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 Living mid-air is a norm for WASHINGTON these days as the perma-touring songstress hops from city to city, gig to gig on a weekly basis, bringing her craft to vastly different crowds every time. DENIS SEMCHENKO gets codenamed "D-Sem" by "Mwash" – Megan’s got a hidden knack for snappy monikers.
Getting on the road is a norm in the music world, yet few young Australian artists have a touring life as hectic as Megan Washington. Having already supported a multitude of remarkable acts including Nouvelle Vague and Tim Finn, she now embarks on the nationwide International Relations tour with Hungry Kids Of Hungary and Philadelphia Grand Jury – this time backed by her own, all-male combo.
"I’m going to be the only girl among about eighteen boys – it’s going to be hilarious!" she chortles. "Hungry Kids Of Hungary are incredible; they’re really amazing songwriters as well. I know their live show is great but … do you know that song of theirs called Arrest This Heart?" Nice tune. "It’s fucking amazing, I love it – it’s the most played song on my iTunes! I’m probably going to rip it off and write a song just like it!"
Ever excitable, Megan is living her dream of sharing the stage with her artistic inspirations – counting among them legends like Tim Finn, who she recently toured with. "Tim Finn was amazing – he’s one of my all-time musical heroes, and the opportunity to meet him, let alone tour with him, was rather unbelievable," she reflects. "He’s a consummate professional, an incredible songwriter and… a fucking lovely guy, so that was a dream tour; he’s nearly 60 but he’s still got it, man! On this tour, he just had his guitarist Brett with him and it was still so … rocking."
Revisiting the first time I saw Washington – opening for Nouvelle Vague at The Powerhouse – I wonder how she was able to command a large crowd with just her voice and piano. "I think if you respect an audience, they will respect you in return," Megan states. "That crowd at The Powerhouse was there to see music and I wanted to play for them, so we got along pretty well! Nouvelle Vague were of course phenomenal – a lot of really amazing artists have come from that group, like Camille and…" Melanie? "Yes – do all French solo artists have just one name?" Seems that way, but Melanie Pain (who also recently did a fantastic show at The Zoo) is an exception. "Hmmm, what would I be if I was like Soko? Mwash! You’d be D-Sem."
Following our joint laughter, I query Megan about her favourite songs to perform. "Ooh … I like to play narrative-based songs," she offers. "I’ve written a song about a gorilla and a woman who fall in love, and there’s a song I really like called Delilah that just allows me to get lost in the music."
Aside from an established live staple Clementine, Megan’s also got a number of subdued, acoustic guitar-based vignettes – among them this writer’s favourite Lightwell –
in her repertoire. "Lightwell is a song I’ve written for a very good friend of mine who’s also a musician and when I met him he’s just come off a massive international tour," she explains. "When I saw him, he was exhausted and looked like he’d been hit by a bus –
he was sleeping in a lightwell, which is basically a really small sunroom where there was a mattress, a bicycle, tons of CDs and a guitar – so Lightwell is a song of encouragement and an expression of faith and belief in him and his music."
The International Relations Tour featuring WASHINGTON, Brisbanites Hungry Kids Of Hungary and Philadelphia Grand Jury rolls into Bon Amici’s, Toowoomba, on Thursday Apr 9, and then The Valley Studios on Friday Apr 10. www.myspace.com/meganwashington
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