With a new long-playing release, 3 (a reference to it being her third) hitting the shelves last week - just as she was busy preparing for an appearance at the internationally-renowned Tamworth Country Music Festival - this year looks set to be an extremely hectic one for charismatic Sydney-born country artist, Amber Lawrence.
Something of a "late starter" in musical terms, this city girl has certainly achieved a lot over the last few years, releasing a remarkably assured debut, The Mile, in 2007 and building on this early success three years later, when her second effort, When it All Comes Down, was named Album of the Year at the Australian Independent Music Awards.
Since 2007, Amber has been nominated for five Golden Guitars, had six number one hits and shared a stage with the likes of Adam Harvey, Melinda Schneider and Lee Kernaghan. Most of the material on her first two CDs was entirely self-penned, though every track but one this time around was written with the help of a handful of collaborators, including Suzy Connolly, Sam Hawksley and Mike Carr.
3: A Joint Effort
"Yeah, it’s all original and it’s all songs that I’ve written," confirms the 34-year-old former accountant, who only picked up a guitar for the first time at the age of 22. "It’s just that this time around, I used co-writers to help me get a bit more of a distinct sound that wasn’t so much, 'Oh, that sounds just like the first two albums'.
"I didn’t want this album to sound exactly like the other two, so I called on co-writers to just help push me in certain directions, so I guess the album does have lots of different styles on it. It’s a country album, but there’s ballads and there’s rocky songs - real country rock songs - and even a country calypso-kind-of-reggae song (Huge), so it was fun working with lots of different writers."
Amber Lawrence: The Man Across the Street
One of the real stand-out moments on 3 is the extremely moving ballad, The Man Across the Street, a true story about "Bill," a reclusive and somewhat mysterious neighbour of the Lawrence family - a troubled war veteran who once saved the young Amber's life.
"Yes, it’s a true story about a man that lived across the street from me when I was growing up. He was a Vietnam veteran who would sit out on his porch every day, with a long neck of beer - that was probably how he coped with what he’d been through in Vietnam.
"I had escaped through a little hole in the front door and I lived on a really busy road. I was heading towards the road as a toddler and he was the only person out because he used to sit on his porch every day and he saw me.
"He ran across the road, scooped me up and took me back home to mum and essentially saved my life and I’ve been told that story my whole life - how the man across the street saved my life. I took that song to Colin Buchanan, who’s one of Australia’s great country writers, and he loved it.
"He helped shape it into a song that was not just about the man that lived across the street from me, but about all of these men and women who came back from wars and have suffered, yet have helped give us the life that we live."
Suite101: And you never saw him again?
"Yeah, he moved away… He lived across the road for probably 10, 15 years and he has moved now and we can’t find him. We assume that he probably has passed away, which is sad, but I do feel proud that all these years on, I’m talking about him every single day because everybody wants to know about this song.
"I’m paying tribute to him, even if he doesn’t know it. Wherever he is, hopefully he gets the message that what he did was worthwhile."
The Peace I Keep: Duet with Adam Harvey
One of the other high points on the album, is the sparkling duet, The Peace I Keep, which features the soothing tones of Adam Harvey, who is quoted on his most recent collaborator's website as saying: “She writes great songs, sings with conviction and delivers a great show. Her talent and her connection with the audience put Amber ahead of the other young artists in the industry.”
"He’s a great guy," enthuses Amber, returning the compliment, "and I’m actually on the road with him all year, so I guess I’ll get to know him a bit better. But he’s a big star in Australia and for him to come in and give up his time and sing on my album, I was really thrilled with that and it’s turned out to be a really honest song and probably the most traditional country song on the album.
"We really accessed that beautiful voice of Adam Harvey that just says country through and through and it’s a just a really honest song about how entertainers in particular always put on that brave, happy face – everything’s all good and sometimes it’s not.
"We’re going through stuff in our lives too, so when I wrote this with my producer, that was his take on my life - that I’m always smiling, but surely there must be some times where you have to take off that brave face and have some peace for yourself, but I do actually smile most of the time."
Suite101: Having received glowing endorsements from Adam Harvey and from Lee Kernaghan, who called you, "One of the best female vocalists in Australian country music today," do you feel as though you have finally escaped the "independent" tag and that you are finally "on your way?"
"Gosh, I hope so, but I don’t know... I just want to have a career in music whatever it takes and it doesn’t matter to me if people think I’m big time or famous or whatever. All I want is that they like my music and they like the live shows I do and if they do, then they’ll keep coming and I’ll still have a job.
"It’s a privilege to have this as a job – it’s my only job - and I just want that to keep going. So if people start putting me in the league of the bigger artists, then that’s fantastic, but at the end of the day, the only thing that matters is people liking my music and people coming to my shows and liking what I do."
My Attraction: Duet with Axle Whitehead
Another memorable pairing on 3 comes in the form of the moody, My Attraction, a "down-and-dirty" love song that combines Ms. Lawrence's powerful vocals with those of Australian singer, TV host and actor (he plays Liam Murphy in the hit soap opera, Home and Away), Axle Whitehead.
"He’s an actor in Australia and a great musician actually," explains Amber, "so it was really fun to work with him. He’s about my age so we were on the same page with where the song was at. It’s kind of that sexy love song, I suppose – a bit of tension.
"We did a bit of a Home and Away-style act out scene in the studio, which you can see on my website if you want to have a look at the video."
Amber Lawrence: Where Am I?
"I think we’ve got a lot more rockier songs that push the boundaries of country in a way," muses the 2010 recipient of the Telstra Horizon Award, comparing 3 to her previous two albums. "It’s hard to define what country is today, so we’ve just played the songs as they were written, rather than saying, 'It’s got to sound like this or else no one’s gonna play it'.
"We just said, 'Let’s just produce the songs how these songs should be'. So one of my favourite songs is Where Am I?, which is the second to last song. It's about me dreaming that I’d seen my dad who passed away three years ago.
"It’s a real dream – I had this dream and I guess I must have been in heaven and, whether you believe in heaven or not, that’s what this song’s about. It’s asking, 'Where am I?' and it poses a few questions. I don’t even know what style you’d call it – it just had to be produced a little bit spooky, I guess, because it’s a supernatural kind of song."
Suite101: And it's the only song on the record that you wrote alone?
"Yeah, I did and I wrote that myself in a motel room in Tamworth, which is the country music capital of Australia. I woke up from this dream and wrote it in about 10 or 15 minutes and I actually didn’t even know if it was any good because I’d just written it in such a small amount of time.
"Then I played it to my mum - I didn’t even tell her what it was about... I just thought, 'Oh, I’ll play it and if she says nothing then maybe I’ll just throw it away, but if she says something, if she notices anything about it, then I’ll take note' and she went, 'Oh wow!' and I went, 'Okay, maybe this song’s got life!'
Amber Lawrence: A New Level of Artistic Maturity
"Yeah, I do actually," replies the talented singer/songwriter, when asked if she feels as though a new level of artistic maturity has been reached, "and that was the aim, really, with this album was to push myself a little bit more and reveal a little bit more maturity and kind of say, 'Well, yeah I’m growing up and now I can have different views and not everything has to be fun'.
"It’s still a very fun album, but it kind of summarises what I feel about life at the moment. It’s a positive take, it’s a really positive view of life - the glass is half-full on this album. A lot of the songs are saying, 'Life doesn’t have to be perfect, but you’ve just got to give it a shot' and that’s really how I approach life.
"I certainly don’t think that I’ve got everything perfect or everything right or everything I even want, but what I have got is pretty good and I feel pretty lucky, so I just want to make the most of it."
Adrian Peel - Adrian is an English freelance writer and journalist currently living in Mexico. Over the past eight years, he has had articles, features ...
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