Having grown up in London, Hong Kong and Sydney, Ed Wells has had the rare experience of breaking into the music scene in the UK and Australia at the same time. In our Australian Music Week interview, the musician chats to our Editor-in-Chief Larry, about his time in the UK, his new track, expectations and more.
We’ll jump straight in. To start off, could you introduce yourself for me?
My name is Ed Wells, and I’m here for Australian Music Week.
That’s right. We’re here sitting at the El Sol Restaurant in Cronulla for the inaugural Australia Music Week. Let’s chat a little bit about what you’ve been up to since we saw you earlier in the year. You’ve spent a bit of time in the UK… how has the last few months gone for you?
It’s been good fun. The UK was a bit of a holiday which was nice, sort of get a break in, going to do some stuff with family and things, and then came back and just been writing as much as I can, and then just released the latest single, ‘Snow’ right at the end of last month, and that premiered yesterday online. It’s been really good, a lot of stuff happening so, looking forward to the rest of the year and next year.
So tell me a little bit about putting this track together. Is this something you’ve recorded recently or something you’ve had up your sleeve for a while?
I think we did the recording in September… yeah, I was working with a guy called Paul Najar who was doing the production, and he was fantastic because he only lives two minutes down the road. I’d sorta get out of bed at nine in the morning and just go straight there, and he was really good. Some days we were doing twelve, thirteen hour days just working on tiny little things, which, you know, for me, it’s sorta the first time I’ve worked properly with a producer. I really enjoyed it. And having that sort of sound onboard as well, it was really helpful.
What were your expectations going into that – the first time working with a producer – obviously there are certain expectations there…
I’ve worked with Paul before on ‘Sparrow and Seed’ and other songs when I went in sort of at the start of the year, but he was more just doing the engineering then, so I didn’t really know what to expect in terms of how involved he’d get in the track and things, but he was fantastic.
He left it up to me but then gave me his thoughts on what we could do, because, obviously, his technology is probably a bit bit better than mine. When we got to the synth stuff, because we were mainly trying to do a lot more, electronic side of things to the new songs so, he was really helpful with that. I think he did a really good job.
It was recorded then, but lyrically, is it a song you were working on for quite a while?
Yeah, well, I had this song from the end of last year when I spent about six months in the UK, and I’ve been in London for quite a few of those months and I barely had access to a piano for most of it, so I hadn’t really played much. I had my guitar with me but other than that, not a lot. And then I went up and visited family in Yorkshire, where they all live, and my aunt and uncle have a piano, so I spent heaps of time just on that… probably, slightly anti-social but… when playing a bit of piano…
They had quite early snowfall for that sort of time so, ‘Snow’ sort of came out of that, and then sort of December last year, and then I just kept working until I was happy with what it could be.
You’ve gotta be in that part of the world to bring out a song like that, I think. Cronulla beach isn’t really the place to inspire a song called ‘Snow’, unless you’re talking about something else…
Yeah, that’s true. That’s what we said… we were talking about the release of it… we said if the timing is wrong and people don’t get it then we’ll just make it about cocaine.
There you go. We’ll have to listen to the song again and see if you can interpret it in that way. There will be some Current Affair puff piece on it – “Promoting cocaine abuse: Ed Wells”. So you’re here at Australian Music Week… you’ve got a couple of showcases while you’re here?
Yeah, we’ve got four shows. So one tonight which I’m really excited about, for the Source Music Showcase, that is at Croydon Lane. And then the one tomorrow is at JD’s just on the main strip, and I’ll probably play that with a band – I was training with a couple of people yesterday – a couple of friends – who seem keen to play, so I might just do it as a trio or something like that. And then two on Saturday, which will be interesting because I’ve actually got my last uni exam that day, as well, forever, so I’m gonna come straight from there.
Oh, congratulations in advance!
Oh, I think it’ll be a trainwreck, but we’ll see how it goes... I think that’ll be really, really good fun, so I’m looking forward to them.
Busy, busy week. What’s the rest of the year holding for you? What are you up to over the Australian summer? Or are you going home?
No, see I live up at the Northern Beaches so, that is home. I’m going to be in the water more often that not, hopefully, and just sort of chilling out over Christmas.
So you might have a song called ‘Water’ by the end of the… ‘Ocean’!
‘Hot’! [Laughs] Yeah, so I think it’ll just be chilling out and obviously writing a lot more, because, hopefully, I can get the EP out next year. Maybe another single first, and then EP. But we’ll see how it goes.
We’ll leave it on this, we’ll go into your latest track ‘Snow’… anything else you can tell us about the track as we lead into it?
I guess – like obviously, ‘Snow’ seems like a fairly obvious title, seeing as it was written in the north of England, but it came about more comparing it to Australia, and how they’re so completely different in the way that, like obviously, Cronulla and the Northern Beaches and stuff are so different to something like, the Yorkshire Dales… but both of them are sort of related by how much of a freedom I think you have in those sorts of places, like how you connect to those sorts of places, which I think was really important, and inspired most of what I was writing about.
Fantastic, Ed. Well best of luck here at the festival and thank you for taking the time to talk to us today!
Thanks.
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You can stay up with Ed Wells to date on Facebook here: https://www.facebook.com/edwellsmusic
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