Shane Nicholson supports John Mellencamp and Sheryl Crow on Tuesday 25 November 2008.
You never know what you'll find among the junk when you are moving house. Amid the old socks, unfinished holiday books and cups full of loose change buried at the back of the drawer, you can find some treasures too.
That's what happened to Shane Nicholson. In his case we’re talking about a treasure trove of old songs, and now these long-forgotten gems are the basis for his new album, Familiar Ghosts.
“I'm always writing things, out on tour, at soundchecks, and they tend to end up lying around unfinished,” explains Nicholson, who scored his first No1 album this year in collaboration with his wife Kasey Chambers on the alt-country classic Rattlin' Bones. “When the songs aren't finished they tend to disappear because I'm always working on new stuff. But I was packing up boxes for the move and would come across these songs, [odd] lines scribbled in notebooks and [ideas] on old cassettes. And I would start to play them and think, ‘You know, these are good. How could I have forgotten about them?’”
Ever since he got the money to get hold of his first tape player, Nicholson has also been an enthusiastic home recorder, and so when touring commitments for Rattlin' Bones wound up, of course he found himself back in his small home studio.
“I was working on finishing the songs, and my natural inclination when I'm doing that is to sit in the studio and press “play”. And it was great fun, playing all the instruments myself, just like when I used to work on demos for my albums, putting things down for myself and anyone else who wants to hear them.”
“The first time I played most of these songs through,” he continues, “was as I recorded them, and, after two weeks of that, I had an album. That was the same kind of thing we did with Rattlin' Bones. We worked fast, and there's something very fresh and spontaneous about the music when you do that.''
Despite the nature of how the songs came into being, there's nothing throwaway about the songs that make up Familiar Ghosts. It ranges from the ominous minor-key mystery of ‘Easy Now’ and ‘Short Fuse (Part 4)’ to sweet, aching ballads like ‘Summer Dress’ and ‘Long Time Coming’ to the easy country stroll of ‘Where The Water Goes’.
It's Nicholson's music as naked and as honest as he's ever made it on a solo recording, with acoustic guitars, banjo, dobro and tasty slide guitars all played by the man himself.
“The title Familiar Ghosts comes from one of the songs that didn't make the record, but I had that in mind as a theme right from the start, about these songs that hang around and won't go away. They didn't fit the last record, they might not fit the next one, but I had a great time creating a home for them at last.”
Nicholson, a former local lad who first found fame with his band Pretty Violet Stain will be hitting the road to promote the album.
Familiar Ghosts is out through Liberation on Saturday 15 November 2008.
Shane supports John and Mellencamp and Sheryl Crow on Tuesday 25 November at the Brisbane Entertainment Centre.
