FILLING THE VOID

A visit to Nashville’s AmericanaFest helped David Garnham to feel he belonged By Steve Bell

It’s funny where life’s detours take you sometimes. Rising Darwin Americana outfit David Garnham & The Reasons To Live began its life 15 years ago as a fun, countryside-project in Garnham’s adopted Top End hometown (the singer having been raised in country Victoria and cut his teeth there playing “straight-up guitar pop”), but now it’s not only his main focus but has taken him to the epicentre of all things Americana: Nashville. A couple of years ago Garnham and his bandmates were selected to showcase at AmericanaFest 2019 in Tennessee’s music mecca, which - as the name suggests - is a celebration of all things Americana, that glorious and often amorphous potpourri of roots, folk, country, blues and soul-based music. And despite the name of the genre having a distinctly geographical bent, Garnham’s crew discovered that once there you didn’t have to be from the US of A to be accepted into the fold. “We had an incredible time,” he marvels. “Chatting to a few friends who’ve played there a lot, when you play as an outsider - or someone from overseas - it seems that the American crowds are on your side as soon as you’ve walked into the room. You don’t have to win them over - which can sometimes feel like it’s a thing in Australia - but in terms of the crowds we played to they just loved hearing the Aussie accent. We definitely felt a lot of love. “And I think that was a great experience because like a lot of people - not just artists - I have suffered from the imposter syndrome, and sometimes with the band coming from Darwin it can sometimes feel like we’re not taken seriously on a larger perspective. “Obviously that’s in our own heads, but going to Nashville and playing some shows and feeling the love from people over there - and actually just getting through it, getting to Nashville and playing well - made us walk out of the experience thinking, ‘Oh yeah, maybe I do belong in this game’.” That newfound confidence - and the indubitable talent and songcraft that got them there in the first place - echoes throughout the band’s excellent new album Noise To Fill The Void, which they recorded with legendary local country figure Shane Nicholson producing at his Sound Hole studio. Sonically, the album is genuine, authentic Americana - as much due to the song structures and arrangements as the traditional instrumentation (dobro, banjo, double bass and so forth) - but the lyrics (and vocals) carry a definite Australian essence, with plenty of references to footy, RBTs and distinctly Aussie TV shows. Which is not all that surprising when you realise the kind of artists which drew Garnham towards the genre. “I love John Prine and Hayes Carll has been another one in recent times, and of course there’s Lucinda Williams,” the singer ponders of his alt-country influences. “In recent times I’ve become obsessed with The Bottle Rockets, but at the same time there’s been a lot of Aussie songwriters who aren’t considered country - not Americana anyway - but who’ve put out albums that pushed that way that I really love. “Probably my number one desert island album is Tim Rogers’ first solo album What Rhymes With Cars And Girls (1999) which has proved really important in my growth - I was listening to that before I was making Americana stuff - and I’m a huge Paul Kelly fan, I think his bluegrass album Foggy Highway (2005) with The Stormwater Boys is probably my favourite PK record. “It’s those sort of artists who gave me the courage to sing in my own voice and tell my own stories, people gravitate towards authenticity anyway so the best thing is just to be yourself.” New single ‘Holding Pattern’ exists at the rockier end of the Noise To Fill The Void spectrum, its refrain of “I’m smiling in a shit storm” also proving to be one of Garnham’s own stories, even if not originally envisaged that way. “It was one of the those tracks where I started it and finished it in 20 minutes - I’ve only had a few of them ever,” Garnham admits. “I was actually in a holding pattern in a plane above Brisbane and as a songwriter you’re always in the back of your mind tinkering with ideas, and I ended up having a flash of inspiration and using the holding pattern as a metaphor for a shitty, destructive relationship - a mate of mine was going through one of those at the time - so I took that hurt and heartbreak and turned it into a not-quite-three-minute pop-rock song. “But then on reflection afterwards I realised that I was probably really singing about one of my shitty relationships from years earlier, so there was probably a bit of therapy going on that I didn’t realise at the time”.