Despite his talent, and the sheer volume of praise and support he’s received in his young life, Ben Wright Smith is softly spoken and completely devoid of ego. He stammers as he reflects upon himself and his achievements, the completion and release of his debut album The Great Divorce, not greatly affecting how he sees himself on the music scene.
“It’s funny with first albums, I think I feel more competent as a musician, but I think I’ve got to wait for people to hear it first, that will probably affect my confidence greatly. With music, I don’t know if confidence is the thing that matters. We make what we want to make, the main thing is the relief of having a full album that I can share with people, and say this is what I’ve been doing, this is what I’ve done, and this is how I wanted it to sound.”
Considering Wright Smith’s impressive resume and masterful skill for songwriting, it feels strange that the APRA award nominated musician’s first album is only just being released. It arrives just over three years since he first made his way to the USA after being awarded the Australian Council for the Arts Nashville Songwriting Residency. The release of ‘No One’ announced his arrival on Australia’s music scene in 2015, and the follow up, 2016’s ‘Sand Grabber’, demonstrated his ability to twist the genre of his music to make it his own. But the release of these two singles is an entirely different game to releasing this first album, Wright Smith says.
“When I first started writing these songs, I looked forward to the idea of people listening, and I guess I didn’t realise that once the songs are out there you don’t have anything to do with them anymore. It’s all about the people who are listening, how they interpret it, and whether or not they like it,” he says, “the idea of having a body of work graded is new to me. I don’t think I’ve had something marked since I was in school. Maybe I’ll get marks for trying.”
The Great Divorce, produced by Oscar Dawson of Holy Holy, took quite a time to make, with Wright Smith beginning the process of writing in Nashville, and sharing time between there and Melbourne.
“I think it took so long because we didn’t think we were going to make an album. We started off with a bunch of songs we were recording over two years ago, when me and a few friends were living in Nashville. We recorded one song back here, which was called ‘No One’. After that, people seemed to really like it, that allowed us to keep making more.”
The pressure of a first album meant Wright Smith truly felt alien in the experience at times. “The whole way through I felt like it wasn’t going to get done. It was okay until I was 90 per cent done, but then as with almost anything you do, the last 10 per cent is the hardest.
“Luckily, at that point we had people around saying to me and Oscar that we had to finish an album. We had to really make sure it was the way that we wanted it before we showed it to the world.”
When & Where: The Bridge Hotel, Castlemaine – May 12, The Loft, Warrnambool – June 2, The Bridge Hotel, Castlemaine – June 11 & Northcote Social Club, Northcote – July 29.
The Great Divorce is out now via MGM.
Written by Claire Morley
