Hart started playing drums as a teenager, forming a band with some of his high school friends. In contrast to the discipline of his athletic pursuits, playing music was simply an outlet for fun. “When I started music I was doing it for enjoyment – a hobby I was doing at the time and I didn’t have any serious ambitions to become a serious musician or even to write songs,” he says.
Hart’s fledgling musical interest gradually bloomed. “We used to play Battle of the Bands competitions, whatever we could find at the time,” he says. Initially nervous, Hart evolved into a confident performer. “For someone who wasn’t born as a performer, or wasn’t born into it, that might seem strange at first,” he says. “But as I got used to performing in front of other people it got to the point where it doesn’t feel not normal for me anymore. I’ve been performing for a long time, a lot longer than I’ve been known as Harts. It’s come to the point where I am comfortable performing, and although I do get nervous and anxious before big shows I never feel as nervous as I did when I first started performing, when it was a completely new experience.”
Lucky for Hart, he had a subliminal musical education to draw inspiration from. Hart’s parents had an eclectic record collection that he grew up listening to. “I never really appreciated it because it was so normal for me to listen to that variety of different styles and eclectic music,” he says. But by the time Hart got to school and discovered the comparatively narrow selection of music his contemporaries were listening to, he realised the breadth of his own musical knowledge.
Hart graduated from drums to guitar, and by his early 20s he’d traded in his sporting career for music, exploring a range of different styles, from soul to funk, hard rock to psychedelia. In 2009 he adopted the moniker Harts, and by 2013 he’d signed with Island Records Australia, who released his debut EP Offtime in March 2013.
While the EP gathered significant interest both in Australia and overseas, Hart decided that life on a major label wasn’t commensurate with his creative vision.
“I felt that at the time that being on a major label was the way to go, and the way to develop as an artist,” he says. “I always had my eyes on getting signed to a major label and being that type of artist, but as I got into it and saw how it worked I realised it was the opposite and that I wouldn’t flourish under a major label at that time of my career.”
Despite recognising a disparity in vision, Hart admits he received plenty of support from his label. “Major labels give you a major hand-out when you’re starting out so you don’t have to worry about how much it’s going to cost when you’re touring,” he says. “But all of those expenses become your responsibility when you leave the label, and you have to see how much you can really afford. So of the benefits of being on a major label, that was probably the biggest benefit for me.”
While Hart concedes he can be single-minded in his vision, he never felt his label compromised his creative autonomy. “I didn’t really have any times where I felt that my creative control or artistic expression was not my own vision. I was still pursuing my vision and everyone at Island was happy with what I was accomplishing and what I was coming up with.”
The kicker, however, was the logistics of organising a release – with a major label there is a publicity machine and a release schedule to balance, and Hart was concerned such constraints were going to be a creative impediment.
“Ultimately where I was in my career, I decided that my efforts would be better spent doing it all on my own and being able to control when I released records. It was never a case of artistic frustrations. It was more the timing – there are a lot of people involved in major labels, so it’s really hard to coordinate releases when there’s a lot of people involved. In the case of that EP, I felt that it missed the right time to come out, and it was a little delayed.”
Stepping away from the label, Hart released his debut album Daydreamer in September 2014. The record was widely praised and earned Hart an invitation from Prince to jam with the enigmatic genius himself at his famed Paisley Park Studios in Minneapolis. While Prince offered some casual words of advice to the young Melbourne musician, Hart says his own stubbornness initially stood in the way.
“I remember him saying that I should focus more on the rock’n’roll side of what I do, and the guitar side of what I was doing at the time. At the time I thought that was really pigeon-holing me and making me into a one-trick pony in a way, and not being as broad as I thought I was naturally. But I could completely see his point when I started making traditional rock’n’roll type music, because it really hit home for a lot of people, including for the whole branding of the project, musically. It made sense for people that I was traditionally a blues and rock guitarist at heart, so I should be making music like that, but alongside the funk and soul stuff that I wanted to do – although it’s not like I’m not doing that anymore.”
Hart – who played and recorded all the instruments on Daydreamer – has mixed feelings about the idea of collaborating with other musicians. “I think it started out because I knew what I wanted and I knew how to get what I wanted. That’s the reason I never really felt the need to involve anyone else in what I was doing. But as I’ve got a little bit comfortable in that regard, I feel as though I’ve turned into a little bit of a control freak. But that’s not necessarily a bad thing for me – right now I’m not really open to collaborating with people because I have so many ideas and music that’s still in me to come out.”
As for potential collaborators – alive or dead – Hart isn’t completely sure. “You’ve stumped me. For someone who’s still alive, would always be Prince or Stevie Wonder – I really dream of working with Stevie Wonder at some point. A lot of people would think I’d choose Jimi Hendrix or someone like that to work with, but I don’t think I’d necessarily work with them, because if they were alive they wouldn’t need to work with me [laughs].”
Considering Hart’s work ethic as a songwriter, performer and recording artist, it’s tempting to assume he simply transposed his athletic discipline to his musical activities. Hart, however, demurs at the suggestion.
“As I started getting more into it, and I started playing other instruments like guitar, I did start to take it more seriously, and I wanted to achieve something with my guitar playing – not for any sort of credibility as a guitarist, but just because I thought it would be fun to play like Jimi Hendrix and to get to a point where I could play those songs. So I was never seeing it like I had to be the best, which is what sport is like – I was just doing for it for the love of music.”
BY PATRICK EMERY
