Ben Wright Smith
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Ben Wright Smith

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“Every time I’ve been on a trip overseas I’ve come back thinking I need to see more of Australia. I’d been tearing up and down the east coast last year, but I wanted to go and see the other side of it all. We really pushed for Western Australia, the Northern Territory, and Central Australia, all the places that as a musician you can’t get to easily,” Wright Smith says.

 

“Travelling is one of my favourite things I’ve had the chance to do. To play songs and see all these new places, it’s such a cool thing.”

 

The tour has been far more than an excuse to travel the country, the popular singer/songwriter comes bearing new material, particularly his freshly launched single Sand Grabber. Produced by Oscar Dawson of Holy Holy, and featuring the mesmerising vocals of his good friend Ali Barter, the breezy, chill out track has been lauded for his difference to previous material.

 

“It’s funny how adding in one different instrument like a mellotron can make something sound completely different. There’s only a couple of different elements in there that mark any kind of departure.”

 

Despite the inherent essence of Wright Smith imprinted on Sand Grabber, the composition of the track signalled a change in process for the songwriter, opening up a new level of confidence and trust in himself.

 

“It came out of a jam. I was playing around with some different instruments at a friend’s house, and he had an ‘80s drum machine and a wacky synthesiser. Usually I write a song on an acoustic guitar. I started playing around for the chords to the bridge, which are really weird and backwards,” he says.

 

“Seeing what happened there changed my perspective starting and going for it and finding out what happens at the end, instead of thinking about it before anything has even been done.”

 

Despite all this talk of synthesisers and wild songwriting with newfangled machinery, Wright Smith is still connected to his acoustic, folk singer/songwriter roots. He’s come to terms with the fact that there’s no one correct format for folk music and that realisation, he says, has had a substantial effect on his creative process.

 

“When I first started, I thought if you were doing the singer/songwriter thing, it had to be very traditional, but the more that I experiment and play around with different instruments and things, the more I embrace the freedom of knowing you can make whatever you want.”

 

Collaboration is another key component in Wright Smith’s songwriting, and with his long awaited debut album finally nearing completion, sharing the process has been imperative in creating a sound he’s happy with.

 

“We’re in that age where there’s so many producers who play every instrument. I can be sitting around making music at home in my studio, and have my own voice writing words and telling a story from a single perspective, and that’s nice,” he says. “But once a band comes in, everyone can add something to it, and it completely brings it to the third dimension.

 

“I’ve never been that into my singing voice. It helps me in the writing process to imagine that it won’t be me singing, it means I can write what I’m actually thinking without worrying I’ll have to tell a bunch of people later on.”

 

BY CLAIRE VARLEY