DAVE'S DIARY - 13 DECEMBER 2010 - STEVE FORDE INTERVIEW
STEVE FORDE - FLICKA FROM MCGRAW MOVIE
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Steve
Forde has good reason to believe fate works in mysterious ways. About five years ago the Grenfell singer read for a part in Tim McGraw movie Flicka. Forde, who worked in the U.S. as a rodeo rider and fencing contractor in his younger days, missed out on the role - a ranch hand. But, now in the summer of 2010, Forde has an equally lucrative link with the Louisiana born superstar and singing actor. Forde headed support artists on the debut Australian tour by McGraw and his band The Dancehall Doctors. He also hosts and performs at the CMC Rocks The Hunter festival at the Hope Estate, Pokolbin, on March 5 and 6. "It was kind of a coincidence that Flicka was one of his movies," Forde, 34, told Nu Country TV as he promoted his sixth album Hurricane. |
"It
was a couple of years ago that I read for that part. That was before I
had met Tim. The part was a ranch hand - they figured I was right to read
for that role. They sent me out the script and I went to this place in
Santa Monica. The agency was in Beverly Hills."
It's a far cry from Forde's first overseas sojourn in 1998 when he worked
wide-open spaces of Texas, Kansas, Tennessee, South Dakota, Missouri,
Colorado and Canada.
Flicka - the 2006 movie about a teenage girl and a wild mustang
- has since morphed into a sequel starring Texan singer and actor Clint
Black.
FROM GRENFELL TO REDFERN
Forde identifies
with the equestrian lifestyle but confines his acting to the videos that
accompany his songs.
Although he exploited beach locales in previous video clips he chose a
Redfern warehouse for the Rob Cox directed video of the title track of
his new disc.
"There's just me and the band and the girl who is part of the storyline,"
Forde revealed.
So was this the girl who inspired Hurricane?
"No, she's a model, I like to keep things strictly professional,"
joked the singer whose wife Ali is a teacher and mother of their son Harrison.
Forde and co-writers Matt Scullion and Josh Barker wrote most songs at
an isolated farmhouse near Grenfell and south coast of NSW at Manyana.
The first locale was on the 8,000-plus acre Forde family wheat and canola
farms, replete with touring bus and truck companies.
It was well before Steve burned midnight oil on protracted pre-production
in the basement studio of his Old Hickory lake house in Nashville suburb
Hendersonville.
Bee Gees singer Barry Gibb is a distant neighbour in the mansion that
the late Johnny Cash owned.
"I've spent a lot longer on this album than any other," Forde
revealed.
"You get caught up in your career on timing and deadlines and delivery
dates but that wasn't for me this time. I started the process and worked
at my own speed. I thought I'll be done with it when I'm finished."
But the final recording process with Nashville producer Richard Landis
was less time consuming.
AND WEST WYALONG
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"The
six month journey took it across a few continents," Forde revealed. "l've got an old farmhouse out these near West Wyalong. We sat around a little table, drank coffee and spent two days out there and made a start on writing for the album." The first session sowed the seeds of four of the songs. "We made two trips there about two weeks apart and wrote eight songs. We talked a lot about it rather than just let's write a song. We did Wasted first and then Hurricane and Something Beautiful." The title track has no links with the Bob Dylan song or the Gulf Coast of Florida where Forde sought relief during pre-production. "It's the closest thing to an eighties rock song that I ever recorded," Forde added. |
"It
reminds me more of a Def Leppard style song. Matt came up with the first
line about 'put me on ice.' Unlike Wasted it only took three hours
to write after we got the chorus."
Forde says his angst-fuelled song Wasted delved into a character
being stomped and was a sibling song of the album finale Revenge.
"It doesn't just relate to relationships, it's more a narrative story,
not just losing in love," Forde added.
"Maybe the female character needs to come back and have her revenge
for being stomped on so much. It's not based on any particular woman.
It's purely fiction."
Forde reaches back to childhood for nostalgia-laced sentiments of Never
Growing Old - replete with floating on tractor tubes in rural rivers
- but says it's not completely autobiographical.
"It's not a literal blow by blow story of my life," Forde says,
"but it absolutely represents different periods of my life. It's
a breath in amongst the angst."
FLORIDA
RETREAT
Forde is indebted to the breath of his Jimmy Buffett style Florida retreat
- but not for writing.
"Florida for me was more an escape away from my studio," Forde
says.
"I didn't want to be around musicians or the industry in Nashville.
When I got clogged up on an idea I just needed to get away. The only reason
it was Florida, it was the closest ocean to Nashville. It was beautiful
down there. I started hanging out in Pensacola right before the oil spill
and then the oil came along. I hung out on a boat fishing, catching lots
of Spanish mackerel and snapper."
The singer, who has also produced U.S. indie rock act Shawn Fisher, Hendersonville
band Long Reef and Alaskan group Static Cycle, is at peace with the world.
"I have got to a place in my life where I feel comfortable with what
I'm doing creatively," Forde says.
"Also the 10 years has led me to a place where music has provided
well for me. It's not about the business anymore for me. I'm sure that
puts me in a different place to lot of Australian country musicians. It's
now about making good decisions and having fun."
Hurricane was released on ABC-Universal on August 13.