Interview – KIM SALMON, July 2013

By Shane Pinnegar

First published in X-Press Magazine’s 31st July 2013 issue.

He’s been a Manikin, Scientist, Beast and Surrealist. Kim Salmon tells SHANE PINNEGAR how he came to again team up with Died Pretty frontman Ron Peno for a third trip to The Darling Downs to release new Americana-flecked album In The Days When The World Was Wide.

“When people use the word ‘Americana’ I arc up a little bit.” The man dubbed ‘The Godfather Of Grunge’ bristles. “Our U.S. record label put it on a press release, and I said, ‘Well, we’re not really ‘Americana” and [they] said ‘Well actually you are – you got it all from this and this’. I really don’t need an American telling me how they saved us in the war! I mean, for a start we called the album When The World Was Wide – that’s Henry Lawson, not Hemmingway!”

Salmon insists his influences are more local. “I would say that as much as we’ve been influenced by something from another place, it really is our own experiences which have gone into it, and our own experiences from where we are, and from our culture.”
Peno originally suggested The Darling Downs as a country music project after a few beverages one late night, but it took several years before they sat down to write any songs. Two critically acclaimed albums of folk and country infused blues followed, then a six year gap.

“We never really [had any goal],” he says, “other than to make music when it feels right to do it. And we had done two albums, one hot on the heels of the other, and there was really nothing left to say.”

After an offer to play some gigs, they sat down “just me and an acoustic guitar and Ron, and we just made up songs each time we got together. So it didn’t happen for a while but [we’re back] for no reason apart from that it felt right to do it then!”

Salmon says the album title, lifted from a Henry Lawson poem by Peno, summons a time that was full of a sense of possibility that seems to be rapidly diminishing as the world gets smaller, but had to persuade his partner to use it.

“I just went “we have to use that, we can’t not use that.’ And he went ‘Well it’s a Henry Lawson poem, people are gonna think it’s Australiana and ockerisms, John Williamson and Old Man Emu and all that’. He just couldn’t get away from that, so I explained ‘Look Ron, you’re assuming too much here about people, they’re just going to respond to those words, that beautifully evocative title.’”
That longing for a simpler time extends to the music industry which Salmon & Peno have devoted their careers to.

“If everybody’s being heard, people haven’t got the time any more.” He exclaims. “It’s a different thing now, presenting music in the world today – you’re presenting a much smaller thing because there’s that much more of it to be found. You think you’re able to have that [instant worldwide] coverage but you don’t. When I was a kid, you’d buy an album that had eight tracks on it and you’d know every one of those tracks intimately after a week. That wouldn’t happen these days, there’s a different way of consuming – people consume a lot more for a lot less, and value it in a different way.”

 

Exclusive 100% ROCK MAGAZINE content:

100% ROCK MAG: It’s been six years since the second Darling Downs album – why so long between drinks?

Salmon: Well, we never really [had any goal] other than to make music when it feels right to do it. And we had done two albums, one hot on the heels of the other, and there was in some way, it seemed right to do something hot on the heels of the first album and after we played that, there was really… nothing left to say any more. It wasn’t that we’d never make music together again, but it had been done and we went on our separate ways. We still saw each other, still bumped into each other and hung around, but… then one day we talked about it. I got on the phone to Ron and said ‘What do you think about it?’ I think actually it was after somebody offered to pay us to play up at the Enmore, and we thought, ‘well this is pretty good!’, so we played some shows at The Old Bar in Melbourne, we did a month of shows there, then we thought, well lets get some new songs through. So we just got together like we did before, just me and an acoustic guitar and Ron, and we just made up songs each time we got together. That’s what happened – so it didn’t happen for a while but [we’re back] for no reason apart from that it felt right to do it then!

100% ROCK MAG: When you write for The Darling Downs, you don’t convene and say ‘I’ve got this stuff’ and he says ‘I’ve got this stuff’? You actually sit down and let it gestate together?

Salmon: Yep. That’s how we do it. For the past two albums it’s been a case where we’ve written the material then we’ve recorded it. It’s been an attempt to capture what we do. This time we decided we’d get the songs written and then we’d perform them almost like we were playing them for the first time. I didn’t bother learning the songs [laughs] – the same process, we got together to write. Before we used dictaphones to record each other’s material on it and we’d try to write [using them] and learn to play. With this album the main difference was we decided we’d have lyrics this time round. Before, Ron had some very sketchy ideas for lyrics and he kind’ve free-formed them somewhat. There’d be a couple of written down lyrics, but he just made ’em up on the spot and had some key phrases he used in there. That worked for The Darling Downs anyway, but this time round he wanted to have all the lyrics written down, so we both got together and wrote the lyrics after we’d written the songs. And we went through the lyrics we had and checked and what phrases sounded like they were saying, and started again. And we meticulously went through every rhyming couplet or whatever, and carefully came up with the end result.

100% ROCK MAG: I have read that Ron originally suggested, one night when you were out for a few drinks, that you get together to do a country music project, and you weren’t unsure if that was a drunken conversation or a serious thought… did it seem like an enticing idea to you at the very start or did you need to be convinced?

Salmon: [pauses] It was an idea that I was open to – put it that way… I wasn’t straight on the phone to him [about it] the next day, but it was something that, if the opportunity arose, I would jump at it. You know, if it was like, ‘here’s a studio – come in’, then I’d be there. But it wasn’t… it happened a few years later more because he’d moved to Melbourne and it was suggested by Dave Faulkner – mutual friend – that since he was living down there that why don’t I go have a coffee with him, you know. He didn’t know many people down in Melbourne, and that’s when it came about – we decided we’d write some songs together. And that was ALL. Just that we’d write some songs together, because we had that background and we knew each other anyway.

100% ROCK MAG: You’re both highly revered artists, at least on a cult level. When you decide to do something like this which is stylistically a bit different perhaps from what you made your name doing, do you have to consider how it will be received by your established fanbase, or do you just go ‘nah I’m following my muse, I’m gonna be cool and they either like it or they don’t’?

Salmon: You kinda have to do the latter really. I concern myself with what I want to convey, hopefully more than ‘following my muse’ [laughs]. That is sort of what The Darling Downs do, but I don’t really put it that way – it’s usually ‘what would I LIKE to do’. ‘Following your muse’ is just an expression I tend to shy away from. I think if you concern yourself too much with that… just let the listeners concern themselves with that and make them respond how they like. You know – they can decide to buy the thing or accept it, it’s up to them really. So you really just need to…ummm [pauses] be true to the muse [laughs] – we really need to do what we want to do, otherwise, when you start doing what is expected of you or what people want, then you start recreating. And when you start recreating you’re not actually authentic any more, actually the opposite occurs. It’s like what happens with old buildings, they become a shell – the whole idea of heritage, you know, it’s great to have facades of old buildings around, but it turns them into a museum and the same thing happens with art, I think. If you concern yourself too much with people’s expectations then that’s what you do, I think, there is that danger that you can become just a shell – just a thing that isn’t actually the real thing…

100% ROCK MAG: The album was named after a Henry Lawson poem, and I know Ron is a big fan of Lawson’s work. Were you a fan before you and Ron got together and started working on this project?

Salmon: Well, not a fan [as such]… I was aware of him from probably primary school and high school. The reason we used that title, Ron ran it past me on the phone – ‘what about this for a title?’ and I just went ‘YEP! Beautiful – we have to use that, we can’t not use that.’ And he went ‘Well it’s a Henry Lawson poem, people are gonna think it’s Australiana and ockerisms, John Williamson and Old Man Emu and all that’. And I was ‘No they’re NOT!’ He just couldn’t get away from that, so I explained ‘Look Ron, people wouldn’t even know it’s a Henry Lawson poem – I didn’t know. You’re assuming too much here about people, they’re just going to respond to those words, that beautifully evocative title.’ So I actually had to persuade him to use it. He put it out there, but he needed pushing to use it.

100% ROCK MAG: It is a really evocative title – it’s full of that sense of possibility that seems to be rapidly diminishing as the world gets smaller.

Salmon: Yeah exactly.

100% ROCK MAG: Do you feel that the possibilities for musicians nowadays are less than perhaps they used to be when you started out?

Salmon: Yes [laughs] Absolutely!

100% ROCK MAG: Even though the internet gives artists the chance to be heard around the world almost instantly…?

Salmon: Yeah but you know, if everybody’s being heard… I mean – people haven’t got the time any more. It’s a different thing now, presenting music in the world today – you’re presenting a much smaller thing because there’s that much more of it to be found. You think you’re able to have that coverage but you don’t, it won’t happen. I think the checks [on quality] whether people got recorded are no longer in place. You know, I’m not saying ‘the good old days’ – I come from the punk era when there was that do it yourself mentality anyway, that’s when I started recording, but I do feel that when I was a kid, say fifteen, you’d buy an album that had eight tracks on it and you’d know every one of those tracks intimately after a week. That wouldn’t happen these days, there’s a different way of consuming – people consume a lot more for a lot less, and value it in a different way.

100% ROCK MAG: I couldn’t agree more – it’s taken away far more than it’s given, I think.

Salmon: I do feel that, and I’ve been saying that for decades now – leave it up to professionals, the guys who can do it, you know. If EVERYBODY can play music, then what’s so wonderful about it? I mean, yeah everyone CAN make music, and that’s a wonderful thing, but the people who do that and make it their life, you know, you have to [realise] there’s so much that goes into that. And I can honestly say that’s Ron and I – that’s our lives, that’s what we do. We’ve thought about these things perpetually and for decades. Even if we put down a few ideas, there’s a lot that goes into it, it isn’t just that. [laughs] Here I am sounding… well I don’t know what I’m sounding like but I have to say it’s true though, and there’s a big story behind it all.

100% ROCK MAG: To go right back, you were influenced to explore punk rock music by an NME article about CBGB’s and the US punk scene, and with The Darling Downs, you’ve channelled a very different kind of Americana. Is that a full circle musical journey, right there?

Salmon: Yeahhh, I don’t really think that… when people use the word ‘Americana’ I arc up a little bit. The guy from Carrot Top [The Darling Downs’ US Record Label] put out some press release in The States, and I said to him, ‘Well, we’re not really ‘Americana’ ‘ and he said ‘Well actually you are – you got it all from this and this’, and I really don’t need an American telling me how they saved us in the war [sarcastically]. I mean, for a start we called the album When The World Was Wide – that’s Henry Lawson, you know, it’s not Hemmingway! You know what I mean? I think we have been influenced by a particular kind of music – but even with The Scientists, I was the guitar player before I became the singer, and I didn’t have a heritage of channelling the Mississippi or the River Thames, so I just went ‘I have to start singing now, I’m gonna go out and sing what I can. I don’t want to sound particularly Aussie, so I’ll sing whatever I sing’ – and in the end I sounded like an Australian. Probably as I’ve gotten older the more I sing the more I’ve taken on black American [influences]. But really it was pretty naive when I started singing, so really I would say that as much as we’ve been influenced by something from another place, it really is our own experiences which have gone into it, and our own experiences from where we are, and from our culture.

100% ROCK MAG: Well, interestingly, my next question was gonna be – the music on the new record is – and forgive me for using the term Americana again – that roots based US sound, but after a few listens I could definitely hear an Australian edge to it, and not just in the accents or anything like that, but in the musical styles, it’s definitely buried deep down in there. So my question is, do you think its rootsy enough or different enough to appeal to American music fans of that genre?

Salmon: Gee…I don’t even know… hadn’t even thought about that. Umm… it’s best not to think about that sort of thing – it goes back to what I talked about trying to appeal to people’s expectations, because once you try to appeal to people you’re working within their expectations to a certain extent. You give people what they don’t want to hear – as in, different to what they do want to hear or what they expect – then the odds are they’re not going to greet it well immediately, they’re going to have to get used to it… but we don’t want to have to concern ourselves with that. I don’t know – it’s too immediate to us. We just get together to make some new music and an album is the just the way you convey that.

100% ROCK MAG: Good answer – it goes back to creating rather than re-creating with money in mind.

Salmon: Yeah.

100% ROCK MAG: One last question for you – somewhat more esoteric. If you could magically go back in time and be a part of the recording of any one record throughout history, which would you choose?

Salmon: My God. Hmm, I dunno… Bitches Brew [Miles Davis]? I don’t know – Beggar’s Banquet [The Rolling Stones]… I’m just picking my favourite records. Ege Bamyasi by Can? [Laughs] God, I dunno.

100% ROCK MAG: There’s three VERY different records already that you’ve mentioned…

Salmon: And I was just gonna say Tapestry by Carole King! [Laughs] Wow – some Todd Rundgren thing? Led Zeppelin III… they’re albums I think of the recording and think of the process. To go back in time – here’s another one you might like – I’m really grateful for the opportunity to go and record When The World Was Wide, that process was one I really enjoyed – and that’s one of [my choices]

100% ROCK MAG: Great – it’s been a pleasure to talk with you, good luck with everything

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Category: Interviews