How has your experience with the U.S. music market been different from your experience in Australia?
It's a huge country over here and there's so much going on. There's so much great music that sometimes I feel a bit swamped in it, but that can be amazing as well. At the same time I get to see so much great music come through and be amongst it all. As a result, I'm constantly being humbled and inspired to be a better performer and songwriter. It's definitely a different game. It's much harder, but essentially much more rewarding when you do make some progress.
Have you had to change your approach to things in order to connect with this particular music audience?
No, not really. I think if anything I'm being more myself on stage these days. I don't know why. I think I've kind of settled into my songs and myself as a performer now. Something about American audiences gives me a lot of confidence on stage to open up. I find Americans to be very accepting and willing to be entertained and taken on a journey during a live show. They're not so quick to judge, I guess.
Are American audiences adjusting to your no-encore policy, or are you finding it difficult to maintain that?
I don't really know, actually, 'cause I don't hear all the mumbles as people walk out of the venue. I'd be quite curious to see what people think of that. I think I'm getting to the point now where I don't feel as though I have to announce it at the end of every show, but I do feel like it goes down better when I explain that I'm not going to do an encore and it has nothing to do with them. It's just that I really don't like doing encores.
I saw you at the Birchmere last fall. It really struck me because I liked that it was very clear that this was the end. We don't have to pretend that we really like it so that you'll come out and play the songs that we wanted to hear. It was like, "Okay, this is what I'm giving you. You might want more, but this is it." I really appreciated and respected that relationship with the audience.
That's cool. I guess my whole thing is that it's quite an honest concert and I don't put on any sort of fakeness on to entertain. My entertainment is to stay purely stripped down on stage. It's the same with my songs and my lyrics: it's all about opening yourself up and connecting with a whole bunch of strangers. That's what's so therapeutic about it for me. Doing encores always felt a little bit contrived and cliché. I wanted to take that aspect out of my show, and I felt more real afterward. We'll see if it keeps working. I know audiences in general seem to love encores, so maybe one day I'll succumb.
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