You won’t find a happier chap than Pete Murray right now. With a home studio set up at his old farm house in the hills just outside Byron Bay, two beautiful children, complete artistic freedom, sold-out shows and chart topping records… what’s there to be miserable about?
To top it off, Pete has just released the first album that he can honestly claim to be 100% satisfied with.
Pete’s happiness glows warmly through every guitar chord, every strike of the piano keys, every drum beat, and (nearly) every lyric on his new album, Summer At Eureka. Songs like ‘You Pick Me Up’, ‘King Tide’ and ebullient album closer ‘Happy Ground’ sparkle with inspiration and contentedness. Even a song like Neil Young-esque album opener ‘Chance To Say Goodbye’ rocks joyously in the face of a less than joyous topic.
Thanks to mammoth radio hits like ‘So Beautiful’ and ‘Better Days’ – more temperate ballads that just happened to plucked as singles from his first two albums Feeler and See The Sun – Pete Murray picked up a reputation as a glum, sensitive artist.
When I catch up with him at his Byron home, he laughs about a particular radio station holding a “cheer up Pete Murray” competition.
But anyone who has followed Pete’s career with any attentiveness – or indeed, anyone who’s ever actually met him – will attest to the inaccuracy of that reputation.
The very first I heard of Mr Murray was a sizzling, high-energy piece of guitar rock called ‘Lines’ that he produced and released himself – in Byron Bay. Though that song would reappear in a toned down version on Pete’s Sony BMG debut Feeler (there was a full-length independent album The Game released before Feeler), its verve and tone were indications of Pete’s true musical vision. And it’s to that original vision, and its birthplace, that Pete has returned with the self-produced warmth of Summer At Eureka.
It seems to be that you never actively chased the commercial success, that it was really thrust upon you pretty suddenly.
“Well it was exactly, that’s what happened. I remember I did the independent album [The Game] and from that we got signed and that was never really put out… And then we re-recorded a few songs and put out Feeler and I remember having a conversation with the guys at the label saying ‘our goal is to try and sell about 25,000 albums, and then we’ll try and set you up with the second album… And I remember thinking, ‘god, 25,000 that’s a lot!’ I was going ‘if I can do five, that’s a good start!’ And then the whole thing just went nuts really quickly.”
With things happening so quickly, you inevitably lost control of some aspects of your career and your music. Is that why you set up your own studio and self-produced Summer At Eureka, to regain some control?
“Yeah going into this album, that wasn’t going to happen. And I didn’t want to fall back on anyone else. The first song I produced on my own was ‘Forever Now’ that Cold Chisel tribute song. And I had Anthony Lycenko who did The Game for me, so I wanted to get back with him and get the right feel back. And no one there going… because sometimes when you work with someone else they’re aware of the record label and that there’s future work for them, I think. And they’re always thinking ‘well we’ve got to keep these guys happy, and keep the artist happy as well’. So for this time, when we did this, I built the studio, the label didn’t even know about it. I got the boys to come up and demoed the album, and about sixty percent of the songs on that album are from the demos.”
So though you had Anthony there to help, for this album you took all the production responsibility on your shoulders.
“Totally… and you feel that pressure when you’re the only one to make the call. And also I’m a Libran too so I would go ‘should I do this or should I do this?’ I had to go ‘put that aside mate, you just have to make a decision’.”
Is ‘Chance To Say Goodbye’ just letting out all your Neil Young worship all in one song?
“Pretty much! Obviously I’m a huge Neil Young fan and it’s very inspired by Neil Young’s style, right through. I wasn’t sure whether to put that as first song, because it is so Neil Young, but it’s got my own flavour to it as well I guess, but it makes a statement and it’s a nice change. The whole album’s got a ‘70s flavour to it, you know and just the sounds that we’ve recorded, trying to make it this old ‘70s drum kit, old ‘70s bass, and drawing from those influences like Young and Dylan and Springsteen, Tim Buckley, all those guys… that era is what I tried to make it sound like…
“Yeah you talk to some people and they go ‘oh you’ve got this muted sort of sound, what is it?’ And I go ‘it’s the ‘70s.’ It’s not bright. All the music you hear these days is bright and it’s snappy and it’s crisp. It [Summer At Eureka] doesn’t sound like it’s been recorded in this decade.”
Dylan, Young, Springsteen – they have unconventional, raw voices. You have such a gentle voice, which I guess is both a blessing and a curse.
“Yeah totally. It’s hard to really belt something out for me. That’s why in the past I’ve used a particular type of microphone to get distortion on my vocals to make it sound a little bit tougher. Because it’s true probably most of the stuff that works me are the gentler songs because of the soft vocals. Maybe I should be doing stuff like Nick Drake, but I get a bit bored doing that the whole time. So I write the more dynamic songs to keep me interested. Saying that about those guys, their own style is what makes them unique and so great.”
After all the touring he did for the previous two albums, Pete’s been in no hurry to hit the road. But the time has come, and hot on the tail of some dates in Europe, where he and his band The Stonemasons performed in front of 60,000 at The Netherlands’ Pinkpop Festival, Murray is undertaking his first Australian tour in two years. With a new member, Brett Wood, joining the band on guitar and a new bunch of his strongest songs yet, Pete is now excited to get back on stage – just one more reason for Pete Murray to be happy.
Pete Murray plays two sold out shows at the Tivoli on Saturday 6 and Sunday 7 September and the Caloundra Music Festival in October 2008.
Summer At Eureka is available through Sony BMG.
