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Xavier Rudd.
Xavier Rudd is speaking from Margaret River, 300 kilometres south of Perth. After playing there that night he's off to the Western Australian capital for his part in a weekend blues festival held in the city's Botanic Gardens. Early the following week will see Rudd, who hails from Victoria, travelling up and down the NSW coast before making his way down to Adelaide for one show to launch his second studio album 'Solace', then back to Sydney before heading home to pack his bags for yet another US and Canada jaunt.
In fact, get on his website and check out his tour guide and you will not only notice how much time he spends on the road and in the air, but how much he's in demand and revered by his fans. For those not familiar with Xavier Rudd, the easiest way to describe him is to say he's literally a one man band; using three didgeridoos mounted on a stand, harmonicas, a cache of guitars (lap steel and otherwise), a stomp board for percussion and a versatile voice that's a pretty amazing instrument in itself.
"That's really cool to hear that actually," he responds to the thought that 'Solace' has a much fuller, more produced and rounder sound compared to his excellent 2002 debut, 'To Let'. Yet it still maintains a very sweet organic resonance... "Because the recording process with 'Solace' was the other way around, like in terms of we didn't do any edits with this one and it was all live. But Todd [Simko] did such a great job at capturing the sounds, he really nailed and everything turned out really for a live recording, so it's really good to hear you say that."
Surprisingly, production-wise it really does sound like someone just might've thrown a quite bit of money into the project. "Nah, I think it was cheaper that 'To Let' to make in the end," he says with a laugh. "So no, no one's throwing money at me. But it's interesting because I really didn't plan this either, it just sort of fell into place. Like I had some space last July where I wanted to do something towards a new album so I just got some gear and did some recording at home and then although the levels were low and it was cheaply done I was happy with my performances so I then took those with me on my last tour overseas.
"I then found a guy in Canada and ended up recording nine more songs there and then we mixed the five songs that I did at home with him. He really brought them up to scratch and got them happening. I guess it just fell into place in a lot of ways, it never was planned, it just happened."
That's the beauty of Rudd and his music, everything really is genuinely heartfelt and organically pure, and for 'Solace' this is also apparent in the album's artwork. "A real good friend of mine [Myles Maddock] painted them on canvas. I saw the two paintings and they really reflected my two worlds at the time, Canada and Australia, and so it just seemed so fitting. But everything on the cover including the font was done by him so he's a pretty amazing artist as he's never had any training or anything."
Subject matter on 'Solace' take in many of Rudd's observational and introspective views on his vast travels and today's tumultuous events, all deduced with an overall positive mantle. "I guess I wrote the songs while I was out on the road," he reflects, "and seeing a lot of emotional situations and witnessing things like between America at the end of the war and just really noticing lots of the unstable things in the world, and that was on my mind during the writing of this album. But that's what solace means, it's finding light in the dark, you know? And we all have our own little worlds and own little pockets of peace that we could be just content with and should really value.
"We should be happy that we have the opportunities that we have and it's the things like music festivals that are so special, and I guess that's where I'm coming from, you know? Focusing on the positive side of things rather than the negative, and I guess that's easy to say from this side of the world."
Steve Jones
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Xavier Rudd plays Norwood Concert Hall on Sat 17 April.
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