One of the hardest working men in the Australian music industry Paul Greene is back on the road promoting his new single “Love Work Dance Trust.” I caught up with this passionate and fiercely independent muso this afternoon to chat about life on the road, how he inspired a Ben Harper hit, and why the Olympics are a corporate marketing scam.
You’re touring to promote your new single “Work Love Dance Trust.” What can you tell me about the song?
It’s inspired by a Tibetan Buddhist proverb that I saw written on a friend’s wall in blue crayon once, nearly ten years ago now. And on a drive to Bryon Bay from Sydney I had this song, which I thought was a bit of a joke, rolling around in my head. On long drives, that’s when I come up with a lot of my ideas, when I’m sitting in my car by myself. And I recorded it, I think I had a minidisk recorder at the time.
And it’s become probably my most requested song when I play live, which is pretty much all I do. It just seems to resonate with people. And I know it’s been used before – “Work like you don’t need the money, love like you’ll never get hurt, dance like nobody’s watching” is a bit of a cliché almost, sort of a modern cliché. But it’s interesting that song. With the way I write songs, I just make them up and bounce them off an audience and see what comes back, see what works and doesn’t work. And that’s definitely the song that has struck a chord with the most people.
You spend a lot of time on the road. What do you love about performing?
I love the individuality of it. It’s the journey that makes the songs a lot of the time, and really has established my sound and me as a performer. I particularly love being able to see the whites of the eyes, and seeing what happens when you bounce these songs off an audience of sometimes unsuspecting punters, seeing what their reaction is. People don’t have a chance to rereview or find out what’s going on a lot of the time. You get people’s raw reactions to the music. I get a lot out of that. I think that’s kind of what my whole project is really about.
What do you miss most when you’re on the road?
It’s more about what I miss when I’m not on the road!
OK then. What do you miss when you’re not on the road?
I miss being on the road! You very quickly forget about the uncomfortable beds. I’ve got to say after eight years of touring I’ve got it down to a fine art. I’m travelling at the moment with my seven-month-old daughter and my four-year-old daughter and my wife.
That would make things interesting!
Well, you know, I’d be sleep deprived if I was at home as well. I get to travel with my family. I come from Culbarra Beach, which is on the South Coast of New South Wales, and I love going home there. But I don’t go away from work. My life just kind of continues in another place. I just move from place to place, rather than having to go away and come back. I feel like this is my life, travelling and playing music, and I get to do it with my family. I feel like the luckiest person in the world.
You visit a lot of regional areas. Do you make a conscious effort to get out there to those places that don’t often see a lot of live music?
Yeah, I do. To begin with it was a bit of a necessity for me, when I was developing. But now I do fairly well in the metropolitan centers, and I’ll stop in towns on the way through. But in doing that I’ve been welcomed into these communities. Every time I come back I get to know a few more people, and there’s a few more people I have to catch up with for a beer every time I go back. And that’s becoming an integral part of the whole trip.
Initially it was a bit of a struggle, it felt quite difficult to get out there and play songs I’d made up in some of these places that didn’t even have FM radio. But I feel like it’s an essential service, it’s a required service in a way that I kind of go from town to town. It’s a bit of the old bard thing, the travelling minstrel. That’s what the troubadours did; they’d go from town to town and spread the news. I guess I feel through that it’s totally made possible by the willingness of those communities to have me back again, and that’s really important to me, that we’ve kind of got a community-based thing. I come into town and do workshops. I have my local musos that teach me something, and we swap information and swap artists that we’ve found that we like.
For the big picture for me, I’m actually celebrating because I’ve just bought a bus. I’m going to deck it out to tour in my bus. So for the rest of my foreseeable life, this is what I want to do. But I’ve made it this far, and I’ve been welcomed back into the communities that I’ve already been to. But there’s a lot of spots I haven’t played yet, and I intend to get to them all.
You’ve just come from playing the Byron Bay Blues and Roots Festival, and you’re a regular on the festival circuit. What do you love about those big collaborative shows?
Finding yourself on a world stage, playing alongside people like Ayo, people like Angelique Kidjo, Luka Bloom, and Ben Harper. I’m not putting myself on the same level as these people, they’re the best in the world, but to just have an opportunity to be in the same air as them and go and watch them play on stage, or have a meal with them, to be able to work with those people, I get a lot out of that. I feel like it kind of lifts my standards when I know I’m in such good company.
The Blues and Roots festival was a lovely experience. I got a day in the mud to wander around and see some fantastic music, and it was very nice to be counted as a part of that.
Speaking of Ben Harper, I read that you were the inspiration behind his song “Diamonds on the Inside.” How did that come about?
We met in a guitar shop in L.A. He was looking for a Fender Telecaster and I was looking for a semi-acoustic Gibson. We met and got talking for quite a while, and we ended up hanging out for an hour and a half or something, we were just hanging out and playing guitars and talking. He asked me what I did and I told him I was an independent musician, and I was travelling around the country, around Australia. And I said to him that his music was a big inspiration to me, his first couple of albums were like a breath of fresh air at the time. And it was kind of what I wanted to do, have an open, honest approach to the songwriting. And I was telling him how I was independent, and it was very important to me. My thing is that if no one wants to listen to the music then I’ll just get a day job. If people keep supporting it, that’s important.
I said being independent is like my wedding ring. I’ve got a white gold wedding ring, and it’s tapered so it’s fat on one side and thin on the other, and on in the inside I have a small diamond. And I said to him that music is a bit like this wedding ring to me. I’ve got a diamond on my ring, but the diamond’s on the inside. I know it’s there. I don’t need to show people that I have the diamond. I know it’s there, and my wife knows it’s there. That’s probably a symbol of our relationship. We know that the best parts about it, only me and Kate will ever know, and it’s the same thing with my music.
I would rather play to a room full of strangers in a pub that know absolutely nothing about me. I really want people to find the music and be moved by it, not be moved by it because I’ve got a big profile, because I’m being played no commercial radio. And for me that just makes the whole thing for satisfying, to know that nearly every single person that’s bought a record of mine or come to a gig has done so because they’ve heard of it through word of mouth, or they’ve got a burnt copy of the album and they’ve liked it and it’s done something for them. That gives me such a good feeling. It makes me more proud of what I do. It makes me feel like I’m doing something that means something. That’s the way it should be. People should be moved by music, not by marketing campaigns.
Having said that, I still hire a publicist to put ads in the paper. I’d be a hypocrite to say that advertising wasn’t important. But it is true that nearly every single person that’s heard of my music has heard me play live, or met someone who’s seen me play live. I think the fact that that’s still possible in this day in age is remarkable. At gigs people look at me a bit funny when they buy an album and I ask them to burn it and give it to their friends. But for me, when a good friend says “You’ve got to check this out, have a listen to this,” it’s awesome. That’s how I’ve found just about all of my favorite artists. They’ve come from a friend who’s said “check this out” or given me a burnt copy or a song or something, and I’ll usually go out and buy all the records.
I’m the same way. My husband says I need to get into MP3s, but I download stuff and then go out and buy it because I still want that tangible object.
You look at the artwork. I do all my own artwork for my albums, pretty much, and I leave little things there for people to find. It is amazing in this world where we’re so global, and we’re so interconnected. But that personal contact just makes all the difference.
I feel like a gamble that’s paid off in a way a bit. When I started doing this nearly ten years ago, that’s what I felt was right to do in my heart. It’s amazing lately, especially with the economic stuff we’re going through, that I think things are doing better for me. There’s less people touring, it’s a bit more of an effort to go back into the communities I’ve been to before, but it feels like the gratitude has increased.
You studied recording arts at the University of Southern California and played legendary venues like the Whisky A Go Go and The Roxy. What did those formative years in the US teach you?
That you might as well have a go. I stumbled into that. I met some people and jammed in their dormrooms, and just happened to be an environment that facilitated that. We played frat things, and we’d just have people who would come into our dormroom and play. And there was never any ambition, it was just fun. I loved doing it. And then all these opportunities were given to us, dropped in our laps. I was deeply in quest of another goal I’d set for myself, I wanted to represent Australia in the Olympic Games, and I pursued that for nearly ten years as well. So I had other things to do and I had to leave.
But I wasn’t really expecting it. I’d never thought of my music as anything other than me having fun. The only thing was that I enjoyed it and loved doing it. I’d never thought of it as having value to other people, but I guess that’s what it taught me. People enjoyed it, they got something out of it. I guess it’s really what sparked my whole journey. To suddenly find a job at the Whiskey A Go Go, not only that but we sold out. We were playing all these parties for free, pretty much, every time someone’s friend had a party we’d play a set. It’d kind of be a bit half-arsed and a bit drunken, and it seemed a bit silly at the time. But when we actually went out and got some gigs and some support, it was quite incredible.
I’m still working with that guy actually. I’ve got a side project. We recorded an album and I’m hoping to release it through my record label hopefully later in the year. It’s called –Ling.
You mentioned that you represented Australia in the Atlanta Olympics in 1996. Was it hard to balance a musical and sporting career at the time?
It was hard to balance my sporting career with my gigging. I was gigging a couple of nights a week just doing pub covers or busking or whatever I had to do to pay the bills. It was actually my job at the time. It was more that I found it hard to train. The athletics kept getting in the way of the music. So I just gave up on the running.
After touring and trying to compete on an international level and training and doing gigs; just doing music and travelling is nothing, it’s a pleasure. I never got paid for running, and I get paid to do gigs.
I actually think the Olympics is part of why I’m so adamantly independent. I remember stepping out onto the opening ceremony, and they lit the torch and it looked like a big McDonalds chip packet. All the blood just rushed from me and I just thought “I’ve been hoodwinked. I’ve been sucked into this elaborate corporate marketing scam. And I haven’t made a cent out of it. I’ve sacrificed relationships and family and time and fun and getting drunk with my high school mates.” And all the stuff I sacrificed for this dream that turned out to be a big corporate marketing scam.
I guess my playing independent music is partly inspired by that, not wanting to have anything to do with that, not wanting to hoodwink anyone, not wanting to fool anybody into anything. People know that what I’m doing is what I’m doing, and that’s it. They either like it or they don’t like it.
If you like Paul, you can check him out at the following venues!
23 April 2009 – Oysterbeds Restaurant, Coffin Bay
24 April 2009 – Commercial Hotel, Cowell
25 April 2009 – Prairie Hotel, Parachilna
26 April 2009 – North Star Inn, Melrose
1 May 2009 – The Sandbar, Mildura
2 May 2009 – Royal Hotel, Corowa
3 May 2009 – Home Tavern, Wagga Wagga
6 May 2009 – Republic Bar and Café, Hobart
8 May 2009 – Bruny Island Town Hall, Tasmania
9 May 2009 – St Marys Town Hall, Tasmania
10 May 2009 – The Royal Oak, Launceston
14 May 2009 – Brass Monkey, Cronulla
15 May 2009 – Shoalhaven Entertainment Centre, Nowra
16 May 2009 – Milton Theatre, Milton
17 May 2009 – Heritage Hotel, Bulli
19 May 2009 – The Vanguard, Newtown
28 May 2009 – Lizotte’s, Kincumber
30 May 2009 – Hoey Moey, Coffs Harbour
11 June 2009 – Albion Hotel, Albury
12 June 2009 – Baha Music Bar, Rye
13 June 2009 – Meeniyan Hotel, Meeniyan
16 July 2009 – Lizotte’s Newcastle, Lambton
17 July 2009 – The Armidale Club, Armidale
18 July 2009 – West Tamworth Leagues, Tamworth
Image used with permission from AAA Entertainment