“This is a step up in the adventure stakes, I’ve got to say,” he says. “I’ll be hiking through the Flinders Ranges for a week before the tour. I’m going semi-desert, sleeping beneath the stars, in caves. Hiking around trying to find the ‘lost sound’, something like that. I’m definitely thinking of the next Ragas album, so it may be a little bit like that Mighty Boosh episode, wandering around looking for wisdom. One of the mates I’m going with has a portable recorder, I’ll have a few instruments with me. I think we’ll definitely do some recording out there, but what it leads to, who knows? We’re doing it all cowboy style, sleeping with no tents. There’s one night in the cave on the side of a mountain, so you hope it’s going to be inspiring out there.”
Or, he awakens some kind of human subspecies who have been living in the caves undisturbed for centuries and are now baying for blood, but that’s always the gamble with the search for creative inspiration. While this hike will cover new ground, Walker has had the opportunity to visit vast swathes of Australia over the years. He is a seasoned solo performer, and has also experienced great acclaim alongside Ashley Davies, Tex Perkins, Archie Roach, and with The Necessary Few. Suffice to say he has had a front-row view of the shifting Australian music scene.
“The whole Americana renaissance is something I’ve definitely noticed,” he says. “Festivals we’ve been getting picked up for are getting more aligned with this movement, like Dashville Skyline in the Hunter Valley and Out on the Weekend in Melbourne. But I think Australian music has always had a strong country scene. There are so many artists, and if you look back there’s a really strong Aboriginal scene aligned with it too. There’s a whole culture of great country singer/songwriters in the Aboriginal community, all over Australia.
“Maybe I’ve noticed a change here just because I’m Melbourne-based, but it feels bigger now then it used to be,” he continues. “Someone told me that Northcote has the biggest number of country singers in all Australia. Which is a strange place for it, you’d feel they’d be all up north. I think in regional and outback Australia, it’s probably one of the biggest styles of music for the last hundred years. I’ve been around a while now, and I’ve seen different scenes, different sub-genres in the roots scene bubble to the surface, whether it’s garage rock or blues, your John Butler and Ash Grunwald types. It’s always interesting to see how it’s all growing, but it doesn’t really effect what you’re doing yourself.”
While Walker certainly brings a great amount of experience to Lost Ragas, he is quick to emphasise that he is hardly the life and soul of this party. “It’s not just Matt Walker and band,” he says. “We all contribute, and the guys do fucking amazing harmonies, switching around instruments. It’s a real collective.”
Their most recent release, Trans Atlantic Highway, has already picked up great critical acclaim and will likely introduce Walker and co. to a whole new set of fans. Happy as they are to be receiving all of this attention, these dark horsemen of the alt-roots scene are fairly indifferent to such accolades.
“I really play music for myself. It’s a contradiction, of course, because then you record it, you play live shows and hope people like it. But my main drive to pick up a guitar is kind of selfish, it’s just something I need to do. I think a lot of musicians are like that.”
BY ADAM NORRIS
