Project Description

Interview with

William Crighton

Interviewer – Benjamin Smith

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William, first congratulations on the new album, its one of the rare records that I’ve found impossible to listen to as background, it demands full attention whenever its playing. The last time we spoke you were mid-way through a tour with Terra Lightfoot and were about to do a run of shows with her in Canada. How did those shows go? How was your Canadian experience generally, and, more specifically, how did Canadian audiences respond to your work? Also, did you and Terra manage to get some time on stage together?

Thank you for saying that, the album was a journey to make. The shows in Canada with Terra were great fun, Terra and her band are wonderful people. We ended up singing some songs together too. Canadian audiences were very welcoming and seemed generally interested in what we were doing. Terra attracts a great crowd.

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This album is, in my view, a significant departure from your previous collection of songs. The last album had a more traditional folk/Australiana feel, where as Empire has a more experimental element and the influences seem to come from a broader range of styles and genres. Talk us through the process of writing and recording this album and how it came to be imbued with such a unique sound.

We were living in the bush on the banks of Burrinjuck dam while writing the first album and had a lot of time to reflect on things. This album was a different situation. We were on the road a lot.  I was also thinking a lot about my history in the big picture here in Australia, which began fueling my observations of the present and that brought a lot of anger and sadness but then that gave way to a deeper understanding which brought very joyous feelings and that’s all reflected in the album. I was also discovering and exploring music that I hadn’t heard before or that I hadn’t  taken the time to ‘really’ listen too, that was inspiring and brought new ideas, albums such as Astral Weeks and artists like Tinawerin, Howlin Wolf.

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You worked with Matt Sherrod as producer on this album, what did he end up bringing to the project?

Matt brought an enormous amount to Empire. We’ve been playing on and off together for about 7 years so we can read each other well. He helped me break through and see production in a different way back in Nashville around 2012 and since then we’ve been good mates and we play together like brothers. He mixed and produced this album, played drums, synth, percussion and sang backing vocals. We also co wrote Devils Tongue.

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Last year you released Hope Recovery, which had Neil Young’s ‘After the Goldrush’ on it. This record has a cover of Eric Bogle’s ‘And the Band Played Waltzing Matilda’. How do you go about selecting songs to reinterpret and make your own, especially in the case of Neil Young, who I know has been a big influence on your work, but who also has such an enormous canon of work to choose from with such extraordinary diversity?

Yes, Neil Young is a big influence, because he doesn’t seem to be bound by anything. His music has a freedom to it that inspires me.  From the first time I heard the two songs mentioned above they resonated deeply with me and I wanted to sing them because of that.

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