In July this year, Wild Turkey Bourbon’s Music 101 Mentorship Program returned to great success. The Program is about giving a stage to up-and-coming Australian artists, providing a platform to share their boldest stories in a celebration of community, music, and conviction.
This year, Wild Turkey offered ten ambitious artists access to top industry figures, with Australian music legends Angus & Julia Stone as lead mentors for the Program. Studios 301, the largest recording company in the Southern Hemisphere, played an integral role in the Wild Turkey Music 101 Mentorship Program, with some of Australia’s finest audio engineers, vocal producers, and songwriters forming part of the mentor cohort. The mentors included acclaimed vocal producer Simon Cohen, who has received numerous international accolades for his work, producer and engineer Kiah Gossner, a go-to producer for those seeking a sophisticated edge on their recordings, and Stefan du Randt, a prolific producer, mixing and recording engineer.
The Program consisted of six tailored sessions held across the two days in Sydney in July. Australia’s legendary siblings Angus and Julia Stone found a break in their touring commitments for their wonderful new album Cape Forestier to mentor the aspiring artists, one of whom was Melbourne-based singer songwriter Maddy Herbert, front person for the fabulous quartet Velvet Bloom. Not only did Maddy take part in the program and perform at the Wild Turkey Music 101 Mentorship Program showcase but post-mentorship program, she got to fly to Angus and Julia’s Stone’s Sugar Cane Mountain Studios to record with them.
Australian Musician editor Greg Phillips caught up with Velvet Bloom’s Maddy Herbert to chat about the whole Wild Turkey Bourbon’s Music 101 Mentorship Program experience and also discuss the band’s upcoming album and plans into 2025. Audio version here and transcription below
Interview transcription:
GP: Maddy Herbert from Velvet Bloom. Welcome back to Australian Musician.
MH: Thanks for having me.
We’ve spoken to you a few times now. The first time was during Covid. Looking back at that period, was there anything positive that came out of it, do you think?
I think so. I wrote a lot of songs during lockdown and I think we have an album coming out with a lot of songs that I wrote in that period. I think I was able to refine my songwriting, but also refine relationships and stuff as well, and I think it really showed the people in my life who would be able to maintain relationships or maintain a friendship without being able to see each other in real life. So yeah, I think there was a lot of positives that came out of it. Obviously it was hard in a lot of ways as well, but yeah, I definitely felt like it was very positive too.
Earlier this year, you applied to be part of the Wild Turkey Music 101 Mentorship Program and you were successful. What were you hoping to get out of it at that stage?
I think as a musician, when you apply for things, sometimes you don’t have heaps of expectations on what the opportunity is going to bring, but when I did apply, I was like, this would be incredible, obviously, to be mentored by Angus and Julia Stone and to have the opportunity to be in a room with a lot of engineers and staff from studios 301, that was really a great idea or concept. So yeah, expectations. I don’t think I had a lot of expectations when applying, but it definitely exceeded expectations, the actual program. So yeah, that was very cool.
What would you consider to be the most important things that you got out of going through the program?
So with the Wild Turkey Music 101 Mentorship Program, we were able to create really, really nice friendships. All the other mentees within the programme were so incredible and talented, and I think as soon as we all met, we clicked straight away, and I think that connection is why we do music, and it was so awesome to have people from, I guess a lot of different genres be in the same room together and I guess take what they needed from the opportunity for their own practise and apply it in their own ways as well, but also to be able to support each other through that. That was really great. Also, obviously, the time with Julia Stone, that was awesome. I’ve listened to their music since I was really young, so it was just cool that I think all of us had applied for this opportunity through Wild Turkey Bourbon with probably not heaps of expectations because you don’t think that you don’t conceptualise something until it actually comes to fruition. So to be able to actually one, get into the programme and then two have such an incredible experience with wonderful people. Yeah, it was just awesome. We had such a good time together.
What was the first moment you thought, wow, I didn’t think of that… the first time you sort of learned something?
We had a conversation, oh … Kiah Gossner (engineer from Studio 301). Actually, they did a songwriting workshop, and they were talking about an approach to lyricism. It was kind of like a technique which was basically you kind of create a story with a list of nouns and verbs that you see within your space, and I’ve been doing that a lot just for sparking kind of creativity, and that was actually really cool. I think that that workshop, was one of my favourites, because was I was able to kind of apply it in a way. Whereas some of the other workshops, I think they would definitely be helpful in years to come, just especially because in studios three oh one we were talking about Adobe Atmos and all the other things that maybe weren’t able to be applied straight away, but in the future definitely we’ll be taking a lot of consideration for a lot of what those engineers we’re talking about too.
Then after the programme had finished your mentorship with Angus and Julia was extended, you must have made quite an impression. How did that come about and what did it involve?
Yeah, I was so stoked and obviously felt very honoured because as I said, there were so many incredible musicians in the 101 mentorship program. I guess they had just asked if I wanted to come and record with them at Sugar Cane Mountain Studios. So that involved me flying up in October and recording tracks with them and recording those three tracks as well. Yeah, it was incredible, and I wouldn’t have been able to do that without Wild Turkey’s input, obviously. So I’m very, very appreciative. It’s an opportunity that doesn’t come around very… it wouldn’t come around very often, especially because of financial, the cost that it takes from an artist to be able to fly interstate and then stay there and record. Yeah, it’s just something that is probably not very accessible. So yeah, I’m very, very appreciative.
Was there anything about the way Angus and Julia worked in the studio that surprised you?
Maybe my favourite part of watching them work together was seeing their process when it came to writing lyrics and melodies. It was really cool to see how they approached writing with no ego, but also were so supportive of each other’s ideas. I loved watching two people write together because I think that … that’s not something that I really do when it comes to Velvet Bloom stuff. I do all of the songwriting, so there’s not really someone to bounce ideas off of when it comes to the lyrical stuff. So yeah, it was really great to see them work together, it was so quick and it was so intentional as well, but they’ve obviously just been doing it so long that it comes out so fluidly.
Earlier in the year you released a single Silver Tongue, I think that was before the mentor programme? How did that song come about?
So we released Silver Tongue in September, that was just after the mentorship program. Actually, that song came out of it with the band, which is really cool. We don’t usually write that way, so it was awesome to be able to just sit in a room. I think I came up with the lyrics actually on the spot in the gym as well as the rest of the band coming up with melodies and drum beats and stuff. But it all kind of, the actual foundation of the song came together really quickly, but then obviously it’s very production heavy. That song and a lot of work went into it post writing. But yeah, I’m pretty sure that jam came together really quickly, and then the lyricism also came together quite quickly, and the feeling. I think we all kind of understood what the feeling was that needed to be portrayed. So yeah, that was a really fun song to write, actually. Yeah, as I said, it was just different to how we would usually approach things, and I think that’s really good for creativity to do something that is different to your usual practise. So yeah, that’s why it feels kind of like it’s pushing our creativity to the next kind of era or step.
Best In You is the current single released in November, you launched it at Shot Kickers. How did that gig go?
It was so good. We haven’t played live for so long. I’ve played a lot solo and in an acoustic capacity, but in terms of a band setting, we actually haven’t performed live in a really long time. It was amazing to get back on stage and to do the live performance stuff again, because we have been spending so much time in the studio. I think you can kind of push yourself into a bit of a bubble and just maybe get stuck in the recording side of things, and it’s so awesome to be able to step back into the live element and just see how many people come out and know the words and that kind of stuff. Yeah, it was really, really lovely. We had a really good night.
And what was the inspiration behind that song?
So Best In You was about seeing the best in people, even in their raw moments and trusting, I guess, the relationship that you have with them and trusting your intuition with that relationship too. But yeah, that song came about… I think I had written, again, I’d done something different in the way that I would usually write, and I think I wrote this one on piano, which is not usually my instrument. I’ll usually write on the guitar. So yeah, writing on piano I think brought maybe a different emotion to the song than I would usually. And then I had brought it to Alex and we’d kind of refined some of the chords, and then we played it with our keys player on drums. And Jay, who isn’t usually, well, he actually is playing in Velvet Bloom now, but at that point he wasn’t playing in our band and he was on keys, so we kind of had a different arrangement.
So yeah, pushed some ideas again and pushed our creativity into different areas than we maybe would usually with people on the instruments that they play. And that song was also so much fun to write. I think it was the slowest song to come together because we had these grand ideas for horns parts, but we were just riding them ourselves and we’re obviously we don’t play sax or trumpets. So we had an idea of what we wanted it to sound like, and we’d kind of created an outline, but then to have Brendan go through it and just compose the parts that he made was so awesome. We’ve never worked with a horn section, so that was really, really fun.
Speaking of grand ideas, you’ve been having a bit of fun with the design element of your photo shoots. Has anyone been helping you, or is that just your creative instinct?
I think with most of our stuff, I’ll always engaged people who are around us, who I love and whose art I love as well. With the photo shoots that have come more recently, we decided to create a bit of a sanctuary, slash world, slash vision. It’ll kind of all come out with the album, but I guess each thing that we put into this landscape was significant in the way that it would represent something from the album and the world has a way that it operates, and we have a poem that will come out with a vinyl, and it kind of just describes I guess the emotion and the purpose, which is something that we kind of haven’t really done before. But yes, I did engage a lot of incredible artists on this one. We had a person called Erica who did makeup. We had Valentina who was doing the photo shoot and editing, so we worked really closely with her to come up with a lot of those.
We had Josh. He had come up with a lot of the creative design elements with me as well. We workshopped a lot of the intention behind the colour scheme and the world and the props and all of that kind of stuff. And we’ve worked with him quite a few times. He’s a really good friend of ours. We worked with Eden Strachon on typography and design for graphic design stuff, and I’m missing someone. Oh, Kath Gill. She created the incredible chain mail that you see. She’s an incredible artist and yeah, check out her stuff if you haven’t seen it before. And yeah, we had a clothing label who did the intimates too, so had a very, very big team on this one. But yeah, I guess in terms of deciding what was going to be brought into the shoot, I have a lot of grand ideas and then a lot of people who are very talented help us achieve them.
Do you see that design element developing into the live show at some point?
Yeah, which it does usually, whether it be in floral flower arrangements or fabrics or that kind of stuff, we will always have props on stage at the shows that we can. Obviously, if we’re playing regional or remote places, we can’t always bring that stuff with us on the plane or that kind of thing, but a lot of our shows that are more local, we are able to incorporate a lot of that design stuff and definitely will for the future shows that we have coming for the album. But yeah, unable to bring a lot of those props interstate at this point, unfortunately.
So what’s happening over the Christmas period? You get a break or you still writing gigging?
Well, we’re actually on residency at the moment in Point Nepean, so on the Mornington Peninsula, on Bunurong Country, and we are doing the Artisan Residence programme through the Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery, which means that we are here for six weeks to write music, which is really fun. This is the studio that we’ve brought from our house and yeah, it’s been amazing. It’s like we’re on the beach here and able to go swimming and stuff and then come back in the studio and write for the day. So yeah, it’s been awesome. It’s been so great to be able to actually set aside time to write music instead of it just being more sporadic. It’s intentional.
The album’s out on March 28th next year. What happens after that?
After that, we will be touring and it will be a really big tour. Probably the biggest that we’ve done, definitely the biggest headline tour that we’ve done that is national. We’ll be visiting a lot of places that we haven’t been before, which is really exciting. We’re heading up to Darwin and Alice Springs for part of that tour as well, which I’m really excited about. The band’s coming over to WA too, which is also exciting. We haven’t done band shows over there. Yes. A lot of firsts, which is really exciting. And yeah, that’s going to roll out from April onwards.
Well, the album is out on March 28th and we look forward to hearing it. And Maddy, it’s been great to chat again.
You too.