Dan Sultan

Fri 26th Feb, 2010 in Features

The day after he opened the SLAM Rally in Melbourne, and just before flying to the Perth International Arts Festival, Dan Sultan grabs a minute with FL – which is probably the longest he’s stopped moving for a while.

So, you opened up Melbourne’s amazing S.L.A.M. rally, singing It’s A Long Way To The Top out the front of Parliament House.
Yeah, that was me [laughs].

I’ve never been a part of something like that before. Working in the industry can be insular sometimes and seeing everyone together it was like, oh, this is our number. Fuck!
It was pretty serious wasn’t it? It was actually pretty fucking monumental.

What was the view like up the front?
It was fucking incredible. It was a rally in the truest sense: people getting together and expressing themselves, telling people what they really, really thought. And, you know, we were fighting the good fight. We’ve got “good” on our side and righteousness on our side; not self-righteousness, there’s a big difference, but actual, real righteousness. It’s our team. This is our work and this is our job and this is what we do and if someone wants to take that away we’re going to stand up and we’re going to tell them no.

How would they feel if we spoke to every musicians union around the country and said, don’t play Melbourne? You know what I mean? Imagine there weren’t any gigs in Melbourne and all the musicians went on strike. The fucking place would come to a standstill. We’re very, very powerful, together. I love unions, I love the way that together we stand, divided we fall. That’s very cool.

It served to remind me how diverse a culture we’ve got going on here. There are so many different groups out there trying to have a crack.
Yeah, it can be sometimes easy to forget that shit.

I suppose by embracing music, though, you embrace diversity. You grew up on rock, soul and reggae, joined punk and metal bands in your teens…
Like everyone else…

I know, I know. And I know it’s not specifically country music that you do, but it certainly informs your music. What was it about country that appealed to you when you first opened up to it?
Soul and country go hand in hand. They’re brothers. Or they’re sisters… it’s a pretty good team. I found it very easy to get into country music once I gave it a chance. I think there can sometimes be a stigma on country music where it’s not seen as necessarily cool. But I think if you give it the time of day and take a bit of time out to do your research I reckon it’s just fucking amaaaazing. It’s an amazing genre, you know?

Were you interested in country music before you hooked up with Scott Wilson?
No, I wasn’t. Obviously, there was a lot of it around when I was growing up but I thought it was a bit daggy. I mean, you know I listened to a lot of soul when I was growing up, but Scott introduced me to a lot of underground soul that I didn’t know about. He opened my eyes up to a lot: not just country, but soul music, music in general, songwriting…

How do you and Scott write together when you collaborate?
Oh look, I do the music and he does the words pretty much. That’s the general rule. Of course, there are times when he does the music and I do the words, or we both do both but maybe 70 to 80 percent of the time I’ll do the arrangements and he’ll write the words.

That’s interesting. That must say a lot about your partnership where he can write words that you believe in enough that you can make the listener believe too.
He’s a beautiful writer; he’s a wordsmith. I mean that 100-percent. He’s an artist. He’s very, very smart and he’s very talented. I feel very lucky to be working with him. We both do – feel lucky to be working with each other. [laughs] Well sometimes we don’t, but most of the time we do.

Learning the inspiration behind a couple of the tracks made me go back to the lyrics. It’s beautiful how the simplicity of the story telling makes me feel like the songs relate to me, without losing any of the power of the original subject matter.
That’s right. And that’s the thing about a perfect pop song: it sounds familiar, it’s something you’re comfortable listening to and you’re comfortable dancing to even though you’ve never heard it before in your life. If you wanna write a pop song, something that’s brand new – and when I say ‘pop’ I mean popular – that’s the thing, having something that feels familiar from the start.

For a bloke who would have been quite happy earning a living singing and playing guitar, you’re now finding yourself being invited onto Spicks and Specks, Rockwiz – even Bran Nue Dae was a departure. Are you finding yourself more comfortable with being a ‘personality’?
Well, I s’pose. I’m just taking it a day at a time. There’s a friend of mine who’s been in the public eye for a long time and she’s just full of great advice. She says, ‘It doesn’t matter if they say you’re amazing or if they say you’re an arsehole. You just take it with a grain of salt and remember who your friends are, and who your family is, and chill out. Play it by ear and relax.’

Stepping away from the ‘Dan Sultan’ show to perform with The Black Arm Band would be a good way to remember who your friends and family are.
[Debut record] Homemade Biscuits was out not too long when I was invited to join The Black Arm Band. I think I’d been considered but it wasn’t until Homemade Biscuits came out…it all kind of happened from there. The Black Arm Band is just so humbling. I mean, you’re standing on stage with all these amazing people.

I was asked once in an interview, how do you stay grounded, you know? Well, you don’t have much of a choice in The Black Arm Band. If you get ahead of yourself, they’re all aunties and uncles – and I’m the youngest in the group and I get away with murder – but at the same time they’ll just tell me to pull my head in.

I saw Bran Nue Dae for my birthday. It was heaps of fun.
[He cracks up] Yeah, good fun isn’t it!

Not that you’re going to call yourself an actor, but isn’t the performance aspect similar to performing on stage?
Well, look, it’s all performing. In that way there was a lot of correlation but I was playing someone who was a lead singer. Jess Mauboy will say the same thing: we felt comfortable playing singers, ’cause we’re both singers and so we found that the vibe was narrowed, if you will, between acting and singing.

But look mate, I’ve got friends who are actors and I really respect their craft and I wouldn’t want to disrespect that in any way by saying that I’m capable of doing what they do, you know? They’re incredible. I’ve got such a respect for actors. Particularly after doing a fucking movie!

I’m a singer and I’m a guitar player [but] I was very thrilled to do it. It was an opportunity I just couldn’t pass up. And look, if something came along like that again and it could work, then wonderful. But at the same time I’m not going to sit here and say that I can do it as well as anyone can, because I can’t.

Well, we had a blast watching it. I’m sure you can’t imagine how wrong it feels to be three skinny white chicks walking down Swanston Street at 11pm singing ‘There’s nothing I would rather be! Than be an Aborigine!’
But that’s the point! [laughs] That’s the whole point of the movie, so that three skinny white chicks walk down the street saying, there’s nothing I would rather be! That’s marvellous!

Get Out While You Can is out now. Dan Sultan has these shows coming up – check his website for more details.

Saturday 27 February – Factory Theatre, Sydney
Wednesday 3 March – The Famous Spiegeltent, Adelaide
Friday 5 March – CMC Rocks The Snowys, Thredbo
Monday 8 March – Moomba, Melbourne
Sunday 4 and Monday 5 April (two shows) – Byron Bay Bluesfest
Friday 16 April – Prince Of Wales, Melbourne