Tami Neilson has carved an enviable career across the intervening years – picking up an APRA Silver Scroll, being fêted in The Guardian and Mojo – and has done so in idiosyncratic style. Eschewing genres and labels, the Canadian-born Kiwi is marching to the beat of a different drum.
“When I first moved here, I was thinking it wouldn’t be too different,” Neilson says of her Canadian exodus. “I guess you’re deceived by thinking it’s English-speaking, but I did notice a lot of things that caught me off guard. We have a lot of similarities; we both have the big brother next door who heavily influences our culture, from what we watch and listen to, to what we create. I think New Zealand is heavily influenced by Australia, as Canada is by the States. But Canada’s land mass is so vast, so moving to this tiny island in the middle of nowhere, this little strip of bacon floating in the ocean, in the end it blew my mind.”
Though the two countries share a natural splendour, geographically they couldn’t be more different. But within this confluence of isolation and beauty, Neilson found a level of creative freedom she might otherwise have missed altogether.
“When I first left Canada, everyone was like, ‘My God, you’re committing career suicide. People leave there to come here, what are you doing?’ And I saw all those things that people saw as negatives as positives: there won’t be as much competition, it won’t take as long to make my mark. There are these known musical hubs, and people gravitate there, are influenced by it. You start seeing things that turn you into the product they’re looking for.
“I don’t think any artist starts out to be that way, but the more you spend time in the industry, the more you network inside that hub. It becomes like a factory town where the tools are guitars. People ask what’s in the water over here, and I really think it’s being away from the industry, away from those places that started making a certain [sound], where they want you to be a certain thing. When you’re isolated, you create what you want to create.”
Though her sophomore album, Don’t Be Afraid, has only now seen its Australian release, it was embraced by that little strip of bacon back in 2015. It emerged from another milestone in Neilson’s life, albeit a sorrowful one; the death of her father.
“I had the studio time booked for April and Dad passed away at the end of February. I stayed until the end of March with my mum, and it was just…my initial response immediately after his death was to cancel the studio. I couldn’t think of creating anything. I couldn’t even open my mouth to sing, because all I’d hear was his voice. How can I think about singing during this? And I think the turning point was, he’d written all the lyrics for Don’t Be Afraid. He was so passionate about it. Everyone who came into the hospital, he was showing them the words and talking about it.
“The last thing I said to him was a promise that none of his music would go to waste. Making this album became keeping a promise to my father. It became about his memory, and letting other people get to know him through his music. I have two little boys. They won’t remember him in person; they’ll remember him in story and in song.
“In a way, I’m lucky. Everyone loses somebody, but I think artists are fortunate. We can process our grief in a tangible way. At the end we have something we can hold in our hands. This is a legacy I can now give to my children. It’s a landmark that I created, and here stands my father.”
