A lot of people have been asking Ben Salter how he found the time to make a second solo record.
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To the public and other musicans alike, it appears an indulgence given he already gets to make impressive and eclectic records with the likes of The Gin Club, The Wilson Pickers and Giants of Science.
But the Melbourne-based Townsville native puts it simply.
“I don’t really do anything else,” Salter says.
“There’s plenty of hours in the day and plenty of days in the week.
“I guess the solo stuff is my focus at the moment, The Gin Club is easy because there’s eight other songwriters.
“I only have to come up with a couple of songs each year for them.”
Salter is preparing for an extensive tour in support of his new record The Stars My Destination, the follow-up to 2011’s solo debut, The Cat.
The cosmic name is borrowed from the title of author Alfred Bester’s 1956 science fiction novel.
And it suits.
"With the solo stuff I really like to do a bit of everything, I don’t want to be tied down to one genre..."
- Ben Salter
Salter’s record is sonically ambitious and full of the songwriter’s wry, verbose poetry – a concoction of self-analysis tinged with existential unease.
The songs are full of melodic hooks and rich instrumentation, but feel like folk-rock traditions that have been deconstructed and reimagined.
“Even though I have this instinct to make an album that’s just me and a guitar and all folky, I always think ‘why would I do that?’” Salter says.
“I can do whatever I want.
“With the solo stuff I really like to do a bit of everything, I don’t want to be tied down to one genre.
“When I write songs I might have it in my mind that it’s a solo song or a Gin Club song, but truth be told these days I try to keep all the good ones for the solo stuff.”
Much of The Stars My Destination was written during tours of Europe in 2012 and 2013, when a grant from the Arts Council of Australia allowed Salter to travel and collaborate.
Salter deliberately placed himself outside his comfort zone, even as far as a remote fishing village at the foot of a volcanic mountain in Iceland, collaborating with songwriters he did not know very well.
“I did a whole bunch of collaborations over there with expatriate Australian musicians and local musicians, everywhere from Italy to Iceland,” Salter says.
“Over the course of those two trips I demoed about 35 songs, I used some with The Gin Club, some with my EP [European Vacation] and had a whole bunch left over.”
The album was recorded on the Rockhampton cattle property owned by Salter’s sister and her husband, a place the songwriter has been visiting since he was 16, with Drones guitarist Dan Luscombe co-producing and performing on the record.
Out of earshot from the property’s main home was a worker’s cottage that Salter and bandmates turned into a live-in studio.
Days were spent recording and the two-degree nights were lit by an open fire.
The record’s emotive first single is Boat Dreams, a track derived from where its title suggests.
“Boat Dreams is sort of about a recurring dream I have about being on a huge abandoned cruise ship,” Salter says.
“Sometimes the ship is out at sea and sometimes it’s moored.”
Through his various acts Salter has built a following as a live performer, drawing quiet admiration from his peers.
You Am I frontman Tim Rogers once said: “I firmly believe Ben Salter to be one of Australia’s best singers and, if I weren’t so god-damn competitive, one of its best songwriters as well.”
This Saturday Salter returns to one of his favourite venues, Maitland’s Grand Junction Hotel.
“It’s definitely in the top percentile,” Salter says.
“That’s down to the culture that [publicans] Ben and Liss have created there, and the building is amazing.
“It’s almost like stepping back in time, or into a parallel dimension.”
Ben Salter performs solo at the Grand Junction Hotel on Saturday night.
Entry is free.
The Stars My Destination is out now through ABC/Universal Music.