Felicity Groom is Hungry for More

felicity groom

‘Hungry Sky’ has been pretty long in the making, how has the process been?

It’s been really cool and relaxed. It mostly happened at home, in our front lounge room, and then moved to a couple of places, it moved to Mike Joelneck’s house, one of the band members and did a bit of work there, we went to one of my friends’ houses and did a bit of recording there, then finally we took in into Dave Parkins’ studio and anyone who knows Dave Parkin, he’s a super dude. He’s a really nice fellow. It was really cruisey, lovely, easy process of no stress, just good fun.

I read that you got some of the boys from Tame Impala involved.

Yeah, so they were just in town and available. Kevin Parker helped me start the recording process, and then he kinda went away. Then I work with Mike Joelnick for a while and then he got busy and then I started to do it myself and got really into the program myself, and then Kevin came back and we did a little bit more recording and he went away again, and I did some more myself, and then finally we brought it into Dave Parkins to clean it all up, to get rid of all the talking in the background that was in the recording.

Sounds like a really relaxed way to make an album, just jamming out in the front room.

It was brilliant, really cool. It’s a nice blue room as well. It’s a huge room, it’s got everything that we need set up in it and yeah. Blue room with a blue velvet couch, that has since gone to make more room in the room for more instruments. While it was there, it was very comfortable to do takes on.

I was reading that some of the inspiration for this album was very kind of future-based and topical. About where the world is heading. Can you tell me more about that?

Well there’s pretty crazy shit going on at the moment, as per usual, as always. But I suppose in this new environment of being, I suppose as you grow older you kind of start to recognise what kind of shape the ways in which you can contribute to society in a more positive manner and I think I’m just kind of learning about- learning more and more about things to kind of work out where I can start to make changes, make different in my life and the future of everyone. [Laughs]

What sort of differences do you hope your music will make?

I don’t think it’s necessarily about my music making a difference, I just think I’m conscious of my, personally my actions and how I can kind of make positive contributions. So it doesn’t necessarily have to be through the music, it’s just talking about the things that are in my brain. First of all I’d like the government to change to a more community-minded, community-spirited, environmentally active government. I’d prefer the Greens to be in rather than Tony Abbott. It’s kind of talking about- and sociable, you know. I suppose, yeah. It’s like me vocalising my own considerations for what changes perhaps I can make, not necessarily how I can influences other to make bold changes.

You‘ve recently become a parent, do you think that that’s maybe influenced that looking towards the future?

Yeah, totally. Absolutely. It very much has. I mean I started on that trajectory before she was born but obviously as soon as you have a kid you are thinking about what kind of crazy world they’re going to grow up in. Yeah, becoming more environmentally minded and all that stuff definitely.

Was that kind of concurrent process, making a new human and making an album at the same time? That’s got to keep you busy.

Yeah! [Laughs] I was pregnant with her while I was doing most of the vocal takes, so. So she really knows the album. Every time it comes on she dances. I’ve got a fan in her. Obviously she was a part of the whole process, so that’s pretty cool.

How do you think that physically influences your vocals?

Well, I found it quite hard to sing with her. I was performing live, particularly with the Rokwell and Groom thing, right until pretty much she was born. It’s quite hard to song, when you’re pregnant because she was two weeks and five days overdue. So I was quite big.

There’s a lot less room in you.

Yeah, there’s a lot less room, you know, your diaphragm’s kind of pushed up, and your lungs, everything’s a bit squished so you definitely lack the power that you once had, and then of course, because everything’s stretched out after being pregnant, it takes a long time for everything to engage back in as well. So for a while there, your muscles are all relaxed and you don’t realise how much you use your muscles when singing until you go to sing when your muscles just aren’t engaged. So it’s a really interesting process of going through pregnancy and finding out how that does change your body and singing.

Do you think it’s changed your approach to music at all?

Not necessarily having a child, no. But I definitely have changed my approach to music since since making this album. Like I used to sit down and write with a piano or a guitar and now I kind of tend to pick up my laptop straight away and play with that because I feel more confident with recording and music programs. And I find there’s a lot more scope for me in media-based writing, so.

It seems like, with your new stuff and also with Diger Rokwell you’re going in more of a beats kinda direction. What’s inspired that?

I work quite closely with Andrew Ryan on heaps of stuff and we wrote ‘Higher Higher Taller Taller’ together and that kind of determined the areas that I was interested in exploring and then the Rokwell and Groom thing came along so that was a nice transition. So both of them contributed to making a more beats style album. Andrew plays a lot of drums on this album and was very influential on the beats styles in the songs so that was kind of the driving force behind that.

I saw you do quite a different type of performance. It must be a couple of years ago now in ‘Tinkertown’ and I was exciting to see you’d put one of the songs from the show in there.

Yeah, so ‘Oh Jesus’ is part of the album. I wrote that song for the play as kind of a dark, broody, because the characters are all, as you can remember they’re quite demented and broken but beautiful at the same time and that song was written from the perspective of both of them, Chester and his daughter. That was kind of written for the play but then Andrew really liked it and write the bass part for it and then we started playing it together and it sounded really cool so it made it onto the album.

How does writing music for theatre and being onstage for that differ from writing music for yourself and performing onstage with your own stuff?

Well, for a start it provides you with a scene. I was definitely writing from the perspective of those characters rather than, well. I wouldn’t necessarily write about Jesus in my normal rhetoric but these characters were particularly religious. For a start you’re kind of taking on the perspective of someone else and you know, it had a tone to it so it kind of determined the tone of the song as well. It’s a fun way to write, actually. When you’ve got- there’s a story behind the song. So obviously I was really stepping into someone else’s persona there. But generally all the other ones are more closely linked to my life rather than necessarily a character.

It must be quite a different style of performance to be amongst the play. Were you onstage the whole time?

Yeah!

You’ve got to be largely unseen for a while, that’s got to be pretty different to pumping up a crowd.

Tell you what, that was not necessarily my favourite part of performing in the play, sitting onstage all night. Because you had to be really still while the action was going on and it was close to an hour worth of performance, maybe even longer, and I was only performing about 6 songs or something every ten minutes for three minutes or something. So it was definitely hard to stay still. But I did like how big they got my hair. That was amazing. Every night it seemed to get taller and taller.

Felicity Groom is performing at the Courtyard Club at the State Theatre Courtyard on Friday November 14th at 6.30pm. The album launch for ‘Hungry Sky’ is at the Rosemount Hotel on December 5th. Find out about Felicity Groom’s performances on her Facebook page.

Sophie Joske

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