“I have always been inspired by big feelings,” explains 24-year-old Fenn Wilson in regards to the inspiration for his single ‘Eye On You’, and this inspiration shines through his music as he grips you in those ‘big feelings’ with his deep voice and emotive lyrics.
It was exactly this that captivated audiences at the Queenscliff Music Festival in 2018, winning him the ‘Emerging Artist Of The Year’, and a similar honour at the Port Fairy Music Festival in 2019, providing some well-deserved attention and funding. “The grant that I won from Queenscliff has funded the recording of my entire album that’s coming out later this year. Without that, I don’t think that I would have been able to create the album.”
Debut album ‘Ghost Heroine’ follows the 2015 EP ‘Tales Of The Black Dog’, and will describe, in Fenn’s words, “a very intense” period of his life. A period that he is excited to share through his upcoming releases, including the recent single ‘Lost My Way’, followed by the highly anticipated album.
Fenn will also be bringing his music to the stage in front of his home crowd this November, returning to the Queenscliff Music Festival, an area that, along with Ocean Grove and Clifton Springs, he spent a lot of time growing up in. “I love playing at Queenscliff, and having that festival growing up, it’s always been a pretty major point in the year for the younger crew and now to be able to play it… I’m totally stoked.”
Fenn explained that the inspiration for his music comes from his highly musical family and various other artists including Glen Hansard, Matt Corby, and Jeff Buckley, as well as the coastal culture that he spent his childhood immersed in. “Down on the Bellarine, it’s such a concentrated pool of young musicians and because it’s a small sort of coastal peninsula, there’s not a heap to do so a lot of us have to find ways to entertain ourselves and often an outlet for that is creating music, so I think it’s certainly an inspiring place.”
It was here that Fenn would bang together songs in a mere 15 minutes, finding inspiration while messing around with a few chords. Since then the process has changed, as Fenn explains, “as time has gone on and the expectation of what I want to create and the complexity of it, and how I want it to come across has changed, I’ve felt the need to revise that technique and so it’s become more thoughtful.”
Fenn’s songwriting takes on a very introspective form, which gives the music a real authentic and truthful feeling. “It’s a terrific way of being honest with myself and it’s a way of understanding facets of myself that I wouldn’t regularly understand,” he explains in reference to his writing process. It’s this same deep honesty that shines through in talking with Fenn and it is this, coupled with his musical talent, that gives me the feeling that he is an artist to watch out for in the future.
When asked what the future looks like for Fenn, he stated: “I just want to continue to create music to a standard that I feel good about.
“I hope that I get to play some of the other festivals as well, like Splendour and other festivals like that.”
Keep an eye out for this name.
Fenn has just released his next track ‘Lost My Way’, which delves into dark folk overtones. This is the second single off Fenn’s forthcoming debut album Ghost Heroin, out November 14, which he’ll premiere on the 2019 Queenscliff stages this November 22-24.
Written by Bert Seaton
