Lanie Lane

Mon 21st Nov, 2011 in Features

With a look and sound torn from the 1950s Laine Lane has become all too well accustomed to explaining that she’s not another retro act. “The album is obviously inspired by music of a day gone by, but it’s modern. I’m not singing about the war and rationing,” she explains. “I’m singing about modern day things; things that people relate to like heartbreak. I’m a really modern girl – I have an iPhone and I have a Twitter page and I love Facebook. I’m eccentric; I used to skateboard, I used to ride BMX. I’m not one dimensional. I think people have a need to say you’re only one type of person, but I’m really not. I love trying out different things and being really open to fun.”

Even the press circuit sounds like fun in Lanie’s world. When FL catches Lanie to chat about the release of her wonderful debut album she’s being whisked through the streets of Melbourne by her label on her way to play a live set for RRR radio having recently returned from a seven day promo tour of the States that followed five days of solid press booking at home. “I’ve never really done the promo trail before,” she says with genuine excitement “It’s just one thing after another. It’s really intense, but it’s good I mean I’m really happy that people want to talk about it. No complaining at all!”

The good news for Lanie – and gingham retailers – is that not only have punters been talking about the album they’ve also been keen to part with their hard earned to own a copy. To The Horses bolted for the top ten on release racing into the charts with a #12 debut.

Lanie has also been thinking about why she was drawn to the the early rock ‘n roll on her wonderful debut album To The Horses, and not just because it’s one of the questions she reckons she has been asked about ten times a day as she promotes her album. “It’s important to think about these things; I don’t want to analyse it too much but I do have a theory about it,” Lanie offers. “Because my mum comes from an Irish background so I’ve figured that it must be from that because all that bluegrass that eventually became the hillbilly, that became the rockabilly and the rock and roll – all that must have some ancestral resonance with me. That’s my theory at the moment. I don’t know that might change. Also I just love things that are from a different era. My dad’s an antique’s restorer and I love bringing things back to life as much as he does.”

However Lanie insists that she wasn’t really raised on early rock n roll, rockabilly and country stuff, with the soundtrack in her childhood home usually her Dad’s blues and folk records or Mum’s favourite Motown tracks. Her family arrived in Australia when she was just two and as a result Lanie she says that her parents don’t really connect with Australian music the way that she does now. So although she guested on You Am I’s self titled album and has just finished touring as part of the Nick Cave tribute tour, those bands weren’t part of her early soundtrack.

Despite her relatively recent discovery of St Nick, Lanie was “really excited about the tour and playing with all these amazing musicians” name-checking Dan Sultan, Abbe May, Adalita and her “good friend” Lisa Mitchell, and eager to take on Cave’s Jack the Ripper, tackle the Kylie part on Where the Wild Roses Grow and even play trombone on Johnny Mackay’s version of Nick the Stripper.

While Cave might not have figured significantly in her music, Lanie cites another Australian performer who has mined the sounds of the American South – CW Stoneking – as a “real inspiration” Lanie is quick to exclaim that she’d love to collaborate with Stoneking one day and she pays tribute to him in the song Jungle Man on To The Horses. The song was written after Lanie saw Stoneking play for the second time. “It was really special for me,’ Lanie explains. “He had this amazing band and I loved the way they’d set everything up. There was green smoke coming out of the walls and it was so atmospheric. He really did create a world. That’s what Jack White’s done. That’s what I’m trying to do. I really just want to bring people into my world, even if it’s only for an hour. It’s really exciting when people have thought hard about what they’re doing, but it’s still real. It’s not manufactured by someone else.”