Brisbane musician Rory J Dawson is ready to share his latest musical chapter, his second EP 'While Away'.
He will celebrate with the launch of 'While Away' with a local performance at The Junk Bar this Thursday (6 April). “I’m trying to find out how to play the songs live with a bit of a different set-up,” Rory says.
“At The Milk Factory [recent show] I had my sister supporting me on keys and doing back-up vocals and we’ve been slowly expanding.
"We’ve got one of her friends as well who will be providing some more back-up vocals at The Junk Bar and we’re just working on some pretty interesting choral arrangements with some canons and other stuff like that.”
At the time of writing the four songs that feature on the EP, Rory was inspired by the idea of a couple's getaway on the Sunshine Coast. “I was kind of at a point where I was trying to write songs that weren’t directly inspired by my own life; stop trying to use that as fodder and start trying to find a way to write short narratives and then work them into a collection of music,” Rory says.
“At the time I was kind of reading a lot of novels about quite mundane, domestic settings that had an element of melancholy through them, so I kind of wanted to transcribe that to an Australian locale.”
He didn’t always have a strong connection to the Sunshine Coast, but since writing the songs the place has taken on an eerie significance. “I just thought about where I would go away for a weekend, beach getaway and I hadn’t been to the Gold Coast since schoolies, so that was off the list,” Rory says.
“Weirdly, my girlfriend has actually moved to the Sunshine Coast now for work which we didn’t know was going to be happening when I wrote the songs. It was before we met.”
Despite the melancholy style of his songs, Rory has been heartened by his recent, live performances and feels confident in front of an audience. “I think it’s something that you naturally gravitate towards because you go through life and soak up pop-song structures all the time and most of them are pretty sad and aren’t about finding new love, but more about breaking down a little bit,” Rory says.
“I think that’s probably part of it, just absorbing what the standard kind of song is through osmosis. Those kind of songs tend to be the most melodically compelling when you’re writing a song.”
'While Away' EP is released 6 April. Rory launches the EP at The Junk Bar (Brisbane) 6 April.
– written by Emily Oswin
