Aussie singer returns to B.C.
Something of a homecoming for Aussie singer Rudd as he returns to B.C. with new music to share
Aussie singer/songwriter and allaround groovy guru Xavier Rudd is excited to be coming back to Canada. The musician developed his craft playing in a band in Whistler and recorded his second album, Food in the Belly, on Bowen Island. He admits to loving B.C.
But although it’s frequently reported, he is not a dual Canadian and Australian citizen.
“Yeah, I definitely don’t have a Canadian passport, but I had permanent residency there for a year due to my ex-wife being a citizen,” he said. “When that ended, so did the status.”
There is something so decidedly Antipodean in his musical approach and inspirations that Rudd really couldn’t be coming from anywhere but Down Under. Sure, you can surf in Tofino, but it’s not the waves this avid surfer rides back home.
Albums such as 2012’s Spirit Bird just couldn’t come out of the northern rainforests either. Inspired by an encounter with a red-tailed black cockatoo in the Kimberley wilderness, the final album eventually sampled 30 species of Australian birds. Storm Boy, Rudd’s ninth release, references pelicans and kookaburras within the first few verses. It’s an homage to the “beautiful world,” which Rudd is well aware isn’t always that way.
He is a passionate environmentalist who has embraced lowcarbon-imprint touring, lived in off-the-grid solar housing and practices vegetarianism.
“Storm Boy is what it sounds like, just an observational song where you see what’s beautiful in life and don’t always have to dwell on the darker sides,” he said.
“I was just sitting on the edge of the river, watching one bird coming up for a feed, hearing the call of another and it was really inspiring.”
Some of the songs on Storm Boy have been “tucked away under my wing for up to 10 years” before finding their way to an album.
Rudd holds to the belief that when the song is ready, such as the single Walk Away, it will let him know. He’s firm that there are different forces at play when he is performing solo.
The new album is a return to that after a number of band projects. Rudd gained a lot of attention early on for his one-man band performances with complex percussion and didgeridoo that he worked over as he played guitar.
“Obviously, in a band you’re sharing and solo you are locked in with what you’re doing,” he said.
“But even when it became a twopiece with me and a drummer, it still was me sticking to what I do. The nine-piece United Nations reggae band I put together a few years back was definitely a case of me seriously stripping back to leave a lot of room in the sonic real estate for all the other players.”
He has a devoted fan base that will want to hear both sides of his music.
The touring band has worked over some of the new material in concert and Rudd says that the response has been really great. The thing is, he knows that he has an audience who will expect to get served up past favourites and get equal doses of both band and solo performance.
“I’ve got a lot of material and it is tough to know what to put in and what not to, particularly as certain songs almost always seem to find their way into the set list,” he said. “Of course, I want to mix it up and this current lineup is good for old, new, band, solo and covering it all over.”
Storm Boy follows Spirit Bird, which was a strong, political album that saw Rudd back in the collective mind in a way he hadn’t been for a while. He is certainly still taking it to greedy corporations (Best That I Can) and issues of both social and environmental threats (Keep It Simple) and aboriginals’ plights make appearances (Gather the Hands).
But there is a sense that he’s a bit more willing to sit back and watch the river flow now.
In Before I Go, he sings “can I hold you close, because your life fills up my soul,” and it feels as if Rudd is leaving the option open for some love to find its way into the eye of the storm too.