DAVE'S DIARY - 5 MARCH 2011 - JASMINE RAE INTERVIEW
JASMINE - FROM FAWKNER TO GUITAR TOWN
"I don't need no money maker if he can't make noise/ I want a sturdy, dirty, working hunky country boy." - Hunky Country Boys - Jasmine Rae-Matt Scullion.
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When
Jasmine Rae visits Nashville she often enlists the services of the
fast growing expatriate Aussie posse. The pocket rocket has used her second home as a launch pad for tours of Australia with major artists diverse as Brooks & Dunn, Tim McGraw and Dierks Bentley. Now, the former music teacher, playing to sold-out arena concerts here with Georgian superstar Alan Jackson and Joe Nichols, is thriving on that dual nation creativity. Mark Moffatt, pedal steel guitarist for pioneer Melbourne country band Saltbush has produced both her albums in Music City. And New England born former Hollywood starlet and country star Jewel Blanch Coburn and husband Barry's publishing and managerial company Ten-Ten sourced tunes on her debut disc Look It Up. Expat Queensland singer and actress Sherrie Austin wrote songs for both Rae's recording projects. |
Jasmine enjoyed
Guitar Town showcases organised by peers who earlier fled Australia for
the lucrative lure of Nashville.
But Rae has now returned from a lengthy Nashville sojourn to her family
home in the northern Melbourne suburb of Fawkner.
She's using it as her base to promote second album Listen Here
on her east coast tour with superstar Jackson, shot to fame by expat Australasian
Coburn in 1989.
Ironically Jasmine wrote Already Broken with Sherrie Austin and
partner Will Rambeaux but it's not on her second album Listen Here.
Instead Already Broken is only available as a download with her
digital single Hunky Country Boys.
"It's hard when you have written all these songs and love them all
but can't have an 18 track album these days," Jasmine told Nu Country
TV as she promoted her album.
"It comes free with Hunky Country Boys on Itunes."
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Rae
recorded Heart On Ice penned by Sherrie Austin, known as Sherrie
Kren when she opened for the late Slim Dusty and Johnny Cash at 12,
on Look It Up. "She's awesome, I've always loved her music," Rae said of the singing actor who cut her teeth on Australian TV mini-series before graduating to roles in Broadway shows in New York. "She's got great energy. We hooked up with Will Rambeaux. It's always fun to get together with an expat Aussie. We wrote it in Nashville. I came up with the chorus. You hear voices in your head telling you not to go back to someone but you do even if you don't want to. I had written the verses here but knew it was something I wanted to write with Sherrie because it has that strong chorus. I could hear her voice on it as well as mine - it was something that really came together. We sat on it for two days. It took longer than the other songs I wrote in Nashville." |
JOE NICHOLS DUET
"So sick of pain running through my veins/ overtaking my whole life/ I'll try anything not to hurt for a while." - I'll Try Anything - Amber Dotson-Phil Donnelly.
Rae's creative
juices flowed on relocation to the hottest writing mecca in the western
world.
"It felt like I was living there I was back and forth so often,"
Rae said.
"It was so very different, the research, a lot of energy. I met so
many talented people there. I felt energised. The local writers taught
me so much about songwriting. They do it every day - for a living. They
live and breathe it. It's very efficient, like a machine. It taught me
how to get those ideas out there."
Rae, tiny in stature, is comfortable with the tall men in her professional
life.
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Producer
Moffatt, a native Queenslander, is tall enough to take a centre bounce
for the Brisbane AFL teams. Moffatt sourced the musicians, studio and many of the songs for Rae's albums. But it was her support role on an Australian tour by long tall Arkansas born balladeer Joe Nicholls that enabled her to secure him as a vocal guest on new song I'll Try Anything. "I supported Joe here in 2009, I have always loved his music," revealed Rae, now 23. "I got on really well and asked him. He agreed to come into the studio and did some vocals. He loved the song - he was really cool." So was it hard to lure Nichols away from a long delayed Broadway role with Lorrie Morgan in the George Strait musical Pure Country and other gigs? |
"No,
I asked my manager Rob Potts and he organised it with Joe's manager,"
said Rae - daughter of a mechanic.
"I was really chuffed."
Those I'll Try Anything writers have diverse backgrounds.
Amber Dotson hails from Garland, Texas, and released two singles for Capitol
in 2005.
Fellow Texan George Strait discovered her as a demo singer and she later
toured with him.
The other writer is Canadian Phil Donnelly who has written hits for Craig
Morgan, Montgomery Gentry and Austin.
SISTERS IN SONG
"Please don't stand there waiting around for me/ don't tell me I'm the only one who give you what you need/ don't ask me for a promise you know that I can't keep/ if you're looking for a sure thing/ well you got me." - Sure Thing - Jasmine Rae-Jamie Paulin.
Rae's three-week
songwriting sojourn featured a diverse cast including Rachel Proctor and
Shaye Smith.
"I wrote Fixer Upper with Rachel Proctor and Jeff Cohen,"
Rae revealed.
"She's really talented. It's got a bit of a country pop sensibility
to it.
She's an artist herself - she has a couple of albums out. She could relate
to what I was going through. Rachel and I were talking. She was saying
what she could do with a fixer upper. I was saying 'I don't want a fixer
upper. I want one that is already ready to go. I don't want to have to
glue bits on here and there."
The singer also recorded the Proctor songs I Faked It and If
Your Love Was A Rock.
"Gretchen Wilson sang the demo on If Your Love Was A Rock,"
Jasmine added.
"It was hard to live up to that."
Rachel Bradshaw, co-writer of I Faked It, is a solo artist and
daughter of former NFL quarterback champion Terry.
She also played the blonde temptress in the Jerrod Nieman video for his
hit - What Do You Want.
Rae, like Bradshaw, overcame inhibitions with frequent writing sessions.
"I was surprised they agreed to write with a little Aussie chick,
I'm really honored," says the chanteuse who declined an offer to
chew tobacco with Jamie Paulin as they wrote Sure Thing.
"It was my second day in Nashville writing on my first writing trip,"
she recalled of her session with the writer of Justin Moore hits Small
Town USA and Backwoods.
"It was a really heartfelt beautiful ballad. Jamie was the first
person I've even seen who chews tobacco. It was a really fun day."
So was Jasmine tempted to chew and spit with Paulin?
"No, I'd save that for my dad. George Teren (another prolific hit
writer) was doing it as well.
Maybe that's what you got to do. But my dad's a mechanic and he doesn't
chew tobacco while working on cars."
MISS HYDE
"When we hooked up, I was all dolled up/ and on my best behaviour/you were throwing back shots of a broken heart/ and I was your cherry chaser." - Miss Hyde - Jasmine Rae-Jeremy Spillman
Rae made
the most of her Nashville writing sojourn.
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"The
second last day before leaving I wrote Miss Hyde with Jeremy
Spillman," Rae recalled of a session with the writer whose clients
include Texan star Lee Ann Womack, Josh Turner, Eric Church and Trisha
Yearwood. "It was very quick. I got the idea that I'm two people in the one body. We just came up with a cool song. I love the spooky feel to it, channelling exactly what I wanted to say. It was really speed writing." But it was a hard riding South Carolina hombre whose clients includes Texans Pat Green, Cory Morrow, Django Walker (son of Jerry Jeff), Darius Rucker and Jason Michael Carroll who teamed with her for I Hate That I Love You. |
"Patrick
Davis and I are both Scorpios, both very passionate people," she
said.
"An intense song came out of that. He's got that kind of rough edge.
Others like Sherrie Austin like to write pretty lyrics, pretty melodies.
That's not Patrick. I like that contrast. His wife manages Jewel."
AUSSIE WRITERS
"You love me when I'm innocent/ but I've got another side/ you can't love Dr Jekyll/ if you don't love Miss Hyde." - Miss Hyde - Jasmine Rae-Jeremy Spillman.
It was all
good training for collaborations with homegrown writers like Matt Scullion
with whom she penned Hunky Country Boys.
"I wrote that with Matt in Sydney," explained Rae who moved
to the NSW capital city after winning the 2008 Telstra Road To Tamworth
talent quest.
"He had just come off the Planet Country tour with Lee Kernaghan.
We came up with idea of girls who like hunky country boys. It was the
first time I had written with Matt. I had hung out with him a couple of
times before that. It took about five hours to write with a lunch break.
I had written pretty much what I wanted to say and he helped finish it
- that was great."
Equally rewarding was writing Too Much with Melbourne songsmiths
Robyn Paine and Tony Carne.
"She's a fantastic pianist in the Hey, Hey It's Saturday band,"
Jasmine explained.
"She's a great friend who writes jingles. It's a really raw kind
of track - not an uptempo raunchy kind. It's a beautiful song and contrast.
We began writing together three years ago. They live on the other side
of the city. We write every Wednesday and Friday."
THAT VIDEO
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Rae
filmed filming her raunchy Hunky Country Boys video at Windsor
on the northwest outskirts of Sydney. "It was done on a farm, a really full on day from 6 am because I read the time table wrong," Rae joked. "I thought it was going to be rained out. Richard Brancatisano from Home And Away was my main hunky boy. He's going to America to do some acting. He's also a musician as well." But what about the vixen like clobber she adopted for her role in the clip that featured on Nu Country TV? "I always wanted to dress like that but I need to get a choreographer because in the car scene I kept on smacking my feet on the chairs," Rae confided. "It was not that graceful." But the demure diva didn't have that problem as she played full houses with Jackson on his tour and CMC Rocks The Hunter at the Hope Estate on March 5 and 6. |
Her second album Listen Here (ABC-Universal) was released here in March - the week the tour started.