The Justin Walshe Folk Machine have been releasing alt-country and bluegrass music for over a decade.
Justin Walshe tells us how the band first came together.
“By meeting people at Mojos [in Fremantle]. I came to town about a year earlier and I was just hanging out there, working at the bar and hanging out at open-mic nights. So I was slowly turning my solo project into a band. It's been a pretty evolving line-up and sound since then.”
The band currently performs as a seven-piece. “It's always threatened to be large. Generally it's been about four or five members. We've always been a relatively big band, but never consistently this big.
"In the last three years we've sort of leant more and more towards this bluegrass sound, which we're embracing pretty heavily these days,” Justin says.
The Justin Walshe Folk Machine's song 'The Great Escape' was recently nominated for the WAM (West Australian Music) Song Of The Year Award in the country category.
Justin tells us what the song is about. “Escape. Escape and the inverse of that, which is just being trapped. [The song] just kind of hints at a lot of things, from convict times to being trapped in a small town.
“Maybe you've grown up in it or maybe the town has just sort of run out of steam itself. Little towns sometimes just go stale; even just being trapped in your own lounge room and the comfort of your own domestic cage.
"Exploring all of that and even the ways that people most commonly escape from that. Like partying in various forms and how that can go stale too.”
Justin says 'The Great Escape' was first written a couple of years ago. “It's been festering in the band.
"We tried to record it quite a while ago but it just wasn't ready to do that yet. It was around for our last album, but it just didn't work out."
“So we ended up recording it about a year ago at Rodney Aravena's little studio. We did most of it live in there and then added a few little overdubs.
"Then we got in Ian Simpson, who's a legendary banjo player who plays with Paul Kelly. He's proper world class, but he also happens to live around the corner. We got him in to kind of finish off the bluegrass vision.”
On why the band decided to enter the WAM Song of the Year Competition, Justin says, “I've enjoyed seeing friends' bands being acknowledged for their songwriting talents.
"I mean ultimately you write songs to play to people in venues to express something and to connect to something, but there's a craft to it and WAM Song of the year is a good platform for that craft to be acknowledged in a more academic way. I suppose it's just another form of getting some gratification for the work you do; a different sort of applause.”
'The Great Escape' is set to be part of The Justin Walshe Folk Machine's upcoming EP. “It's all been recorded and mastered. At the moment we're working on some artwork and considering maybe throwing in a live song from a gig we recorded recently. But otherwise it's in it's final stages just adding the final touches.”
