Chet Faker’s crash course in fame
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Talented musician … Chet Faker drew an enormous crowd at Laneway Festival this year. Picture: News Corp Australia.
Source: News Limited
CHET Faker finds out what is going on with his career via his fans.
The breakout Australian electronica artist, known as Nick Murphy on his passport, has spent so much time touring overseas in the past 12 months that Twitter often acts as his default status update.
Murphy recently scored three nominations for the upcoming Carlton Dry Independent Music Awards as he continues to tour America in support of his acclaimed debut album Built On Glass and heads home this week for the Listen Out festival.
“To be honest, no one even told me, I just saw someone tweeted it,” he says.
“It’s nice, especially travelling all around the world, the more love you get from home, the more it starts to mean.”
He has been getting plenty of love at home and abroad since his cover of Blackstreet’s No Diggity starting lighting up blogs in 2012.
His Thinking In Textures EP kept building the buzz for the artist who looked like an indie hipster and sounded like a 1960s soul man.
A string of collaborations with his Future Classic labelmate Flume buoyed mainstream attention as the pair crossed over into the pop charts ahead of the release of Built On Glass earlier this year.
It has been a fast ride.
Crowd pleaser … Chet Faker (aka Nick Murphy) is living life in a suitcase. Picture: News Corp Australia
Source: News Limited
“I have had a pretty hardcore crash course on living out of a suitcase,” Murphy says.
“Some people take consistency in their lives for granted. When you have little to none, you discover it’s kind of a nice thing.”
Murphy’s intoxicating soul electronica has fuelled demand for his live presence from Minneapolis to Manchester.
Performing has been an experiment in goal-setting for an artist whose songs were created in a lo-fi home studio.
“It was definitely hard when I first started and by no means do I consider my live show to be where I want it to be; it will develop step by step for the rest of my life.
“I set myself little goals each year. I started off sitting down at the keyboard, then the big goal was to stand up and perform, then to sing with just a mic and not be playing all the time and now I can’t help myself and I am crawling all over the stage.”
As evidenced by the recent live video for his single 1998, the 26-year-old musician has plenty of smiley, happy fans singing along these days.
Like most of his breakthrough peers in the digital era, videos have proven to be as valuable in capturing fans as gigs and airplay.
The clip for his Flume collaboration Drop The Game has clocked more than 11 million views, Talk Is Cheap has almost five million and Gold is closing in on two million hits.
The latest 1998 clip — in addition to the “official” video — was filmed during one of his three sold out Enmore Theatre shows.
More shocking than the fact this slow-burning soul man could whip so many thousands of people into a sweaty mass was the flash of breasts aimed in his direction.
Certainly not your average Sunday night electronica crowd.
“That was a good gig,” he recalls.
“I was still recovering from laryngitis and the weird perfectionist thing about me is I know I can do so much better than that.”
Popular … Chet Faker is likely to finish the year with a few awards. Picture: Supplied.
Source: Supplied
Murphy is the kind of artist who thinks long and hard about how and why he is doing what he is doing.
He laughs when asked if he has developed any early tendencies to diva. But he answers the question in all seriousness, recalling his recent frustrations when he discovered he didn’t have a bathroom backstage at a Detroit venue and had to walk through he crowd before his gig just to use the toilet.
It may sound like a first world problem but try being the headline act and getting through a crowd to do your business before the show.
“I guess I do, everyone does. I think diva is an inevitable outcome of the industry and I don’t think it reflects on the person at all,” he says.
“You take a normal human being and basically for 24 hours, seven days a week, apart from sleeping you introduce them to places and things almost every minute that are brand new.
“The difference between someone being a diva and not is how well you learn to deal with the things that pop up.”
Murphy has broken into his overseas commitments to head home this week for the Listen Out festival.
Another Australian visit is scheduled for the ARIA Awards in November, with Built On Glass expected to win him some nominations and one of the coveted performance slots.
“I fly home straight from Glasgow, do the ARIAs the next day and two days later, I am in Los Angeles for another show,” he says.
“The trick is to keep yourself playing enough shows that those kind of flights don’t feel like a big deal.”
SEE: Listen Out, Centennial Park, Sydney, Saturday.
Ozone Reserve, Perth, Sunday.
Royal Botanic Gardens, Melbourne, October 4.
Brisbane Showgrounds, October 5.
