From back-up singer beginnings, Megan Washington has risen to dizzying musical heights, picking up a slew of awards and an army of fans. Now based in New York, the restless musician talks to Linley Wilkie about what keeps her moving.Megan Washington is doing some serious heavy breathing down the phone line from New York City. “I’m sorry I’m so like, panty,” she puffs. “I’m just carrying my groceries up the stairs.” The Australian singer/songwriter relocated to the Big Apple last year, living the dream of carving out the next chapter of her flourishing music career – and the nightmare of a life without wheels.
“I always took for granted what it’s like to have a car – I don’t have one here,” she says, still puffing, evidently still climbing stairs. “I had to buy some cardboard boxes to send some things home and I’m like, ‘F*ck, how am I going to get these home, I can’t carry them’. It’s this f*cking logistical nightmare when you don’t have a car, or when you don’t know anybody, because I don’t know anybody here either.”
Washington (who’s partial to dropping the F-bomb) lives alone in her self-described “crazy, mad lady cave of madness”.
“My neighbours hate me, they f*cking hate me, but I don’t care. The people upstairs have a dog and kids who start at 6am and then I play piano at 8pm, so they’re banging on the floor and I’m banging on the roof. It’s this really, really hostile thing that’s quite funny.”
The 26-year-old moved from Melbourne to the States last August and spent the next “sporadic and irritating” four months either writing songs or travelling to and fro from gigs throughout the US and UK. With those tours complete, she returns to Australia this month to perform at a clutch of summer festivities, including Nova 100’s ensemble of live music as part of the Australian Open celebrations (on Grand Slam Oval, neighbouring the courts) and Melbourne Zoo’s Twilight concert series.
Washington is approaching the performances with an open mind and her usual dose of quirk, hinting that audiences should expect the unexpected.
“I’m in a weird in-between stage,” she says. “I’m not really touring and I don’t have a new record, so I just wanna have as much fun as possible. Maybe I’ll play a bunch of covers.”
She’s also flirting with the idea of a new orchestration or band configuration. “That quartet thing is awesome [her band plays under the moniker Washington] and obviously all the musicians are people I will continue to work with, but maybe adding some things like strings … I toured quite a lot last year and I don’t wanna turn up and play the same sh*t I’ve been playing for two years.”
Performing in novel surrounds, such as prestigious sporting venues or metres from a pride of lions, is part and parcel for Washington – her previous stint as a jazz singer made sure of that.
“I sang at so many f*cking wedding receptions in weird places, I’m kinda used to the strangeness of the life that music gives you,” she says. “It’s one of the perks of being a musician.”
Having spent her formative years in Papua New Guinea, Washington’s musical prowess was nurtured in Brisbane, where she studied jazz at the Queensland Conservatorium of Music.
She emerged as a promising jazz artist, singing as a back-up vocalist for Old Man River and Ben Lee and picking up some prestigious awards. It was only upon moving to Melbourne at the age of 22 that she switched to a more indie/pop sound. She promptly won Triple J’s Unearthed competition in 2008 and garnered a league of new fans following a mesmerising performance on Spicks and Specks in 2009.
Washington verified her talent by winning a songwriting competition for the title track from her EP, How To Tame Lions, and her debut album, I Believe You Liar, went platinum. But the winning streak didn’t stop there. In 2010, she won Breakthrough Artist and Best Female Artist at the ARIAs and late last year, she released another EP, Insomnia, partially inspired by the sleeplessness she had experienced for most of the year.
The frenetic pace associated with her soaring career doesn’t faze Washington, who says she doesn’t cope well with downtime. “I need to be busy, [otherwise] I don’t know what do,” she says. “I haven’t had a routine for so long; if I haven’t got anything to do I just create problems for myself, like get into a feud with the neighbours.”
She deals with her restlessness by pushing herself out of her musical comfort zone. “I read this really great interview with Bjork and not that I’m comparing myself to her on any level, but we do have a similar approach to music,” she says.
“She said that every artistic exploration she made was because she didn’t understand something. She didn’t really understand a cappella music so she made Medúlla. That’s sort of what I have done. I’d learnt about jazz and didn’t know who the Rolling Stones were, or who The Killers, or The Strokes, or The Clash were.
"So I bought a book about punk and some classic rock n’ roll records and set about a three-year project to try and explore the medium. Then I made Insomnia, which was different again because I hadn’t really made anything that fast before, that simple, I suppose. I’m just trying to do something else.”
After her appearances at the Australian Open and Melbourne Zoo, Washington will return overseas to pursue further artistic challenges, most of them musical. “I wanna write another record, one that hopefully doesn’t have so many chords.” With that in mind, the talented pianist also plans to tackle the guitar, admitting: “I’m really ordinary at guitar, that’s the biggest understatement of the universe. I find it very hard, almost unkind.”
There’s also more songwriting on the cards, this time with musicians in New York, Paris and London. However, top of Washington’s to-do list is a foray into acting – although at this early stage, she won’t divulge whether it’s for the small or big screen.
Wherever she pops up, it’ll be another notch in the belt for the hardest-working Aussie musician in New York City. “I believe being a musician is a privilege, not a right, and there’s a certain diligence it demands of you,” she says. “There are so many people who wanna be full time musicians and aren’t, so when you have the luxury or fortune of being able to do that, you need to work as hard as you can to continue to grow and have an industrious nature about it.”
Megan Washington will perform at the Melbourne Zoo on January 21 and the Australian Open’s Grand Slam Oval on January 28. For information about the zoo’s twilight concert series, or to buy tickets, visit zoo.org.au. To buy a ground pass to the tennis or for more information on acts appearing, visit australianopen.com.au
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