In the early 2010s, professional slashie Bradley McCaw – that's singer slash songwriter slash actor slash playwright – had a vision for making an album the way his heroes would have done it.
The former member of The Ten Tenors had picked up work playing covers gigs at the time, tackling the songbooks of giants like Billy Joel and Elton John, which ultimately compelled him to follow in their ivory-tinkling footsteps."This is the music I love," he explains. "If you get in my car, it's like a time machine back to the '70s – I'm always playing these songs. I knew that if I ever made an album, this is exactly what I wanted it to sound like."
With that, McCaw got in contact with Louie Shelton – a veteran session musician whose credits range from Lionel Richie to Boz Scaggs to Barbra Streisand and back again.
As it turned out, Shelton had relocated to Australia with his family in the 1980s and had since set up a Gold Coast studio. Having worked on songs and albums by dozens of McCaw's favourite artists, he felt their collaboration would be a no-brainer – a hypothesis proven true by their subsequent studio sessions together circa 2013.
"It was just really simple," McCaw recalls. "He got a bunch of guys together, and we cut ten songs in three days."
That could well have been that, but instead of getting the album out then and there McCaw was drawn back into his various career obligations.
Appearances in productions of 'Rent' and 'Les Miserables' followed, as did the creation of McCaw's own stage musical 'Becoming Bill' and his interview podcast 'Ramble City'.
In a moment of reflection during 2020's lockdowns, however, Bradley realised the shelved album, 'Worried Minds', was something he not only needed to revisit, but properly complete.
"I didn't know if I would ever get back to it – I mean, it's not a cheap record to make," McCaw says. "So much of my time had been consumed with getting this musical on stage, too, that everything else just kind of fell to the wayside.
"The timing of the world stopping at that point in 2020, where we were all assessing our hopes and dreams, just seemed to be the right moment to finish what I'd started."
McCaw also notes that having those years away from the album really helped him to cultivate the tools necessary to take on such a big-scale project – not to mention find his footing as a musician. "I was really more of a theatre guy when we first did those sessions with Louie," he says.
"I remember Louie playing guitar with the session guys, just laying it down in the room together, and I think it really hit me that I wasn't on that level. I had to go away and really put the hours in.
"I spent a countless amount of time rehearsing, learning. . . performing, especially. I went all around the world, everywhere from playing gigs on cruise ships to corporate events and all sorts of stuff in-between.
"I don't think I could have finished this album until I got to my 30s, because I wanted it to be as authentic as it could possibly be. When you heard me singing, I wanted it to sound like a guy who belonged up there singing those songs – not just a theatre guy pretending that he did."
Now, with 'Worried Minds' finally out in the world, McCaw can confidently say the decade-long journey towards its release was worth it – even with all that ensued in the intervening years.
"It was a crazy mission," McCaw says with a laugh. "I mean, who even releases this kind of album in 2023? Especially as an independent artist, on a boutique label that I started myself.
"I was really lucky to have the right people come along every step of the way, and I could truly get to channel that experience of making an album in the classic sense."
'Worried Minds' is available.
