Jeff Lang is a unique Australian treasure. A virtuoso guitarist and sonic alchemist informed by everyone from AC/DC to Ali Farka Toure, the Victorian-based singer-songwriter has just added the icing to the cake of his near two-decade-long career with his stunning new album Half Seas Over.
Recorded in a duo format with long-time bassist Grant Cummerford, the album focuses on the storytelling traditions of old time folk and blues.
“It was a pretty painless process making this record,” Lang reflects. “I’d been doing a lot of shows in the two-piece format with Grant leading up to the record.
“There were certain songs that would suit a band approach more so than this minimal kind of thing, but there were other songs that seemed to fall right into being played in this duo format with no drums and just bass, guitar and voice. There was a bigger pile of those songs, so that was the record we ended up making.
“It made it a very easy record to make; it seemed pretty obvious what was going to work. Without it being easy in a lazy way, it felt like an easy process.”
Despite its minimalist aesthetic, Half Seas Over is far from a one trick sonic pony. With a plethora of guitars at his disposal, Lang has crafted a diverse and textured album.
“I had those songs that worked in that minimal way,” he explains, “the main thing was to just give the album a bit of texture from song to song, ‘cos it could sound samey if you just have guitar and bass for the whole thing. So if I’d recorded a couple of songs on regular acoustic guitar I’d go over to a national steel guitar for a couple of songs. Luckily I’ve got a few instruments at my disposal, so I can pick and choose for the songs. So that, in a nuts and bolts kind of way, was a fun part of making the record.
“It’s a bit of a storybook record in some respects – the types of songs that suited this format were more connected with a folk or traditional songwriting style. It’s not so much to do with the structure of the songs giving the dynamics, with verses and choruses and bridges and middle eights and things like that. It’s more to do with the stories that are being told and how the verses pile up on top of each other as what gives the song its dynamic.”
On Half Seas Over Lang puts his own spin on a few songs that are steeped in folk traditions including the exquisite ‘My Mother Always Talked To Me’ and ‘The House Carpenter’, the latter of which has roots that stretch far back in Scottish history.
“‘The House Carpenter’ has been around for about four or five hundred years,” Lang explains. “I first heard it done by Bob Dylan, then I realised it was on the Harry Smith Anthology by Clarence Ashley on banjo. It’s been recorded by loads of people; the way I do it is probably closest related to the Dylan version.
“But I also wanted to just check out, ‘cos a lot of those old folk songs have a lot of verses, and certain versions will remember some verses. The Dylan version had certain verses and told the story really well, but then I discovered there were a lot more and I actually ended up inserting quite a few verses from different sources that just extended the story in the way that I wanted to do it.
“I sung I think 14 or 15 verses, there’s probably another 10 that I could’ve included that have more detail in various little spots. But I just picked the ones that felt right for me to tell that story.”
Lang says that songs that have stood the test of time such as ‘The House Carpenter’ have proven, built-to-last qualities.
“I love the fact that a song like ‘The House Carpenter’ has been shaped by all of those years of all those incredible minds working on them, the Chinese whispers that happen. Even if it’s not particularly what you’re into you can’t deny the respect that stuff deserves. It’s like The Bible – it’s been around that long and still effects people that much than it’s gotta have something to it. Even if it’s not something you care for that much you gotta respect it.”
Lang’s respect for the folk tradition can be reflected in the sense of timelessness that imbues his own songwriting. On Half Seas Over Lang originals such as ‘Five Letters’, ‘Mooncoin’ and ‘Newman Town’ sound as if they could’ve emanated from times Centuries old.
“You can’t really contrive something like that,” he says of this timeless quality. “You would hope that it might have that, but at the same time you can’t make it be so. I guess input equals output – you listen to what you find compelling and what moves you, and eventually the influences are gonna filter out in their own way. I find things that have a timeless quality more compelling than things that necessarily get dated very quickly.
“Even if it’s something that feels like it might’ve even come out of a newspaper story – some of the things that Woody Guthrie wrote about, or early Dylan songs might be related directly to particular current events, but there’s something about the way the story is told that has a timeless quality. If you’re telling a story effectively it will stand outside of that particular moment and still continue to have resonance. So I like things like Richard Thompson, Tom Waits, Bob Dylan. They write songs that stand outside of a particular moment – you can get transported into a different world by listening to them.”
Given such inspiration, does Lang envisage some of his own songs following in the footsteps of ‘The House Carpenter’ and being passed down to subsequent generations over time?
“Who knows whether anything that any of us do is going to be remembered after we’re gone,” he stresses. “But if somehow songs that you’ve written, if hundreds of years later you’re name’s forgotten but the song is still going, that would be really cool. But we’re never gonna know, so who cares. We’ll have to wait and not see!”
Half Seas Over out now through ABC/Warner
I was lucky enough to see Jeff Lang live at a small winery in Stanthorpe last year.
One of the best performances I've ever seen.