INTERVIEW: Jack River announces new EP and Party In The Paddock appearance in February
Image: Daphne Nguyen
Jack River, real name Holly Rankin, has had a pretty incredible 18 months. Last June she released her critically acclaimed debut album Sugar Mountain, re-released this year in a deluxe edition, which peaked at number 11 on the Australian album charts and garnered her three ARIA Award nominations, toured across the country and appeared at every festival worth attending. Today she returns with new music in the form of single ‘Closer’ and the announcement of a new 7 track EP Stranger Heart to be released on 14 February. She is also due to appear at the final ever Party In The Paddock festival from 6th-8th February. We recently chatted to Holly to find out more.
Hey Holly, so good to speak to you again. You have been teasing new music for the last week on social media and now ‘Closer’ is finally here!
Yeah, oh gosh! It's a beautiful slow summery ballad, I'm very excited to be entering a new chapter.
You will be making your first appearance at Party In The Paddock next February. How are you feeling about it all?
I'm so excited, because I've never played in Launceston. So this will be my first show in that area and my family are from Tasmania so I'm excited. It’s such a special place to me and obviously so beautiful. I hear very good things about Party in the Paddock.
Have you planned your set yet?
Oh gosh, I haven't actually! It's still a little while away, but there's going to be a couple of new songs of course because that’s right around the time my EP is released.
Next year will be the final Party In The Paddock as well which is such a shame for the entire festival scene
It's so sad. I mean creating festivals is extremely hard…
Which you would know more than most! (Rankin runs two music festivals, Grow Your Own and Electric Lady)
Yeah, it’s a huge thing. I don't think people understand how big a one-off festival is to create.
What do you think are the main challenges facing festivals now? Is it simply a matter of economics or do you think recent government intervention with mandatory drug testing at many festivals is having a negative effect?
I think the main risk and reward in festivals is a very chaotic marketplace. You just can't plan for anything and on the day again you can't plan for what happens. As a business, it's a magic show. You can prepare and plan the most magnificent thing but there's so many risks involved. This year's been a great turning point to actually come together and tell the story of how much effort is put in and the expertise of the majority of teams around Australia working on these events and for government and police and health regulators to come to the table and recognise that expertise and time and investment. Like anything in music, we're all about the outside, we don’t often talk about what's going on behind the scenes. In New South Wales, we’ve had a really turbulent year of not knowing what those [drug testing] regulations are. It's been awesome to look into the regulation around festivals, but there needs to be a line drawn and there needs to be support for the effort of [what are] small businesses.
What's the future for your festivals Electric Lady and Grow Your Own? Do you plan for them to continue on next year?
Yes, so we're going into the fourth year of Grow Your Own. It’s planned for September 2020. It’s slowly growing again it’s a lot of effort but hopefully also rewarding giving something to country listeners. And super excitingly we're working on an Electric Lady, it’s taken some time but we've got something really massive planned for late 2020 with Secret Sounds.
If we switch back to you as a performer, when you're playing a festival how does your performance or your artistry change when you're performing at one of these big festivals in front of a huge crowd as opposed to a more intimate indoor venue?
Festivals come with a wild energy and a lot of unknowns. You don't really know who's going to be there and who's going to be listening. So you kind of come with an open mind space. Whereas at one of my shows I have a feeling of my audience and you kind of know what's going to happen because it’s planned, it's indoors. When you're outside and you only have 15 minutes to plug in and play you’re kind of like a cowgirl. It's different but I enjoy them both.
Has it ever gone horribly wrong for you with the rush of 15 minutes to set up?
Oh yeah. Of course. Festivals are hard because you've got 15 minutes for your whole band and as every artist will tell you it's pretty stressful. I've got a lot of instruments in my music and we use in-ears [earphones] and you just can't predict what you're going to hear with those. You might not be able to hear anything, and you have just got to act like everything's breezy. The anxiety is real!
Apart from yourself there are some pretty amazing artists on the line-up for Party on the Paddock next year. From a personal point of view, are there any acts in particular that you're really keen to see perform?
I'm pretty excited to see Briggs. I've been watching everything he does and excited to hang out with him and chat with him about the world. And I really love Mallrat, she’s like an angel from heaven. I love seeing her and hanging out with her as well. They're my two favourites probably.
Last year in particular was such an amazing year for you. You had a top 20 debut album. You had some ARIA nominations. Universal acclaim. How has that impacted on your creative process or changed the way you are as an artist?
That's a big question, I could take all day to answer it. My world changed pretty rapidly in a career sense, but in a day to day personal sense, it doesn't change that much. So you’re navigating this weird world. And touring, I think I've done maybe 50 or so shows this year. And the travel changes your life in a kind of negative way. You really miss that calm of being at home. It’s really confusing and big and wonderful, but I've had to take time this year to try and tune in and really decide where I’d like to take it on a personal, professional and musical level. The opportunities are endless, especially when it comes to what kind of music you want to make. I feel that should drive everything. With this next EP I've tried to really tune into an authentic place on a writing level and then hoping that that feeds into my life to just stay calm and authentic in a pretty overwhelming time.
You were nominated again for an ARIA award last week. How was the ceremony?
It's awesome to have physical community in the room and to be able to see and talk to all of these people that we work with in our industry. You never get to actually see them in one place. I really enjoyed that part of it. But also, it's a pretty whacky kind of evening that doesn't seem too close to music for me. It is good… and wonderful and strange I would say.
You’ve announced your new EP Stranger Heart will be released next year on Valentine's Day. Have you finished it or are you still adding the final touches to it?
Oh yeah. It's all good to go. It’s in the cannon ready to fire! We're really keen to have ‘Closer’ out today and then another song in early January. So yeah, I finished it a couple of months ago really. That was fun, I’ve been working on it for a couple of years just throughout everything.
Is there anything you're allowed to tell us about it as in who you worked with or what kind of sound or theme you're going for?
Yeah, I worked with Xavier Dunn again on 6 of the 7 songs. I worked with Styalz on ‘Later Flight’ which has already been released. We did some mixing with Spike Stent again and also just mixing with Xavier. And co-produced by me again. It's kind of an exploration of the heart in the digital age. Like I said before, I wanted to be really like open and honest at this point where I am deciding where to go. The songs are very broad in their production and also what I'm writing about.
As you know, we are very big on gender equality at Women in Pop. So much has been happening in that space over the last 12-18 months since the whole #metoo movement broke. How do you think things have changed or perhaps not changed for female musicians in the Australian industry in the last 12 months or so?
I feel like the conversations are absolutely being opened up and we're seeing real consequence in the entertainment industry and I think real change in representation on festival line-ups and play-listing, I feel like that's shifting. In terms of like, awards, which I don't really care too much about, but I think it's very important, I feel there's still room for improvement and for general representation. There's still, of course, a long way to go, but I think that last year and this year we're seeing huge, huge, shifts in our industry. The unification of women and men around making a step towards positive change.
What other kind of social issues are you most passionate about and think that we should all be paying attention to?
Very broadly, I'm really concerned that in Australia we need to engage with our political system. There are leaders that could so much better represent our society than we have, but it's kind of up to us and I think up to young people to get in and help figure it out and be a part of the conversation, because it's kind of scary. If a lot of people in Australia talk about politics and get involved, that's number one because I feel like that would change everyone. I've also been involved in the Fight for the Bight movement umm, which is a coastal life and coastal industry issue that, I think needs serious attention from the Liberal Government. I’m interested in finding political solutions for climate change in our country. I could rant on all day, but I’ll keep it short and sweet!
One quick question to finish up. Anything else planned for next year? What's on the agenda for Jack River apart from a new EP?
Well I do have things planned, but I can't talk about them! Next year I'm exploring the release of music in a different way. Again, I’m pretty keen to have a conversation around my music which will be a bit realness in the digital age and how we can cope with this crazy time that we're living in.
‘Closer’ is out now. You can download on iTunes and stream on Apple Music or Spotify.
Jack River will perform at Party In The Paddock in Tasmania from 6th-8th February. Tickets are on sale now here.
To keep up with all things Jack River, you can follow her on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter.
Stranger Heart EP tracklisting:
1. Lonely Hunter
2. Later Flight
3. Night Song
4. Dark Star
5. Closer
6. Infinity Roses
7. 80'sHD
