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Jeff Lang.
 Trying to get hold of Jeff Lang is tricky at the best of times since the man is pretty much constantly on the road, but he's enjoying a couple of days off in his Perth home before heading off again. And, of course, even on his day off, he's doing interviews: "It's bringing the road through your home," he chuckles. "I don't even have to stop."
The reason for our chat is the release of Lang's new album 'You Have To Dig Deep To Bury Daddy' and imminent visit to Adelaide: his second album for ABC Records (following last year's much-lauded 'Whatever Makes You Happy') and something like his tenth overall. "There's quite a lot - I haven't actually been keeping track. The first few were completely independent in that I literally was just selling them off the stage. It was a kinda kooky recording career: I literally made the first one because people were asking if they could buy a recording of the songs I was doing, and I thought 'hmmm, maybe I should say yes'. And it took me a year to work that out," he laughs, "and I didn't even send them in to people to review them, or put them in shops, or send them to community radio or anything at all. Then I started doing independent record distribution deals: it's just been a slow process of working out that people should actually be able to find your stuff."
Lang's been plying his mix of what now is neatly pigeonholed as "blues & roots" for almost twenty years, putting him in a unique position to comment on the growth of the genre over recent times. He pauses when I ask about the apparent roots explosion from Perth over the last little while, where it seems a number of artists - like Lang himself - had been quietly plying their trade for yonks before being suddenly embraced by the public. "Well, The Waifs would certainly be one but I don't know of any others who've been touring for ten years, at least that I can think of. John [Butler] and Carus are much newer than that: John's five or six years, Carus maybe four, but The Waifs were definitely out there. It was very heartwarming to see them get the kudos they deserve because they were one of the few other bands in some of the places that I played where I'd see their posters up and there was an awareness that they were playing their own songs."
I guess I meant that it seemed that there was more of a community of rootsy artists in recent times. "Well, there was then actually, in a way. The community of musicians has always been there, it's just that it's far more visible and people are talking about it now. I mean, it was either a sore spot or a joke, depending on your sense of humour, that for a lot of years there wasn't even an ARIA award that acknowledged that this category actually exists. It's not like the ARIA awards determine that there are now bands who actually do this: there always was.
"[Popularity for roots music] goes in ebbs and flows, I think. When you're a touring artist and doing a lot of work on the road there's usually a period where you start getting onto a bunch of festivals and there's a growth spurt in terms of people coming to your gigs, and then the challenge is to try and get new people who are beyond the obvious pool of folks who are already into music - I mean, that's the great thing about a festival crowd, the only reason people are there is because they're into live music, but there are obviously a lot of people who stay at home and don't go out that often but do love music, and somehow you've got the reach them and find a way to bring them out to your show. I've been lucky enough that people who are into what I do tend to stick around, which is actually probably because of my kooky, low-tech career plan," he laughs.
"For a lot of years I was living in a van and selling records off the stage to the people that were in front of me, and those folks have stuck with me to a large degree and I certainly feel grateful for that, because they certainly don't have to. But that kind of thing where you're not rammed down people's throats, where they discover you on their own, makes you feel a little more connected with it."
Andrew P Street
 | 'You Have To Dig Deep To Bury Daddy' is out now through ABC/UMG. |
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