Ben Walsh has been playing music since early childhood. Having turned his detached garage in high school into a music studio, the aspiring artist spent a lot of time producing music in Pro Tools before and after school. He explains how he decided on travelling across the US at the age of 18, where he was able to experience playing at bars from New York through to Canada. We caught up with the Australian artist following the release of his latest single Velshur!
“I was having one of those moments sitting on the beach at Santa Monica towards the end of the trip, pondering life and watching the sun set and just made the decision that I wanted to be a full time performer, start with bar gigs and go from there”.
VELSHUR
The artist found himself wanting to make his blues and rock n roll solo music more “poppy and bass guitar / drum rhythm” focused so he started Velshur to allow him the freedom to explore pop, whilst keeping the rock n roll content a little more retro. “I have always wanted to get into doing pop music, as bass guitar was my first real instrument. I have a real love for bad ass bass lines and snappy compressed drums”, he explains. Pointing out how his latest production has allowed him to experiment with a range of “flavours” and evolve as songwriter. Highlighting how he wrote the lyrics for Other Side to inspire people in whatever challenge you have in life to look at challenges as temporary and not get bogged down in focusing on what is wrong. The artist going on to open up how when he started surrounding himself with people he aspired to be like and respected, it immediately forced him to up his game.
LONG HAIR EFFECT
Walsh explains that people used to call him a girl because of his long hair all the time and put him down due to being a creative. “At the start, some people really discouraged me to pursue music and go out and get a real job but I learned to love it because it makes it really easy to know if you are around the right people or not”. In his experience, if people are bringing you down for following your passion or your dreams, it simply means you are around the wrong people. Noting that the creative industries are some of the biggest industries on the planet, and art brings people together so it just shows you their ignorance. He does count his fortunes to have no suffered from depression and anxiety too much, but reference being around a lot of people with depression and mental health problems. An issue he has a considerable amount of compassion for those that experience the depth of darkness.
THE ART OF STREAMING
For the Austrailian artist, social media and streaming has given individuals massive leverage over the industry.
Influenced by artists including ELO, Flea, Paul McCartney, Charlie Puth, Khalid, Tom Petty, Stevie Nicks/ Fleetwood Mac, Rolling Stones and ABBA; he believes what is ulimately key in getting into the music industry is finding a mentor who is the real deal and listening to them. Walsh highlights his biggest challenge to date has been finding time to make music. With a schedule that has been heavily involved with playing a lot of gigs, after the travelling and performing, there is often not a huge amount of energy left to write and record new music. #watchthisspace
