There are as many approaches to songwriting as there are fish in the sea (so, at least three), and while one artist might feel no qualms in laying open their chest for all to peer inside, others are more expressive when clothed in the costumes of an alter ego.

How this develops is as much inspiration as it is temperament, but over time, either as a solo troubadour or as frontman for The Wildes, Melbourne singer Lachlan Bryan has slowly succumbed to dropping the mask and allowing folk to gather around to see what makes him tick. In other words, this time, it’s personal.

“I think with every time I make an album, every time I write a set of songs, I think it gets closer and closer to me, to be honest,” Bryan admits somewhat ruefully. “I was a bit frightened to be writing autobiographically to start with, although a lot of my favourite songwriters are guys like Tom Waits, Dylan. With them, you get a sense of who they are, but they also hide it well, with all these characters and stories.

“When I first started writing, I didn’t want it to all be about me. I wanted characters, I wanted to sing murder ballads! I thought what I was doing was being creative, but I think now I was probably being cowardly as well. I didn’t want to reveal too much. As time goes on, I’ve probably gone the opposite route. The obvious thing when you write a song when you’re a teenager is to write about your own experiences. Some girl has broken your heart, things like that. I’ve always been a little scared to be so vulnerable to talk about those kind of things, and so I channel them through other people – but gradually, I’ve started writing through my own eyes, and I’m more excited about that than ever.”

While Bryan and The Wildes haven’t had too many opportunities to showcase material from their latest album, The Mountain, all that is set to change in the weeks ahead. With the Dashville Skyline festival just around the corner, Bryan’s dark lyricism will be open to all, and between the strength of their performance and the ethos of the festival, the chance of audiences not engaging is slim. After his last release, Black Coffee, earned a 2014 Golden Guitar for Alt-Country Album of the Year, Bryan’s musical musings are almost divinely suited to the Hunter Valley’s Americana festival.

“The thing I’ve realised is that although we certainly take a lot of influence from American country music, the way that country and folk originated in the States is not that different from the way it sprung up here. We’ve been playing this kind of music in Australia for just about as long as they have, it’s just that they got more famous from it,” he laughs. “I think Americana today dates back to people like Hank Williams, and there are Australian guys who toured with Hank. There were plenty of Australian artists who were developing around the same time, building this kind of music at the same time as the Americans.

“So sometimes I kind of question when people say, ‘Oh, this is American music.’ I think we were all pulling influence from Irish music, from all over Europe. The Americans probably had that influence of black music in there that pushed their country and roots music in a slightly different direction, the blues. But we picked that up quickly from them as well. So I think the reason so many Australians are doing this music is, well, it comes very naturally to us.”

Lachlan Bryan And The Wildes playDashville Skyline,Dashville, Hunter ValleySaturday October 3 – Sunday October 4;The Basement on Wednesday November 18; and Australian Music Week, Cronulla, Wednesday November 18 – Sunday November 22.The Mountain is out Friday September 25 through ABC/Universal.

Get unlimited access to the coverage that shapes our culture.
to Rolling Stone magazine
to Rolling Stone magazine