A Quick Chat With Jord.

Congrats on the album! For those who haven’t heard it yet, where did the title Learning to Wait come from?
Thanks so much! Learning to Wait comes from a lyric in one of the songs, Time in a Teacup, which is all about letting yourself take time to heal, grow and really just be still and patient. This record took quite a long time from first song written to release, so it felt like the right title to fit both the lyrical themes in the songs and the journey my producer Alex and I took to get them all finished.

What can listeners expect to hear from these songs?
Something I’m really proud of is the variety of styles across the eight tracks. I think we were able to let each song be its own thing, and still have the album as a whole feel like one body of work. Unavailable, the lead single, is this kind of surfy, rocky, tongue-in-cheek thing, but a lot of the other songs are a bit less bombastic and a bit more earnest. There’s some moody piano ballads, some more folky/country/acoustic guitar led songs, as well as the moments of good ol’ rock’n’roll. It’s quite a roller-coaster!

Who are some of your influences, and why?
It’s funny, when I’m writing, I don’t always think directly of influences, or people to emulate, I just try to focus on what comes out and where the song leads me. But of course I’m influenced, everyone is, so when I look back at what I was listening to at the time, or other people will point out the vibe a song reminds them of, I go “Oh, yep, that makes a lot of sense!”. With these songs, particularly in the writing phase, Paul Kelly and Missy Higgins were on rotation, Kacey Musgraves, and some old school stuff like The Beatles and Carpenters. One of the songs even started as kind of a bad impression of Matt Berninger from The National. But I don’t know how much of any of that comes out in the finished recordings – I’ll let others be the judge of that.

You mentioned that the album took some time to complete, what was the recording process like?
I had written a bunch of the songs and finally decided they were good enough to take to Alex. I’ve known him since year seven and I trust him completely with all my insecurities, and basically we just started jamming at first. The band grew with other old friends and at the end of 2022 we went to Hothouse Audio in St Kilda to record the drums and bass for six of the tracks. Then Alex and I spent the next two years tinkering around with them, both in other studios and at home, trying to get the arrangements to a point we were happy with. Some songs stayed pretty true to our original plan, but some evolved a heck of a lot over those few years. We had to scrap a couple of the recordings and start again, either in part or completely, to arrive at the right arrangement for each song, which felt a little crazy at the time but it was the right call even if it added some time to the process.

If you could collaborate with any artist, who would it be and why?
Right now, I think Angie McMahon is making some of the best, rawest music of our generation. Ruby Gill too, and Adrianne Lenker over in the States, there’s too many to list! There seems to be a whole movement right now of these contemporary troubadours, a lot of them are women born in the 90s, who are making these beautiful songs with this honesty and passion and gorgeous arrangements and I am just so inspired by them. I hear these songs and they just knock me out, they feel so personal and immediate and also completely timeless. That’s a balance I strive for, so I’d love to co-write a song with Angie for sure!

What do you have planned for the rest of 2025?
Coming up there’s a show at The Retreat Hotel Brunswick on August 1 to celebrate the release of Learning to Wait, and I’d love to play a show or two in regional VIC if I can swing it. Since Learning to Wait has been finished and ready to come out I’ve been writing heaps of new stuff, so I really want to see where that takes me too. Hopefully no-one is waiting so long for the next release!