A Quick Chat with Finn Pearson

You’ve spent the last few years writing songs, driving thousands of kilometres and playing seemingly every kind of venue in WA. What’s the most “Finn Pearson” moment you’ve had on the road?

A couple of years ago I did a 1300km round trip to play one solo gig in the absolute sticks of WA. The weekend before I’d managed to rip off the side fender and front bumper of my already unreliable car in an incident involving the steel council bin outside Mojos Bar. The repair job involved a day driving around wrecker’s yards and a housemate with actually useful practical skills. I left town late, and about an hour into the drive I heard a massive bang and watched part of my recently fixed up car spin off into the dusk. I then had to do sixty for the remainder of the trip so that my bumper didn’t fall off, turning the already long drive into a truly absurd one. Also all the servos along the route turned out to be closed or unmanned so I couldn't get anything to eat or drink. Eight hours, and one near miss with a kangaroo later, and I pulled up to a town square park to play for 3 hours to about eleven people (all of whom were actually incredibly hospitable and supportive), before cable-tying my Subi back together and doing the whole journey again to arrive home around 2am. Being on the road is the best thing ever, but if I’m honest this particular gig pushed the boundaries a little I’d say.

Your new EP is called Rush Hour at The Servo. Where did that wonderfully specific title come from, and why did it eventually feel like the right name for the record?

It honestly just came out of a really bad day. I was pretty dusty already, and I had a solo show at a pub where they’d double booked the main bar room where I was meant to play and so they stuck me in the dingy TAB room in front of the screens with all the dog races, which I already hate. Then when I was on my way home, I managed to knock stale coffee all over my centre console, and about a minute after that my fuel light came on, so I had to leg it to the nearest petrol station, which I pulled into to find a bumper-to-bumper queue out onto the street for. I had a second where I fell into a rage, but then the phrase ‘rush hour at the servo’ popped into my head. I’m not sure exactly why, but it really took the steam out of my first-world-problems crash out.

The reason I chose it for the EP title is because it’s become a real fulcrum point for a lot of my experiences playing music, capturing a lot of the absurdity and the banality of giving so much time, energy and money to the strange pursuit of creating and showcasing music all over WA.

You’ve described the past few years of your life as “gig whiplash” - moving between big stages, empty rooms, long drives and everything in between. What has that experience taught you about being a working musician?

I think the main takeaway for me is that it has to be driven by the art. Although music can be a strange occupation, and the contrast between the highs and lows can be absolutely dizzying, the thing that keeps me personally out there doing it is simply the love of the game. At the stage of a music career that I’m in, it can sometimes feel like 3 steps forward and 2.9 steps back, and the whiplash of being up in front of thousands of people one weekend then being in the corner of an empty pub the next is pretty disorientating, but if you’ve got the privilege and capacity to be doing something as awesome as writing and sharing music, you’re already killing it in my book. Stay hungry, and enjoy the ride I guess.

The EP brings together songs written across quite a few different periods of your life. When you listen back now, do you hear a younger version of yourself in these songs?

Absolutely. By nature I’m a very personal songwriter, and even if I’m telling someone else’s story I feel like my own experiences and perspectives often bleed over. Every line on this EP was at some stage something incredibly meaningful to me, and although my specific relationship to the content can change over time, it’s all still a snapshot of something really intimate. I don’t keep a journal, so I guess these little vignettes of where I am in life at various points are my version of that. In some ways it’s nice; I can also hear how much I’ve grown and changed over the course of the past few years.

There’s a lot of storytelling across this record, from relationships and existential crises to masculinity and life on the road. What usually gives you the spark to turn an experience into a song?

For me it’s usually something that builds up in my subconscious. Particularly on this record, there isn’t much “sit down and write a song about this”. It’s more like a slow aggregation of descriptions, imagery, and experiences. These are then usually catalysed by either a chord progression or keyword which will kind of act as the lens through which I approach the rest of the song. It’s quite an organic approach to songwriting which can be frustrating at times. I’m also not particularly good at translating feelings or events into songs at the time they occur, it feels like I’m standing too close to the painting or something. I tend to make notes in a free-form style and just generally vent, then look back and analyse once I’m more removed from the situation.

“Rush Hour” is a much more stripped-back and reflective track than some of your recent work. What did you want the song to feel like when you were recording it?

I always had the idea that Rush Hour should be more pared-back than the other songs on the record. It nearly didn’t make it onto the EP for that exact reason. I initially had the idea that it should be a piano track, but the more I explored that the more I realised that it didn’t feel really authentic. It felt right to try and record it as close as possible to how it sounds in the small bar rooms it was born out of: unfiltered, unpolished and a little bit melancholic. Rather than layering everything and recording to click track, Oli just mic’d up me and my acoustic in the vocal booth and I just went for a few takes, so the main vocal and acoustic part is all recorded live. We nearly left it alone at that point, but once we played around with some synth pads and washed-out slide guitar I felt that the atmospheric textures were accentuating the feeling of the track rather than detracting from it.

You’ve had a pretty huge year, including WAM nominations, national radio play, regional headline tours and supporting some seriously established Australian artists. What does that kind of momentum mean to you after putting in so many kilometres?

It honestly feels really nice! Even though I fundamentally do music for the love of the game, obviously it’s always rewarding to feel like people are connecting with what I make. For me it’s a marathon not a sprint, and I’ve been doing it long enough not to fall into the trap of thinking that I’m just one release away from everything I’ve ever dreamed of, but I’ve learnt that part of balancing the highs with the lows is really bloody appreciating the highs, so all of the recent wins have been really appreciated.

What’s one thing about the life of an independent musician that you think people would be surprised to learn?

I mean this maybe isn’t necessarily surprising, but I think a lot of people don’t realise how strange not having a locked-in routine can be. That’s probably the same for anyone who does contract work or runs a small business, but to be hustling all the time as a musician you’ve got to be kind of an agent of chaos.

I feel like the part people don’t really see probably the time pressure that it can put on personal relationships and social life. Amidst all of the normal everyday stresses around finances, housing and staying generally on top of your life, constantly having touring and performing occupying entire weekends, evenings and other times when a lot of people would socialise, exercise and recharge makes musicians super prone to burnout. Believe me, I know.

Finally, if Rush Hour at The Servo had to be listened to in one very specific setting - where are you, what time is it, and what’s happening alongside it?

‘Rush Hour at The Servo’ is really a child of the highway, and so - in a turn of events that will shock nobody - I’m going to have to say on a drive. I feel like the record spans that range of road-trip emotions where there’s high energy, lower energy, and then the part at the end where everyone’s tired of talking and there’s just companionable silence. Maybe you’re coming back from a festival with your friends and you’re exhausted. Maybe you’re driving back from work late at night. Anywhere It’s you, your thoughts, and the white lines in the middle of the road.

Listen to Rush Hour at The Servo