New crowd-funded album Steer the Wheel is a marked departure for Kirk, bringing in some pretty damn big-name collaborators from the Australian music industry to add a new dimension to the material and to present the best album possible to existing and prospective fans, all with the aim of using his music to help as many people as he can through the support of charity. The album debuted at #1 on the Australian iTunes Blues chart, and is currently in an arm-wrestle with Russell Morris’s Sharkmouth.
“The whole idea behind this album was not just to put out another album and hopefully propel myself to the next level, but it was very much personally about going in a direction that I’ve been interested in since I began playing music, and that was to use my music to raise money for charity,” Kirk explains. “So I pretty much had this vision that this album would do that, and I wanted to do it – I mean I’m not earning bazillions of dollars or anything, I’m still just an underground musician – but I thought that if I could get some kind of assistance that would take some of the financial pressure off myself which meant that I could donate a higher percentage of the album profits to this little charity that I’ve hooked up with called Orphfund.”
Orphund is a volunteer-based organisation working within remote communities in some of the world’s poorest countries, with projects aimed to reach out to vulnerable children who have been abandoned or orphaned and help provide them with shelter, education, care and support.
The agenda of helping others is stated quite clearly on the album’s first track, Give to the Needy, “That’s pretty much what brought it all about. That was probably one of the first tracks that I started writing, because I’ve been writing this album for two years. I remember when I finished that track I went, ‘Yep, this has to be the album where I take that step.’ And like you said, it’s pretty clear in that song.”
This is Kirk’s first album to be driven by artistic collaboration rather than being more of a solo endeavour. ARIA Award winning rhythm section Grant Cummerford (bass guitar) and Danny McKenna (drums) join in, along with some of Kirk’s heroes, such as Mia Dyson and Jeff Lang.
“I didn’t want this album to be all about me,” he says. “If I was going to get crowd-funding involved and I wanted the whole vibe of the album to be especially creative it was going to require that ‘working together’ kind of vibe. So I gave it everything and ignored budget – almost! – and went over budget but I think it was well worth it, with the calibre of players on this record.
“We’ve got keys, we’ve got Hammond organ, we’ve got drums and bass, which I’ve never recorded before! It’s previously just been solo stuff with maybe a little something here and there. There are back-up singers and percussionists and all kinds of stuff on the record, so I definitely tried to create that ‘working together’ kind of idea. As for Grant and Danny, it was such a cool experience. I’ve never played with a band before until they came into the studio and started jamming with me. And it made me realise as a solo artist just how bad my timing was! I was so used to creating the timing by myself with my feet that when you get into the studio with ridiculously talented musicians like that, it puts things into perspective!”
BY PETER HODGSON
