Scott Spark plays The Troubadour Wednesday 21 February 2007.
Brisbane's Scott Spark may style himself just another piano bar crooner, but on his debut EP Wet Behind The Years he portrays himself as more of a storyteller, wearing his heart on his sleeve in more ways than one.
“The EP is a cross-section of songs that I’ve been writing for the last four years or so,” Spark explains. “I originally wanted to make an album, but quickly realised that that was completely beyond my scope – financially and experience-wise. I think you have to be honest with yourself as to what you’re capable of and basically where you’re at.”
Spark speaks of the EP’s creation affectionately, and often refers to the songs “writing themselves” or “wanting to go their own way.” It seems he is one of the lucky ones who can create effortlessly, but Spark explains that he did, in fact, have a little help from his friends.
“I can’t even tell you what I owe Emerson [Bavinton, co-producer],” he gushes openly. “He’s a complete gem and I am so happy that I ended up pairing with him. I didn’t even know the guy and we produced the thing together. He has a background of recording rock bands and I think he was secretly thrilled to record a grand piano. It is a little bit naff, it’s not the coolest kind of assignment.
“Brisbane is very much still a rock city,” Spark continues. “A lot of my friends are in rock bands and I go along to see them and cheer them on. One of the songs on the EP is by Kate Cooper from Iron On and apparently they are working it as a track for their next album.”
But Wet Behind The Ears? What kind of a name is that anyway?
“I had a friend ask me ‘What the fuck is that?’,” he reveals. “But that’s just me; it’s a feeling of being new. It’s a feeling of being inexperienced and for some reason I don’t have a therapist and if I ever earn enough money to have a therapist, I might hire one. I think I have this condition that doesn’t really leave me. No matter what I do or what I achieve, I still feel a little inexperienced. So I felt like it was really apt and really fitting to call it that.”
But despite songtitles like If And When I Have A Kid, Something Clean About Skin In The Cold and Half-Formed Song, the singer says he doesn’t feel the need to be left-of-centre, it just comes out the way it comes out.
“I couldn’t give a fuck which point I was near the centre,’ he says. “I could be right-of-centre, left-of-centre and smack-bang-in-the-centre. I think any decent songwriter covers the spectrum.”
While the singer/songwriter/pianist reckons Randy Newman and Elvis Costello would be too intimidating to work with, he says could sure handle being taken under the wing of Ben Folds.
“I’d be in awe and completely nervous, but he’s one of the good guys,” Spark suggests. “I’d love to see him come off stage needing to bandage his fingers. By comparison, I’d look like a complete wuss.”
Wet Behind The Ears out now independently.
