Stage 4 Lockdown, Taylor Swift and a vulnerable new single from Ed Hawke.

At 29 years old, most people have experienced their first taste of adult life. Relationships, heartbreak, loss, a complicated sense of compassion and empathy, an emotion-filled and confusing quarter-life crisis and a search for the innate feeling of true and unequivocal happiness. For Melbourne musician Ed Hawke, these experiences have allowed him to express himself through his music to unveil, untangle and understand his life and his place in the world.
To Celebrate his new single titled After All This Time release we sat down with Ed to discuss Stage 4 lockdown, musical influences & Taylor Swift.

1. Thanks for chatting to us Ed and congratulations on After All This Time. How is it living in Melbourne stage 4 lockdown?

Thank you, and thanks for having me! It’s been pretty wild to be honest. It’s been like what, 6 months? It feels so much longer than that. As much as I’m missing my family & friends, it is going to be pretty weird when things start to open up again. I feel like I’ve kind of gotten used to it in a strange way. You just kind of get on with it. Not that it’s enjoyable at all.

2. After All This Time seems to be the most vulnerable you’ve been in a single, what was the process like trying to express something deeply personal?

I think I wrote this song maybe 5 times over. I knew what I wanted to write about, but I just struggled with it for a while. This song is about feeling a certain way for so long that it becomes how you identify with yourself. Even if they aren’t necessarily the most healthy feelings. Actually, somebody once told me a good analogy that perfectly sums up this song. It’s kind of like an old winter coat that is really comfy but you’ve had it for so long that it’s worn out, and has holes in it. You’ve been through so much in it that you can’t stop wearing it, or bear the thought of throwing it out. I wrote this song about realising the coat isn’t for me anymore, and now it’s time to find the strength to get rid of it.

3. We loved your Taylor Swift cover that you posted on Instagram, can we expect more of those coming from different artists, or were you just expressing your love for Taylor?

Thank you! It was so much fun to put together, I love that song! I started off making my own little songs from grooves that some of my favourite drummers posted on their Instagram pages. But then I figured it would be fun to mess around with other people’s songs. It’s interesting to me, to start with a drum groove. It’s the total opposite to how I would normally record. I guess it also challenges my brain, spending an afternoon trying to figure out how to make somebody else’s song sound like your own. I’m really keen to do more of those.

4. We understand you were in the USA a fair bit of last year, can you describe what travelling in a different country has affected your musical process?

Yeah I was over there for a couple of months last year. It was just so cool and truly inspiring to see so many amazing artists. To be honest, I think the biggest thing that changed for me while I was there was my mindset. Just having time and separation from my life in Melbourne gave me a different perspective. When I came back I had a totally different attitude towards how I work, and I think a new perspective on how hard I need to work..

5. What are your top 5 musical influences from any genre?

I always struggle to answer that question. I feel like it’s always changing, and I draw upon different influences for every song I make. I guess the artists that have been fairly constant influences and inspiration are artists like Theo Katzman, John Mayer, Angus & Julia Stone, Kimbra, & D’angelo to name a few. I love their songs, and they’ve each got their own sound that I love. After seeing all their names next to each other, they are all so different. I like them all for different reasons, but the one thing I believe they all have in common is honesty. Their song-writing is so pure, and that’s something I aspire to.