Blake

Blake O’Connor is a local singer songwriter who has performed on some of the world’s biggest country music stages in Nashville, the UK and here in Australia. He has taken out a Golden Guitar and top spot at the prestigious Toyota Star Maker competition, and he’s just 22 years old! Blake is currently touring his latest album Finding Light, and will be putting on a very special show at The Butter Factory in Telegraph Point on Saturday 8th April.

Can you tell us about your background and how you got into country music?

I started playing music when I was six years old when I got a guitar from my grandparents. I grew up listening to country music and just about everything really; country, gospel, blues, everything that Mum and Dad or my grandparents played. I was probably around 10 years old and I decided to start singing because that's what guitar players did, I figured I’d give it a crack! And from there I started writing songs because that's what singers did. When I was 13 or 14 a friend of my Dad's, Brock Mathers, rang up and was like “I'm playing a gig down the road, if Blake wants to jump up and sing a song in the break, then I'd love to have him come along”. And so I played a few songs in his break and from there the venue actually reached out and asked if I’d like to play a few more gigs there. I only knew about seven songs at the time, so I said “Yeah, sure, no worries.” and then sat in my room and learned like 30 new songs so I had enough material to play in front of people. From there I just kept playing music, and I found the Zac Brown Band and Chris Stapleton and that kind of steered me back into country music.

How do you approach the songwriting process, and where do you draw inspiration from?

I try to write about my own personal experiences or things that are really close to me. My latest single Time To Kill I wrote about a friend who was going through a bit of a rough trot with his partner and, I guess for lack of a better term, just did him very wrong. I try to draw from things that are quite close to me. Chained To The Ground, a song off the new record, I just woke up one night, and I had the song in my head. So I just started writing down verses and I think I wrote about seven verses in about 20 minutes. And then I fell back to sleep and forgot about it and then a day or two later, I read over the words I was like ‘this is pretty cool’. So I wrote a chorus and a bridge to it and that song was done, and that's probably my favourite song off the record! Most of the time if they just come naturally like that they are usually the best ones.

You’ve been recognised for your talent with awards such as a Golden Guitar Award for New Talent of the Year. How has it felt for you to be so highly regarded from such a young age?

It's really cool when you’re recognised for all the hard work you've done, especially at a young age. It’s really reassuring that you're on the right path. I remember when I started, I used to enter all the talent quests at school and the local ones, and I didn't win any of them until I went out to Tamworth and then I won a bunch of talent quests out there. I entered five or six of them and won five. So it’s nice when you receive accolades at a young age, it really keeps you going and fuels that fire to keep on working harder. Especially the Golden Guitar win, that was a really good little kick for me to just double down on what I'm doing and run hard. It's pretty special. You have just released your highly anticipated new album, Finding Light. Can you tell us a bit about the album and the process of creating it?

This album is a long time coming! We started working on this in August of 2020. So, in between pandemic lockdowns we got into the studio and we recorded about five songs, and then straight after that the band went home and when we all tried to get back in the studio a few weeks later, we couldn't because of the lockdowns happening. The studio was in Byron Bay and most of the musicians were out of Sydney. So it was really tough, especially with the lockdowns in Greater Sydney, we couldn't get the band back to Byron Bay. So we had to just put it off and let it sit for a while and then I don't think we ended up getting back into the studio until February of 2022, so it was a good 18 months later. When we went back in, by that time I had a whole collection of new songs to finish the record with. If we were to have recorded it back in August at one time it would have been a totally different album because I wrote a heap of new songs in that break period to pick from. We ended up picking all the new songs to fill in the gaps that we didn't get to the first time around. We ended up recording it out at Beechwood at Michael Lynch’s studio, Shoehorse Sound, which is just down the road from Port Macquarie, it was really nice to have such a good studio and it was just so nice to have it all completed. The album was done in February last year, but then I also wrote another song called Time To Kill at a songwriting camp in September. So the album was already done and we decided I had to go back in the studio and record another one! So we ended up adding that one as an even later addition to the record. So the album really changed and grew throughout the years because I learned a lot more, I wrote a lot more songs and matured a bit over the three years.

You’re also about to tour for the new album, including a show at The Butter Factory in Telegraph Point, what can we expect from the show?

I'm really looking forward to this one because normally when I've played locally, I'd put the big band on and make it a massive production. Whereas this one, I've gone the total opposite and I've stripped it way back. It'll just be me and my acoustic guitar and I'm gonna be playing the songs how I wrote them. So it's going to be a different show for the tour. It's the only show on the tour I'm doing this for, so it's gonna be a bit of a special one for the local area. I'm just going to be playing the songs how they came to me and then telling the stories of how I wrote them. It's probably the smallest, most intimate show I've played locally. I usually play out at the Wauchope RSL and I think that's usually a crowd of about 400 or so people. Whereas this one I think the capacity is about 100 or 150 so it's going to be a lot smaller and I just want it to be a bit more intimate and a bit more personal.

Thanks Blake.

Hi Phil. Thank you so much for speaking with FOCUS. You are an artist with tremendous talent who also hails from Port Macquarie. Tell us a little about your background.

I grew up on a few acres just out near the racecourse with my family, hanging with neighbourhood kids, riding our BMX’s around, building cubbies, being little tear-around ratbags. Strangely, I wasn’t a surfie kid like all my school buddies. My thing was always drawing, which I discovered in primary school. I remember my Dad doing a drawing at our kitchen table of a concord with a ruler and it was really basic, but I found it fascinating. After that I would always sit at the table drawing as a kid. I’d draw Danger Mouse and other cartoon characters by putting tracing paper on the TV screen. My brother was a big drawer too and I’d basically always copy what he did. As a kid I loved that idea of making something from nothing and getting lost in the world of imagination.

Your work has humorous and renegade qualities. Tell us about your creative style which references pop culture of the past to convey various social issues of the present?

A big part of that would be MAD magazine. My brother and I collected the first hundred or so issues from an old secondhand bookstore in Port Macquarie. Each issue would have satirical, political and pop cultural content, referencing the Vietnam War or the Black Power Movement in America. That had a huge impact on what I do now. Humour in art is what is most important to me. For instance, I used to draw over the cover models of my Mum’s Vogue magazines, that was a fun thing to do –defacing things!

Who or what inspires you artistically Phil? Again, MAD mag would be number one, and its contributing artists like Mort Drucker and Al Jaffee, who recently turned 102. I love that kind of lowbrow, highly skilled artistry closely followed by Loony Tunes and Walt Disney and all their characters. During that time the animation skills and draftsmanship of studios like Warner Bros and Walt Disney were unbelievable. The animation backgrounds were amazing paintings. Artists like Paul McCarthy and figures from the punky New York scene have influenced me, though cartoon, film and music more than other capital-a ‘Artists’ do. Being invited back to your hometown as Artist in Residence at the Glasshouse Gallery, you have 10 days to explore and be inspired to plan new work. Tell us a little about what you hope to achieve while you are here?

Returning home is always a nice thing. I haven’t been back in a long time, so I am looking forward to visiting the places I used to haunt and see my old childhood home. Maybe not so much tapping into the local history of Port Macquarie but tapping into my own history of Port Macquarie will be a cool thing while there during the residency. I don’t know what that looks like at this stage, but I’m really looking forward to seeing what comes flooding back. The work to come from the experience will not so much be historically or politically charged, but definitely nostalgic.

Attending your residency is Daniel Mudie Cunningham (DMC), an invited guest curator who will work with you to develop the framework for your solo exhibition at the Glasshouse next year. What are you most looking forward to regarding this collaborative opportunity?

The best thing about this for me is working with a close friend who has informed my work in the past. DMC has put me on to some really good pathways as an artist that I wouldn’t have considered myself. For instance, painting and drawing over old family documentation was his idea and later sparked a collaboration with world-renowned photographer and longtime friend of his, Polly Borland. It’s always nice to work with a curator who knows you personally. DMC works like that consistently; he’s known for working with people he’s close to. I think he’ll get the best out of me, and I want to deliver for him, so, I think it will be a really cool experience. What is on the horizon for you as an artist for the year ahead?

I just finished a show in Sydney and am working towards a show in Melbourne with Nicholas Thompson Gallery. During the process of making that body of work, I am consistently thinking about what this coming Port Macquarie residency will look like, so I’m pleased to say the development of this project at the Glasshouse is a strong focus currently. For people wanting to find out more about yourself and your work, how can they best get in touch?

Instagram is the most direct way. For sales, commissions, and exhibition enquiries, either of my representing galleries is the way to go –Chalk Horse in Sydney or Nicholas Thompson Gallery in Melbourne.

@philjames chalkhorse.com.au nicholasthompsongallery.com.au

Thanks Phil. Interview: Sarah Baker.