Salter began his music career as a solo artist, before co-founding the bands The Wilson Pickers, The Gin Club and The Young Liberals. He’s currently focusing on his solo project, ready to release his third album later in the year.
“I guess playing solo felt inevitable because a lot of the people in bands got a bit sick of touring all the time, I mean not totally sick of playing music full stop, but just doing it all the time and I just wanted to do it full-time, that’s all I wanted to do,” says Salter. “That’s why I started concentrating on the solo stuff, I thought if I’m going to do it all the time, I may as well stop involving other people and dragging them around with me.”
Salter’s love of performing hasn’t wavered. He’s currently playing shows across Australia on the back of his recent stints in Japan and New Zealand. “There’s something pretty cool about playing in galleries, surrounded by art, I can’t wait,” he says. “I’ve got a few of the songs from the new album that we’re going to be giving a bit of a trial run. I don’t think I’ve played them before, in Melbourne anyway.
“I’m sort of getting the whole old band back together. Seja is coming down from Brisbane and Arun [Roberts], my bass player, he’s been travelling around with Gabriella Cohen so he’s back,” Salter says.
“It’s a five-piece band, it’s going to be nice to have the songs nice and filled out,” he says. “I mainly play solo most of the time, so it’s quite odd that I make these albums with all these arrangements pretty dense and lush. Most of the time I’m just playing alone on an acoustic guitar, so it’s going to be nice to have the whole band.”
Despite his busy touring schedule, Salter has been working on his forthcoming album, Back Yourself over the past year. He aims to release the album in August through ABC Music.
“It was written predominantly on the spot, I was trying to be as spontaneous as possible to avoid demoing songs and redoing them and redoing them,” he says. “I didn’t come in with any songs, I tried to write them all in the studio while I was recording.
“I recorded most of it down in Tasmania and I’ve actually moved to Tasmania. I’m now living down in Hobart, so Iguess there’s a lot of stuff about Tasmania on it,” Salter says.
“It was a pretty full on year last year. I turned 40 this year and I had a bunch of heavy stuff happen last year with some friends of mine getting quite sick and a bunch of other stuff, so that ended up influencing a lot of lyrics on the album. But I guess it’s just life, it keeps going and weird stuff keeps happening.
“The weird songs are a bit weirder and the simple songs are a bit simpler, everything’s a bit more in focus I suppose.”
Salter has collaborated with a number of musical greats throughout his solo career, both in the studio and on the stage. Back Yourself will again see him working with a collection of talented artists.
“I’ve written songs on this one with Conor Macdonald from The Gin Club, he co-wrote some of the songs. I’ve got Jeff Lang playing guitar on it, which is pretty amazing, on a couple of songs. I’ve got Julien Wilson, the amazing jazz sax player from Melbourne and his band playing.
“Some of the collaborators from The Cat as well. A guy named Peter Novotnik, who is an Australian/Polish multi-instrumentalist and he played on The Cat, the first album, and he’s played a bunch of stuff on it as well.”
