always wanted to do something together. 
We’ve known each other a long time now, like five years ago I opened for Soph [Gordi] in Sydney which was the first time I’d ever played in Sydney with this project.
I think it was something that we always wanted to do.  It was one of those things that it serendipitously worked out like, ‘Oh we’re both here and we have a room that’s intended to write songs in and we’re here to write songs so why don’t we do one together?’
It was very organic and a nice surprise really, to come out of it with this song.
We weren’t even writing for a collab per se, we just wanted to write a song that maybe one of us would want to release or someone else would want to release in the future, but it just so turned out that we wrote this song and we thought, ‘it feels like its life should be within the space of the two of us, let’s keep it that way’.

Alex, I saw you support Catfish and The Bottlemen at 170 Russell probably five or six years ago. Do you feel like you’ve come a long way since then?
Alex Lahey: I guess so.  When you’re in this job you just are where you are at any given time and it is really important to look back on those things and be like, ‘what a cool experience, I haven’t thought about that in a while’.
It does keep you grounded and grateful when do you look back and think ‘a lot’s happened between then and now’.
I feel like I’ve had a lot of personal achievements and it’s really good to take stock – and important! Sometimes you can be in the moment and feel like things are a bit unforgiving and then you look back on certain experiences. 
It has been a very generous few years and I’m definitely very grateful.

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When did you feel like you’d made it and truly become part of the industry?
Gordi: I don’t know if you ever really feel like that.  I think the idea of ‘made it’ continues to change and evolve as you move through your career.  That’s certainly the case for me anyway.
I always find that an easy parameter to look at is venue size.  You think ‘one day I want to play Northcote Social club, one day I want to play The Forum’.  So those are definite, you can look at it and think ‘wow, I’ve made a lot of progress and probably made it in the sense of what I thought in the beginning of my career’.
I think you just have to enjoy the ride.
Alex Lahey: For me a big milestone, and I don’t think I’ve had a milestone this big since then, is quitting my day job five years ago.
That to me, still is the thing I hang my hat on, out of all of the things I wanted to get out of music the only one that has really been in…
As a musician we’re given a lot of gifts.  Things will happen to you or for you and you think ‘wow, I didn’t ever think that was something I wanted to achieve and here we are and this is awesome and I’m so happy that this has happened’.
The one really tangible thing that I’ve wanted to achieve since I was young was just to be doing this for a living and the moment I handed in my letter of resignation, I was like ‘hell yeah, I’ve done it!’.

Where did you used to work?
Alex Lahey: I used to do communications for some not-for-profits, and it was always just a means to an end. 
One day I thought, ‘if I keep doing this job, I’ll probably get fired because I’m going on tour now,’ and all that kind of stuff.
I can’t even think of something other than maybe winning a Grammy, which is something that I will do and be like, ‘I did it!’.  Those are the kinds of things that are now like the childhood dreams. 
Everything else along the way, you’ll find whether they are acknowledged achievements or not, and these little things will happen and you just have to give yourself a pat on the back.

It must be crazy to hear, but you are here at the SAE Industry Insights to provide inspiration because you are inspiring.  Tell me, who inspired you?
Gordi: I grew up in the era of Missy Higgins, Sarah Blaskow, Claire Bowditch.  A lot of those really successful and who are still successful, Australian female musicians. 
That sort of cohort of artists I really look up to.  I mean, I idolise someone like Carole King.  She’s kind of in a far-off land but, you’ve got to have all of sorts of heroes.
The Australian industry does have this nice feeling like you do have a cohort that you move through with and I guess that’s determined by when you make your first break.
Alex Lahey: It changes all the time for me.  Something that I really want to get out of my career is longevity and being, not necessarily culturally relevant but musically relevant. 
Throughout my career I hope to be an artist that pushes boundaries and has something interesting to say through the course of time.  That doesn’t necessarily mean being the biggest artist in the world right now.
Someone who I look up to at this point in my career is someone like Brandy Carlisle.  She’s still on an upwards trajectory, she still hasn’t peaked and she’s in her late 30s and has a family and has lived a life already.
It’s awesome, especially as a woman.  Unfortunately the culture of the music industry is that women date really young, which is awful. 
To watch her continue to grow as an artist and have things to say while inspiring younger people, but also forging her career is really cool and really inspiring to me.

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I’m going to go for the hard-hitting questions now.  If you had to pick an ice-cream flavour to describe or represent your music, what flavour would you choose and why?
Gordi: Vanilla.  No, I’m kidding!  That was a joke!
Alex Lahey: I feel like the best answer would be rum and raisin or something.
Gordi: I used to always think of my first record as a Belgian chocolate.  Like a really rich, decadent thing that didn’t come out too often.
I feel like I’ve graduated to a more palatable chocolate maybe, but still chocolate nonetheless.
Alex Lahey: Hokey Pokey.  Yeah.
Gordi: Everyone’s favourite.
Alex Lahey: It’s like vanilla ice-cream with honeycomb and caramel in it.
Gordi: That was my regular order as a child.

Why Hokey Pokey?
Alex Lahey: Strong foundations, little bit of crunch, and something exciting in the caramel.  

One last question before we finish up.  Have either of you had any weird fan encounters?
Alex Lahey: [To Gordi] Oh my god you have the fucking weirdest fans!  Like funnily, the Gordi fans are weirder than mine.
Gordi: I do have one guy, one lovely guy who used to come – I haven’t seem him in a while actually – but he used to come to all my shows in Sydney and every time we’d get a photo together.
Then he’d go away and come back to the next show and he’d have a t-shirt with a photo from the last show printed on it.  But he did it every single time, so by the eight time, there was him wearing a shirt with a photo of him wearing a shirt with us on it.  And on that shirt was a photo of him wearing a shirt with us from the precious show.  And then in that pic- you get the idea.  That’s one of the stranger ones I think.

What is your – either all time or current – anthem?
Gordi: I know a place by Muna.  It really gets me hyped.  Like pre-show and post.  And during.
Alex Lahey: Smooth is a classic walk-on song for us, Santana and Rob Thomas.  I mean on the last US tour we did, the song that we’d always play in the van was Welcome to the Black Parade which is why I did it for like a version. 
I remember thinking, challenge accepted.  But Smooth is probably the definitive Alex Lahey tune.

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You can keep an eye out for future SAE Creative Media Institute Industry Insight sessions HERE.

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ALEX LAHEY – Times Square

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Website – Facebook – Instagram – Twitter

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GORDI

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AMNPLIFY – DB