Chilling Out with Charlton Hill
(The Drum Media, Nov '03)

In a lot of ways, the residency singer songwriter Charlton Hill has taken up at The Vanguard in Newtown over this month is a return to his roots in the acoustic scene, recalling something of his early days at La Bar, for instance. It's a welcome chance for him to catch his breath in what has been an incredibly hectic and exciting year.

"Basically I've had a bit of time to get out around town and see a few artists and musicians that I've been getting into, and then as much as possible been inviting them down to sort of share the night. I'm very much into gigs being about a cool night with everyone just sort of hanging out and bringing friends and jumping up on stage, and doing whatever and feeling pretty spontaneous about it all. And all these guys seemed to have followed the same path that I've been following.

"So it's pretty cruisy and it's been a good chance for me to do a whole bunch of new stuff too, and just experimenting with kind of the musicality of the existing songs and then I've got a whole bunch of new tracks that are kind of just finding their feet, and amongst friends it's somehow a lot easier to drop these new songs. I grew up playing a bit of piano and stuff too and they've got a beautiful piano there so I'm getting a chance to dabble away on some of the other instruments and remember what I can and can't play!"

Much of that experimenting will give Hill a better idea of how he wants to approach his next album.

"With the first album I had quite a variety of tracks and I guess I sort of honed in on a particular area of sounding song that I wanted to put on the album, so now I'm getting a chance to play some of the ones that never got heard and sort of find places I do or don't want to go some of the new songs.

"I guess a lot of the stuff that was coming out, maybe even in the last month or two has been a lot more aggressive. It's the classic thing, the first album's the first twenty-odd years of your life in a nutshell and then the next one's experienced over the last couple of months, so it's kind of funny. I think I chilled out a little bit in the sense that I got a whole lot of things said and I'm kind of finding a new space or a pocket sort of just living in generally and sort of documenting that in songs, but initially there were a lot of things that were frustrating the shit out of me so I just sort of had to get them out. It's a relief once it's down in songs, it's like 'well hey cool I've said that now, probably no point in saying it again.'

"I've learnt so much over the last year or two particulary having certain expectations fom the industry, to my music itself, or to how it sounds and feels once you start getting a few runs on the board as well as some singles out there and stuff. I've just been enjoying getting back to the root of all things which is the song and the moment.

Back