Jem Cassar-Daley and Meg Washington will both take to the Sydney Opera House steps this week, opening for Missy Higgins and The Teskey Brothers, respectively.
Ahead of the performances, the Australian artists sat down together to talk about songwriting, performing and what and who inspires them… and we were there to record it all!
Check out the full conversation below.
Jem Cassar-Daley: What makes you feel the most yourself- writing, performing, or time in studio?
Meg Washington: For me, there’s really nothing better than being onstage, lost and floating in the middle of a song I love. Studio time is for belly laughs and musical growth, and writing can feel transcendental, but the live moment really is where it’s at for me.
What is a song or project that you resonate the most with and that captures the essence of yourself as an artist best?
All the songs that I’ve written are kind of the same to me, the repertoire becomes useful in terms of what it can do as I design the setlist. Sort of like Tetris – now I need a small twisty song, so that one goes here, then a long slow one to change the flavour. I do, however, really love coming across my own weird lyrical choices inside the songs; I never get tired of singing “I am a mermaid eating at the sushi train”, for example, because it’s both strange and beautiful, also subtly horrifying. That’s the brand!
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What artists have you been inspired by lately?
I’m not really into machines or machine-made music at the moment, so I am really enjoying art and artists who have a beautiful human essence and soul that’s tangible in the music. I’ve been listening a lot to my friend Kevin Morby’s new album Little Wide Open, also to a lot of instrumental Italian folk music from the 90s. I love Ripple Effect Band, and listen to them a lot. There is an Australian solo artist called Ullah who I think is a really unique and amazing.
Is there an older song that still really resonates with you, even after performing it many times?
Both “How to Tame Lions” and “Sunday Best” still amuse me to play. “Lions” is cool because it’s the only song I’ve ever written in 6/8, and it got played a lot on the radio. Bring back novel time signatures on the radio! And “Sunday Best” is always fun to me because it’s essentially written as a blues, so you can kind of do it any way you want. It’s like a little black dress.
What life events do you draw the most inspiration from when you’re songwriting?
Whatever is making me mad! The feeling of songwriting always hits when I’m trying to hold two difficult or opposite things together at the same time. I like when there’s tension in a song; usually, it’s some kind of irk that kicks off the process. Or an obscenely beautiful turn of phrase that I can’t resist.
Washington: How long does it usually take you to write a song — and what tends to arrive first? Is it a lyric, a melody, a feeling, an image?
Cassar-Daley: Writing a song for me can take anywhere between half an hour and a year, depending on how many times I put the idea down and pick it back up again! I mostly start a song on the piano or guitar and play until a melody makes me feel something. I chase that feeling with words, set up my voice memos and wait for the idea to take shape!
What’s a lyric on your record you almost didn’t put in?
I had some feedback before I released the album to shorten the song “Into Sunsets” as it’s around 5 minutes long, so the bridge was about to be cut out. I ended up going with the original form as I think it tells the story better.
When you get dressed to go onstage, do you feel like you’re becoming more yourself, or creating a different version of yourself?
My relationship with performing has changed so much over the years. When I first started, I found myself trying to cater my setlist to what I thought people wanted to hear, rather than what I felt comfortable playing. I’ve slowly grown more confident in myself and my intuition over the years, and now it is absolutely my happy place. I feel like I am more myself on stage than anywhere else.
Do you make eye contact with people in the audience when you’re performing? What happens when you do?
In my first few years of performing, it used to make me really nervous to recognise people I knew in the crowd! So I would avoid making eye contact! Now I love spotting people, particularly friends and family supporting a show.
Does a song change for you once you release it, and it starts belonging to other people?
The original meaning of a song always stays the same to me personally, but it is really special to hear other interpretations of the lyrics from people or how they connected with it. I particularly feel this with songs that are a little more ambiguous in their meaning.
Click here for more details on the upcoming shows.
