Asa Broomhall is a name that should need no introduction. Australia's own rock & roots larrikin, Asa is about to give us his fifth independent album, ‘Jangle House’, which he recorded in an iconic old guitar shop in Brisbane over the Easter 2011 break.
That means he has been sitting on it for three years. So what the hell has he been doing to only just release it now? “That's a very good question,” Asa says. “Luckily independent releases have much longer legs than major label releases... but my excuse is real life has gotten in the way. I got married last year, so since then it has been marriages and mortgages and all that sort of stuff.”
For Asa getting hitched and taking out a mortgage is as close to a “real” adult he is probably ever going to get. “I started with a live EP that came out in 2001; I recorded it at gigs and mixed it at my brother's house,” he says.
That means for 13 years Broomhall has been busting his chops as one of Australia's hardest working independent musicians. “Writing great songs is a very tough thing to do, who knows if I've even written a great song,” he says. “But as a songwriter you have to try and push yourself into doing new stuff.
“That's the hardest part... songs are written to connect with people and if you really want to connect with people you got to get to them on an emotional level.”
Apart from getting married last year, Asa lost his previous studio (which was his brother's house, who is his sound engineer) in the Brisbane floods of 2011. So, if anyone knows anything about trying to connect with an audience on an emotional and personal level, it's Broomhall.
But sticking to the tried and true formula that sells records isn't enough for Asa... he's better than that. “Everybody does their break-up and love, lost and found album, but after you get a few albums down the track you get sick of writing about yourself all the time and people get bored of it.
“I try to write a lot of stuff now in third person or even stories; really pushing it and trying to write things that I personally haven’t experienced and don’t understand. On 'Revelry Road' I wrote a song that was really well received about divorce.”
It seems like a funny topic for a man who’s just returned from his own honeymoon not long ago. “It's from a child’s perspective though,” Asa says, clearing up any confusion you might have about his personal life.
“As a kid you have friends whose parents split up at school and you see what happens and get a taste of it through their eyes. People think that I went through the divorce, so that's a sure sign I've managed to connect; it's about getting in a zone to write a song like that and using the experience of other people to strengthen your experience.”
On 'Jangle House', Asa has found that balance between personal experience and third-person storytelling, resulting in an album that retains the polish of modern blues and folk while still maintaining that live and raw sound Asa has crafted for the last decade and a half.
He recorded it at the old guitar shop on LaTrobe Street in Paddington, Brisbane, and although it was hard yakka, Asa didn't mind at all. “I've always self-funded all my releases in order to do that; it’s about keeping your overheads down, it's a big reason why I've done recordings in guitar shops and houses and things like that,” he says.
“The shop in Paddington is obviously a musical place, it's been a guitar shop since the early ‘80s, so the amount of rank sounds that have been soaked up by those walls and just being surrounded by gear and amps and guitars has made the experience and album great. It's a hell of a lot of work doing a record like that, but it's pretty rewarding in the end.”
Written by Benjamin Pratt
Asa Broomhall Tour Dates
Fri 19th Sep - The Green Room (Eumundi)Fri 26th Sep - Queen St Mall (Brisbane)
Sat 29th Nov - The Irish Club (Toowoomba)
