Q & A with Casey Barnes

Often Australian Idol brings us bright new stars, who seem to fade from view almost as quickly as they appear. One artist determined not to be just a flash in the pan is Casey Barnes, who is carving out a credible career as a singer-songwriter. I caught up with Casey this morning to chat about his new EP Red Lion Motel, his experience on Australian Idol, and his surprising European club hit.

You’ve just released your new EP Red Lion Motel. What can you tell me about it?
It’s a five-track EP and I wanted to do something that was a little bit different. I’ve recorded a couple of albums in the past which have had more of that processed pop-rock vibe, and I wanted to release something a little bit raw and acoustic and real, so that’s what we came up with when we wrote this EP. But it’s all personal experiences, and each song’s a little bit different, but it’s come up really well.

What made you decide to take that back-to-basics approach on this one?
I think I just wanted it to go in a deliberate, different direction. I’d recorded a couple of albums previously and I was really happy with those, but a lot of my career has been spent playing solo, acoustic gigs. And I think I wanted to go back to acoustic, real rock, because there’s so much stuff out there that’s that processed sound. Anyone can be put in a studio and sound good. And I just wanted to do something that sounded like every instrument was recorded live, which it was, and that was just that real, acoustic sound. So that’s sort of why we decided to go in that direction.

Most Aussies probably know you from your time on Australian Idol last year. How do you feel about that experience looking back?
I think overall it was a great experience, and I got a lot out of it as a performer and especially the exposure from the show that it gives you. People obviously get to know who you are a lot more than when you’re slogging your guts out in pubs every week, trying to do it on your own. I think overall it was a positive experience. Some of it I didn’t really like. I would have liked to have been able to perform my own songs, because as you see every week you’re up there performing somebody else’s songs. And knowing that I’m a singer-songwriter and I’ve got my own material, it’d be great if there was an opportunity to play your own stuff out there. But I think overall it was definitely a worthwhile experience.

Given that you’re a singer-songwriter, how did you approach performing covers week in and week out?
With great difficulty. I think Wes Carr was similar the previous year. I’m actually a mate of his, and we had a very very similar story, and I think he found it difficult trying to get his head around having to play covers. I think he did it well because he gave his own slant on a lot of songs, and if I had been able to stick around it was my plan actually to do the same thing. And actually the week that I went I had taken a George Michael song called “Freedom” and we’d flipped it around and we were doing a really cool acoustic version of it. And we’d rehearsed it all week and it sounded great, and even the executive producer said to me “This would have been your strongest week by miles and you didn’t get to perform it!” So I was gutted. But it was tough trying to cope with doing other people’s songs every week, that’s for sure.

Despite the massive exposure this kind of show affords you’ve remained an independent artist. Was that a conscious choice, to do things yourself rather than work with a major label?
I think there’s a lot of restrictions on you when you come off the show; you’re still sort of under contract with Channel Ten and Idol when you finish the show and you’re not really allowed to go out and do a lot until that expires. And now that contract’s up we’re allowed to do our own thing. But I think, obviously Sony takes the winner, and they’ve taken this year the winner and obviously Hayley who came in second. They don’t generally take any more than that. And I think once that window of opportunity after the show kind of comes and goes it makes it harder to get signed to another major label. So I’m sort of quite enjoying doing it independently. You look at people like Ricki Lee and Lisa Mitchell, they’re two good examples; they’ve gone independent and done really well. Axle Whitehead, he’s done well independently, and there’s quite a few others. So I’m just going to go along that road, and if something else develops along the line that’d be great, but I’m sort of quite enjoying it, especially the feedback so far on this new single’s been really great.

You also had massive success recently when working with DJ Marco Demark on a dance cover of “Tiny Dancer.” Did its meteoric success take you by surprise?
Absolutely it did, yeah. That went obviously bananas over in England and the UK. He actually approached me directly. He’d been trying to find the right vocalist to sing on the track and he’d heard about me. We recorded the vocals in a studio here on the Gold Coast of all places and then it got remixed; we had a remix done in New York and Canada and a few done in the UK and Europe. And it just got put into the right people’s hands. A DJ over there in Europe starting breaking it on a huge UK dance radio show, a guy called Pete Tong, he broke it over in the UK. And then some really big DJs like Tiesto who is the biggest DJ in the world and about half a dozen other major DJs started playing it at their shows and it just really took off. It was honestly the last thing that I expected, and it’s such a different direction for me anyway, because when you listen to my own original stuff it’s quite different to anything dance related. But you see a lot of artists these days branch out and do other genres of music just to experiment and see what happens and it’s definitely worthwhile.

What’s it like for you to play around with such a radically different sound?
I think at the end of the day my heart lies with the style of music that I’m doing at the moment with Red Lion Motel and that pop-acoustic-rock vibe is where I think I can see myself staying. But I enjoyed it. It’s funny, after the success of “Tiny Dancer” I did get a lot of different approaches from other producers and dance DJs and stuff to collaborate and do other tracks. So I’ve done a few other little projects, and even Tiesto, anyone who knows dance knows he’s quite prolific and well known, he actually sent me an e-mail and asked me directly if I was interested in working with him. So there’s a few things that are in the pipeline there, and you never know, we might do another track soon. We’ll see what happens.

You’ve been playing some shows in your home state of Queensland lately. When will the rest of Australia get a chance to see you play?
That’s a good question. I’m talking to a company up in Brisbane at the moment who are looking to put together a proper tour, towards the second half obviously of this year. I’d say that’s what it’ll probably happen. We’re actually looking at doing something with a group of three Idols together. Someone like myself, say James – I’ve already done quite a few gigs with him already – and maybe one other. So we might put a tour together of maybe three of us, that’s sort of the plan. People can come along and see not only myself but a couple of the others for the price of one ticket I guess.

Casey Barnes’ new EP Red Lion Motel is available now through his official website and the iTunes store.

Image source: Casey Barnes website

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