Every great artist feels some kind of deeper call towards their craft. For Watty Thompson, the call came from an unlikely place: a cat pee soaked piano.
“Out the back of the home my siblings and I grew up in, there was an old dust covered piano. It had come from a great Aunt’s house at some stage and smelt of cat urine,” he recounts.
“I was drawn to it early in my school years and would run to the shed every afternoon to have a play of the dusty keys above my head. My parents witnessed this growing passion and after airing out the old piano, moved it inside for me to be able to have easier access.”
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Decades later, that same passion has taken him from that shed in the Northern Victorian bush to the stages of some of the country’s most renowned music festivals. A singular voice in the Aussie folk scene, Thompson is especially known for his captivating live shows, where his raw, salt of the earth storytelling takes crowds across the spectrum of emotion, from laughter to tears.
His uncanny ability to connect with a crowd, paired with his insightful, evocative lyricism has steadily built his career since the release of his debut self titled album in 2023, and even helped secure him the title of Music Victoria’s Regional Artist of the Year in the same year.
These days, he’s been taking some time to reflect before his special performance at Darebin FUSE Festival on 6 September, at Preston’s Darebin Arts Centre.
“I’ve been stargazing, contemplating life and the world we live in, gardening, patting my dogs and working on new music,” he tells me.
“Overall, trying to take a moment to feel grounded again after a big few years going hard with releases and live shows. There’s been too much time writing emails and not enough time writing songs over the past couple of years so I’ve been working on fixing that. You need these moments of peace to keep the wheels turning.”
While he doesn’t have a particular process when it comes to songwriting, Thompson says the music usually comes first for him, then he’ll work on the lyrics a little at a time.
“Lyrically, a majority of my songs are written from first hand life experiences while also knowing that they are common human experiences that others will connect too,” he says.
“Many of my verses have been written in my head while behind a steering wheel, in the shower or on the end of a shovel. I like to let ‘em brew at their own pace.”
It’s this careful, considered style of songwriting that’s brought about hits including The Beauty That Surrounds Ya, a love letter to the Australian bush, and City To Run, a jaunty bop about ditching the big smoke for the good life back in the country.
Though the subject matter and occasional pedal steel and fiddle accompaniments lean country folk, there’s also a distinct touch of old school rock ‘n’ roll in Thompson’s tracks, perhaps due to his early influences.
“When I was about 6 or 7, my brother Ned and I found a caseless Ozzy Osbourne Bark At The Moon CD laying amongst pine needles in the churchyard over our back fence in the small Northern Victorian farming town that we grew up in,” he says.
“Where did it come from? We never found out. It’s the first time we’d ever seen a CD and it was all very mysterious. We didn’t have a CD player at home so it sat wrapped in a paper bag in a drawer for a few years until our family owned our first computer. The computer had a CD-ROM drive and finally the CD was placed into a machine. The opening guitar riff of Bark At The Moon filled the house and in that moment life had changed forever.”
Soon, he’ll bring it all to the floor once more at Darebin FUSE Festival for A Night Under the Stars with Watty Thompson and Friends. Recreating an intimate bush campfire atmosphere alongside musicians Annie-Rose Maloney and Brodie Buttons, he’s promising a few yarns, a few guests and a few surprises. “I’m confident that it’s going to be a very special time,” he says.
“I try to cultivate a big shared feeling. Feelings and energy are palpable and contagious. If you’re in a room full of people feeling happiness, then it is very hard not to feel happy. If you’re in an audience full of people crying, then it can be easy to have a cry yourself even if you weren’t expecting too. Nothing like an unexpected cathartic cry to release something that had been trapped within for a while.
Watty Thompson is performing at Darebin Arts Centre as part of FUSE Darebin on 6 September. Find out more here.
This article was made in partnership with FUSE Darebin.
