Alex Lloyd

Alex Lloyd the voice behind hit singles such as Amazing, Green, Everyone’s Laughing and Coming Home is playing “Up Close and Acoustic” this Thursday at The Gov. As part of this run of shows Alex is playing acoustic interpretations of his classics which feature on his Acoustica album. HI Fi Way: The Pop Chronicles spoke to Alex ahead of his Adelaide show.

It’s great that you’re bringing Acoustica back to Adelaide?
Yeah, it’s good, I’m really looking forward to the tour, it’s really just a run of shows.

With kids and grown up commitments is it getting harder to tour?
It definitely is different! Different in a good way, basically you have less time. You can’t do what you feel like when you feel like!

What has Alex Lloyd been up to right now?
I’ve been in the north-west Kimberly of Western Australia right up near Broome and near Alice Springs doing a series of short films about musicians who have been inspired by the country up there like Missy Higgins, Dan Sultan and other people have been doing it as well. That was an amazing experience and I am working on a new record.

Will that be leaning more towards an acoustic style or are you going back in to band mode?
I think I will go back to band mode but it is a bit bluesy, country kind of vibes to it at the moment which is where it is heading but you never know. It could go somewhere else.

Does something in particular inspire that?
The kind of music that I started with was blues kind of stuff. I recently did a trip to Nashville to focus on writing for other artists. It is inspiring to go to another city that is all about music and I got a bit carried away with some of the music there getting inspired by that. I came back and started writing in that vain.

Do you think you would go back and spend more time in Nashville to continue the writing process?
I would really like to, I definitely thinking about the end of the year and maybe doing a bit of recording. I don’t know, it’s like the whole city is about music and from a musician’s point of view it is a pretty inspiring place to be in. Melbourne is probably the closest to that here.

How frustrating is it when people continually expect another single like Amazing?
I would love to be able to do that but I feel that some songs are just a series of events and the right time and the right place. Who knows what Amazing is or what the next hit is, I just don’t know! There used to be a time where music on the radio was pretty diverse and celebrated more than one genre, on the mainstream radio anyway. Music tends to celebrate one genre now.

I don’t understand the popularity of some of the music out now…
It is Kyle and Jackie O sort of stuff, to me it sounds like you have been really opinionated and a little bit mean about it. I was having this conversation with my eleven-year-old the other day and he has a YouTube site. He put something up and got trolled a bit. It was the first time he got any criticism and I said to him that any time you do anything artistic there will always be critics.

Have you found it hard taking the criticism over the journey?
Not any more, if I took it personally I would have gone insane. Everyone is going to have an opinion and some people are going to love it, some are going to hate it and some will think it is OK, that’s just how it goes.

Does the whole music landscape frustrate you especially putting a lot of time and money in to recording?
It is frustrating at the moment and I haven’t really worked out how to make money off music since the internet and streaming. Only the big artists make money off streaming, I don’t know it is very difficult. To earn minimum wage for a million streams a month isn’t very much money. Things will be in limbo for a little while until that sort of works out.

With that in mind does your satisfaction come from other pursuits such as short film?
Definitely, working with different people in different industries has kind of saved me to be honest. That is where the majority of my work is nowadays.

What’s next for Alex Lloyd?
This will be my last tour for the year and then I think I will head off to Nashville for a bit and try and finish this album.

Is this tour just yourself acoustic?
It is me doing acoustic and people can request anything they like via my Facebook page and say what songs they want. If they give me more time there’s every chance that I will do it!

Interview by Rob Lyon

Don’t miss Alex Lloyd at The Gov on Thursday 31 August. Tickets through OzTix or at the door if not already sold out. Head to Alex Lloyd’s Facebook page more info on shows near you.