Bertie Blackman - The Showbag Everyone Loves.

So how do you spend the last few days before embarking on a national headline tour to support the release of a much anticipated second album (Black)? If you’re Bertie Blackman you spend them scrounging around your local wreckers.

“Today I need to find a scrap metal place because I need to make this weird percussion instrument that I‘m going to play on this tour for this one song. I had some old shitty cymbals that my drummer had, kinda ripped cymbals, and we’re putting it on this big stick so it rattles. Anyway, he broke them, so now I’m stuck with no instrument so I’ve gotta go find some corrugated iron. I wanna make it a bit more junky and weird.

Very busy the last few weeks, getting it all out and making sure the right things are together to make the magic happen. We go on tour in a couple of days so I’ve been organizing that. My manager does most of the work, and my booking agent as well, but it’s one of those things where it doesn’t get done properly if you don’t do it yourself I’m one of those freaky control people. You’ve gotta be on everyones back, but it’s good.”

With homemade lagerphone in hand, I can picture the petite oz-rock newbie menacingly standing over the seasoned, ARIA award nominated, producer Paul McKerhcer (Augie March, You Am I and Eskimo Joe), having to harangue him out of bed and directing him to get things just right.

“It wasn’t like that with Paul. That was very very different. When it comes to creative things it’s a lot more exciting than all the admin. Email’s a lot less exciting than going in the studio to make some music. Paul was a pleasure to work with. I actually wanted to work with him, so we sent him a demo in the post and he called us the next day and said he’d love to do the record. He only works on things that he likes. So it’s a luck thing you know. One persons opinion on music and he just happened to really like it, so it’s lucky for me.

We recorded the takes with the band are all live, and then if we needed to drop things in we did. There are a lot of live takes and Hold Me Close is completely live, even the vocals. It was the third take or something. I was going to go back in and do the vocals again and drop stuff in, but everyone was like ‘Why don’t we just leave it?’. I was ‘ok’. You always think you can do a better job, but it’s one of those songs and in that moment we captured a really great kinda take, and there’s a really great furious energy going through it that we didn’t want to mess with. If you do things over and over again you tend to lose the life, so it’s good to under do things sometimes. Sometimes it’s good to let go of stuff.

It’s been a quick turn around. I wrote the first set of songs at he beginning of last year, and five-six months writing and then in the studio, then spend the next four months writing and back in the studio, so it was a really full on year last year.”

The new album has been widely described as an ‘evolution’ for the mid 20s songbird. Not surprisingly, the cause and effect relationship quickly presumed by the press is not necessarily the case.

“It’s not really an evolution. More just playing a bit of a different instrument and the songs have changed because of that. I love playing the electric guitar and it is a really new instrument for me. People are always going to say that, from acoustic to electric, it is an evolution in that way. But the next album I could be playing piano accordion. Who knows?

It’s only been in the last year that I’ve really started playing one. I learnt how to play guitar on an acoustic and just kinda hit a point where I had this electric guitar sitting in my room and wanted a bit of a change.

I only got a pedal about six months ago. I’ve got a couple of distortion pedals. Cameron who’s the lead guitarist in my band has this massive rack of pedals and I look at my tiny little rig and feel inadequate. I have serious pedal envy.”

A phenomenon that will soon be overcome. After spending the year recording a great album, and playing with the likes of ARIA award winner (it’s a legal requirement to put that in nowadays) Bob Evans, and international superstar Jeff Martin, I’m sure that everyone’s looking forward to a break at the end of the tour. Which is when….

“The tour basically goes until … It doesn’t really stop. We’re just gong to tour tour tour, until we go and recording again I’d say. So it’s just getting out as much as possible . We’ve got some interesting gigs coming up. I’m playing a show with Midlake in Sydney which will be really fun, then we’ve got a couple of festivals over New Years which will be fun, and then next year we’ll lock things in. This is our first headline tour for a while so I’m really concentrating on making sure the tour goes well and that we all get a lot out of it performance wise. We’re always learning about how we can make things better, so I’m just concentrating on that right now.”

And what does being a headliner mean in real terms?

“We get a better beer rider. We always get crap beer, so I’m hoping on this tour we’ll end up with some better beer. We always get New, VB. Coopers would probably be one of our choices. Coopers is a good beer, it’s not too classy, like Asahi or that. But I’ve got a band of boys who really, really, really like beer, so hopefully it will all come together.”

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