The upshot was Tex Perkins’ latest, and eponymous, solo album. A virtual continent away from his work with the Beasts Of Bourbon, and barely in the same country as The Cruel Sea, the record is arguably closer to showcasing Perkins’ emotional alter-ego than any of his competing projects.
Perkins, however, doesn’t see it in the same way. “This collection of songs is more about what happens when I write songs with Murray Patterson,” he explains. “Murray has a certain style that leads me into certain areas that I wouldn’t go to with other bands, or other people.”
Perkins met Patterson over a decade ago through mutual friends. He describes Patterson as “an ex-surfer, a Parramatta supporter and he’s a Bob Dylan fan – oh, and he’s an art lecturer as well,” he laughs, even going so far as to label him “my learned friend”.
“He’s my favourite person to work with because of the temperament he has”, Perkins admits. “Some people can be a little guarded when they’re in a songwriting partnership, but that’s not the case with Murray”.
Armed a laptop and some suitable software, Perkins says he was “probably the most hi-tech I’ve ever been in my entire life” for the development of the songs on the album. “These songs would have to be the most prepared, most demoed songs I’ve ever had,” he reveals. “All the arranging and all the fiddling about, wondering whether this works or that works, had already been done.”
It’s easy to assume that many of the songs on the album, such as What Do You Want, Easier Without You, You Haunt Me, are drawn from Perkins’ personal experiences. The man himself, however, challenges that assumption. “I don’t think I’ve ever started out thinking ‘I want to write a song about this, or that’,” Perkins counters. “I think it all comes from my subconscious – the way I hear words or phrases appearing.
“Sometimes it’s not until many years later perhaps that I get the perspective to realise what these songs are about, and what I was really talking about,” he muses. “Songwriting helps me feel good about myself because I’m a musician, and if you’re not actively doing that then you don’t feel complete. I guess it’s possible that it occurs inadvertently, but I don’t use songwriting as a means of dealing with problems, but inadvertently it can – if songwriting makes me feel better about myself.”
Despite branching out into a solo career over a decade ago to balance his iconic presence fronting the Beasts Of Bourbon and The Cruel Sea, Perkins still considers himself primarily a singer first, and a songwriter second. “Most of the time the reason I write songs is so I have something to sing,” Perkins figures.
“I’m not in the same league as Paul Kelly or Tim Rogers – they’re songwriters. I love hearing them sing, but I think of them as songwriters first, and singers second, if you see the difference,” he explains.
While Perkins has clearly evolved as an artist, and one who is capable of balancing a number of competing projects, he says he’s not in the practice of actively planning out his various musical endeavours. With the Beasts having burnt out, and The Cruel Sea having had a revival of sorts – certainly, that band have played more recently than they have in years previous – and the Man In Black stage show having been so successful, Perkins says the only driver for his solo album was “to make a record full of songs that I had written”.
“I’d spent quite a lot of time either just buggerising around, completing record company contracts with the Ladyboyz and then doing the Man In Black for a while, so it’d been a while since I’d got my hands dirty making a record,” Perkins explains. “I felt it was important for me, and for the perception of me as an artist – and just for myself, really. If you don’t use it, you lose it”, he laughs.
For his backing band, Perkins called upon his long-time collaborative partner, Charlie Owens (Divinyls, Tex, Don and Charlie), as well as fellow Ladyboyz Joel Silbersher (God, Hoss) and Gus Agars (The Vandas, Mike Noga). Supplementing his performances in the touring Man in Black show with his own writing, Perkins says it was a case of having the right people available at the time to make the album.
“All during the Man In Black [tour] I was writing – it afforded me the headspace, and I had plenty of time to prepare,” Perkins says. “We could have done plenty more Man In Black shows – people wanted us to do more shows, but I felt it was important to draw the line for a while and remind people, and myself, that making music is really what I do.”
As the interview concludes, it’s asked of Perkins for an observation on the plight of his St Kilda football team. He’s philosophical about the team’s many and varied problems. “I came on board St Kilda knowing full well that they were a basket case team, that they were perennial losers,” he concedes.
“And I am aware that they are the Saints. And if you think about it, what is a saint? Saints are people that suffer. And after they die, years later, someone says ‘oh, they were a really nice person, let’s call them a saint’.
“So there’s really no reward in one’s lifetime in being a saint. So they are really fulfilling the whole idea of being a saint,” Perkins muses.
