In 2022, at the tail-end of the COVID-19 pandemic, and together with the award-winning Australian poets/writers/performers/makers Melinda Smith, CJ Bowerbird, and Stuart Barnes, I arrived at a simple idea: what if we started setting our texts to music, which we would make ourselves?
At first, the answer to that question came in the form of a name: Hell Herons.
Wanting to see – and hear, and feel – what might be possible, we just started somewhere; there has been no masterplan. We have played, experimented, taken risks. Some texts were poems that had already been published, others were unpublished fragments. In some cases, the music came first, inspiring the text.
As Melinda and CJ live in Canberra, Australian Capital Territory, Stuart in Queensland, with myself in regional New South Wales, the texts were emailed to me. Then, over months, I wrote, performed and recorded the music at home. I have no formal qualifications in music – really I’m little more than a lifelong fan – but I felt that I knew, or felt, enough to at least make an attempt at working it out. (More about this side of things in a future diary entry.)
I also recorded my first goes at the vocal performances – in my closet.
Sometimes Melinda and CJ dropped in to my house and tried out their own versions of the songs – yes, in the closet too – and Stuart made his way to Canberra. It has always been a core principle of Hell Herons that the poet’s voice be on the final recordings. Another core principle has been for the music to be as interesting as the text, while also aiming for a diversity of music expression.
Really we’ve just been following our noses: how might a certain text work with music, and how might the making of the music change the text?
We’ve been motivated by Rick Rubin’s maxim: ‘As artists we have one responsibility, and that is to make something we love, with all our ability, right here, right now’. However, as we developed the album we also wanted to ensure that while some songs might be challenging, others will be…well…delightful.
Always, especially when experiencing the inevitable doubt, we came back to a simple principle: if it gave us goosebumps, we were heading in the right direction.
Eighteen months later, we culled the demos to sixteen songs, enough for an album.
A double album.
Thanks to funding from artsACT, at the beginning of 2024 we engaged Kimmo Vennonen of kv productions in Canberra to re-record all our vocals, then he mixed and mastered the album. I also gave Kimmo the space to add his own flourishes to the songs, especially in terms of noise manipulation, rounding out the Hell Herons sound.
On 29 June 2024, the final album, which we’ve titled The Wreck Event, will be released internationally through all major streaming services as well as Bandcamp.
We’re currently distributing a series of three album teasers, which can be found on our YouTube channel, and for users of the world’s main music streamers, such as Spotify, Apple Music and Deezer, The Wreck Event is currently available for pre-saving.
As I like to do for major projects, I’ll write some diary entries over the coming months. In the meantime more information about Hell Herons, including detailed artist bios, can be found at our website.
We hope The Wreck Event gives you goosebumps too.
xo
2 comments
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June 19, 2024 at 9:16+00:00Jun
be.bodden@t-online.de
Thank you, Nigel, for your Diary of a Heron. What a great idea to add music to your texts! Yes, let’s do things every now and then that we didn’t initially think were possible.
When I was suggested to run a writing workshop in Charleroi, Belgium, in 2019, I didn’t think it was possible. As a non-native speaker, I was supposed to run a writing workshop in French! I never, ever expected something like this. In 2024 I am still running this workshop.
Here comes a warm greeting from the northern hemisphere for you and Tim.
Bernard
June 20, 2024 at 9:16+00:00Jun
Nigel Featherstone
Oh, Bernard, your comment is WONDERFUL. I so love the idea of your agreeing to facilitate a workshop in a language with which you weren’t familiar. I ESPECIALLY love that you’re stilling delivering it. How very, very brilliant. Thank you so much for you warm greeting, and here’s one in return – from a rather brisk (minus 6C tonight, so they say) evening.