It sounds like the ultimate cliché – doing it for love, not money – but for Jenkins it’s genuinely true. He has created for himself the opportunity to remain a full time musician, with his work in artist development purely altruistic. His career has had the sort of longevity that doesn’t always align when the starting gun is some sort of overnight success but with such a long haul is sure to have come seeds of doubt. “There were times when I thought it was never going to happen but I was thankfully supported by my better half at that period in time,” Jenkins says with a polished charm. “I was asked the other day about ambition and things like that from an up-and-coming songwriter, and I explained that my ambition is simply on a song-to-song basis. I have an ambition to write this type of song or that type of song, to record it a certain way, that is as far as I go. The rest of it is manoeuvring to enable those things to happen. I don’t tour relentlessly so I can enable those songs to come and be recorded. I probably should be more prepared to make short-term financial losses for long-term financial gain but those things are out of my control. My ambitions towards writing and recording music in a certain way are completely under my domain and able to be brought to fruition by me and the band.”
Icecream Hands enjoyed a comfortable level of success with ARIA nominations and a strong media presence but Jenkins seems to be at odds with any car salesman approach to releasing an album. “Back in the day, when the Ice Cream Hands were doing a lot of promotion and TV shows – and there were a lot more television shows around in the ‘90s – it was a pain in the arse,” he says, laughing. “You didn’t make any money, you lost money. You were constantly running around promoting the record, and while you’re promoting the record you’re not making any money, and by the time the royalty statement came through you were charged for all of the costs incurred while promoting the record. That’s why I’m comfortable here; I’ve learned how to live without the trimmings and I’ve had the support of those near and dear.”
With all of those costs and more importantly, lost time, Jenkins decided to take complete control of his career and jump into the dubious world of owning a record label. He certainly isn’t attempting to recreate Chess records or anything. Surprisingly, he realised it would actually make his life easier. “I never really planned to enter into the world of label owner,” he says. “I was sick of spending so much time – and this is not to imply a lack of appreciation for everyone I’ve worked with in the past, they were great – but you spend so much time wondering what’s going on and where things are at during the release of an album. I know it sounds incongruous, but I thought I would have a lot more time to dedicate to my craft if I was able to be in control and aware of every step of the process. I decided I would segment a portion of the day or the week to that work and that would enable me to spend the rest of my time focusing on the music.”
Love Your Crooked Neighbour With Your Crooked Heart came about in a haphazard way but the resulting album’s cohesion doesn’t hint at that. So far, the critical reception has been overwhelming and while Jenkins has been churning out music for a long time, his passion for the craft hasn’t faded. “My love of songwriting continues unabated; it’s nerdishly obsessive at the moment,” he says. “I’d gotten a grant from the Australia Council to make an album about water, I was doing lots of research into the Snowy River Mountain Scheme and early exploration into inland seas, into tidal movement – you fuckin’ name it, I was doin’ it. It was driving me to distraction so on the fly I would write these weird tales that would help me relax; creating these fanciful little stories.
“I had the intention of going and working with The Yearlings in Adelaide; just me and a guitar maybe with them on a few songs. I’d written a few songs, for one reason or another, where the subjects were weird, or demented, or missing a little upstairs. So I was putting those together yet it still felt like I was doing this record on the fly. It was a long process and yet free, in a way.”
BY KRISSI WEISS
