Troubadour makes musical magic
Australian sharing reflections
Australia’s most famous musical export may well be the diesel-fuelled anthem rock of AC/DC, but there’s another facet to the country’s musical landscape.
Whether it’s the country’s isolation at the bottom of the world or the immensity of its spaces, Down Under seems to inspire a particularly reflective style of songwriting that permeates the work of singer-songwriters like Gotye and Colin Hay and groups like Midnight Oil and Crowded House.
Add the name Jordie Lane to that list.
The 26-year-old Melbourne native more than capably carries the standard forward during his first Canadian tour, which started in Halifax July 3 and winds up in Vancouver on Aug. 1.
Lane has been on the road almost constantly for the past eight years, backpacking around Southeast Asia, touring his native Australia and living rough in the Mojave Desert.
Growing up in the Melbourne suburb of Thornbury, an unremarkable neighbourhood whose ordinariness sparked his creative imagination, Lane perfected his songwriting skills.
“In a funny way, it was being stuck in one place that first inspired me,” he says. “I began to be fascinated with country music and the myth of the wandering troubadour. It’s that classic thing — that yearning for something you don’t have, for experiences that you’ve only had in your mind.”