Courtney Barnett milks own success
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Hot on the charts … Courtney Barnett has gone global thanks to unlikely hit Avant Gardener. Picture: Supplied.
Source: Supplied
IT was the most globally blogged cover of the month. Australian singer songwriter Courtney Barnett had chosen to perform The Breeders’ indie anthem Cannonball for American pop culture site The A.V. Club.
And the music world applauded.
A few weeks later, Barnett is back home for a national tour and surprised to discover the performance has generated so much interest.
“It was a fun experiment to try something different but in my typical fashion of leaving things to the last minute, we learnt it the morning we did it,” she says.
“It’s risky but it makes you try harder.”
Performing unexpected or left-of-centre covers for radio or television stations instead of your current single appears to be cool again.
A hefty percentage of fledgling artists will include a cover to fill out early live sets simply because they haven’t written enough originals yet.
But at this point in Barnett’s career, after countless renditions of the song which made her an altrock darling worldwide, doing a cover is a welcome distraction.
“I don’t really play covers. It’s kinda cool because we have played Avant Gardener a million f … ing times, even though it is always fun to play,” she says.
On the world stage … Australian singer/songwriter Courtney Barnett.
Source: Supplied
The witty tale of a panic attack sparked by an allergic reaction, Avant Gardener was the song that got picked up by influential American music site Pitchfork and rippled out from there to the rest of the blogosphere.
The song was the lead track on her second EP, last year’s How To Carve A Carrot Into A Rose.
It was later paired with her debut EP I’ve Got A Friend Called Emily Ferris for the A Sea Of Split Peas compilation as demand for her music grew globally.
Even now Barnett struggles to get her head around the appeal of a song which features such quintessentially wry Australian lyrics as “The paramedic thinks I’m clever ‘cause I play guitar
I think she’s clever ‘cause she stops people dying.”
“It seemed like such a ridiculous song that I wanted to put it out as a single and then I thought it would be a stupid single but it was my favourite one out of the bunch,” she says.
“I didn’t care if no one played it because it was too long. And then suddenly people started playing it.”
With increasingly more Australian artists taking a DIY approach to how they release their music, Barnett formed her own Milk! Records.
The imprint has also issued releases by Jen Cloher, Fraser A. Gorman, The Finks and several other artists.
When they announced a crowd funding campaign for a limited edition 10 inch vinyl compilation of the label’s artists, it raised four times its target in a day.
Success … Milk! Records artists celebrated a phenomenal response to their crowdfunding campaign to release a compilation. Picture: Nicole Cleary
Source: News Corp Australia
Barnett was understandably blown away by the support of fans.
“I feel like I am pretty hard on myself; I have high expectations of my work and I work too hard sometimes,” she says.
“It’s nice to think it all paid off to push to do things my own way and see that pay off at the launch.
“It’s an awesome bunch of people who have become of this weird Milk! Records community over the last couple of years.”
The young singer, songwriter and indie music label boss is so hands-on, she is personally stuffing those CDs and LPs into the envelopes landing in fans’ post office boxes.
“I absolutely started it from nothing in my room with no money, no advice and trying to figure out how much to charge for postage but getting that wrong and losing a couple of hundred dollars.
“But it is so cool seeing all these orders come in from around the world. How the f … does someone in Russia buy my album? That amazes me still.”
Equally eye-opening for Barnett is discovering just who her friends are thanks to gigs and other public appearances.
“Five-year-old girls were coming to instores with their parents and singing along to the words of my songs and dancing. They listen to it with none of the other s … that adults think, to impress their friends or post it as a Facebook update.”
Courtney Barnett performs at The Corner Hotel, Melbourne, October 2 to 5, Oxford Art Factory, Sydney, October 8 to 10 and The Zoo, Brisbane, October 11.
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