09/08/2012 • 3 Comments •Buffalo Tales Music News

I was in the middle of a national tour with Cold Chisel’s lead guitarist Ian Moss, we were on the road for months on end and I think we played about 60 shows together. It was a special time and an amazing way to see Australia.

One particular night I can’t remember where but we had just previously been held up on the highway there was a horrific truck accident ahead. We had no idea where we were, all I remember was the stench of road kill in hot steamy north Queensland sun, it was me, Mossy and Mossy’s band, who are drummer Hamish Stewart (I had known Hamish for a while and had played on one of my first studio records titled “simple sum” after my band Tambalane with Gillies broke up) and bass guitarist Johnny Zion who is one of the sweetest musicians I know and I regret not staying in touch more with that beautiful soul, but when you tour with someone you become great mates forever and I’m sure when I see them all again we will pick up from where we left off.

Anyway…   We diverted a little off the beaten track  but there was no way around this huge traffic jam, it was about 40 plus degrees in North Queensland, we got lost a little but stumbled apon a roadhouse back a few clicks down the highway and decided to have some really bad greasy food and sit on plastic chairs and wondered whether we would get to the gig on time.

This roadhouse had a real strange energy, like it had seen too much and even if it could talk I really wouldn’t wanna know.. I think us four boys were the first customers they had had in a while.. I remember thinking , we really do live in a desert. We were all tired from the 10 hour drives everyday and we hadn’t had a good nights sleep for a while and it was hot but we loved it. Touring is like no other, you become an army.

We finally hit the road again and made it just on time for my soundcheck

In soundcheck I usually become very creative and I usually almost always start writing a song as i soundcheck, the room is different every-night, and if it’s a good sound on stage and I feel most comfortable, I usually get inspired to play free form and just sing and play what ever comes in a stream of consciousness.

This time around I had inspiration and the chorus of lost just came to me all in one moment, it’s alright to get a little lost sometimes I sung..

Those words meant so much to me, not just because of the experience I had had that day but just in term of feeling really lost with myself. I was meant to be happy living the dream and being “wes fucking carr”…. I was meant to feel like Elvis but all I felt was embarrassed.

The tour ended and I felt like I had just ran with Forrest Gump for a year ( you know when he just keeps running night and day) and then came Christmas and 2009 went by like a flash. I had one of the biggest and the most played song on radio that year in Australia with Feels like Woah and I circled the country about 20 times or more. So why did I feel numb? I had no real sense of achievement ..

I called up my friend and Australian songwriting legend Don Walker who I had collaborated with when I was about 18 and asked if we could write a song together, I had all these creative ideas but I was stuck in a plastic world and I couldn’t shake the copious monkeys on my back.

So I caught up with Don and showed him a few ideas, we talked about life in general, he always has amazing stories, he’s a true wordsmith and I just love listening to him speak. He told me a story about his friend who was in jail and learnt to play guitar by watching me on idol every week and the young maori guy who he shared a room with would teach him. Don read his letter and thought it was strange because he knew me and then his friend was writing a letter from jail about me, then a few weeks later I was sitting in his living room. But I feel right at home around someone like Don cause it’s always creative and I get him and he gets me, I should be intimidated but I never really thought about it like that, he is Australia’s most successful songwriter, I guess I should be..

I told him how much Paul Kelly’s “Post” meant to me as a body of work and he agreed with me, in fact I started to ramble about it and quoted lyrics as if he had never heard about the record before and he just puffed on his cigar and waited for me to finish and then just casually said , “ah yes, Paul was living on my couch when he wrote that album.” Ha! Very Don.

I eventually showed him the chorus of Lost and he loved it, he smiled and said that’s your best one yet.

Don and I decided to finish it over a week.