DAN SULTAN loves rockabilly, blues, soul, country and swing, and knows the best way to share this appreciation is to get out there and play. CHRISTIE ELIEZER catches up with the in-demand performer on his national tour.

The buzz around Dan Sultan that started two years ago has grown louder this year. The 26-year old played a wider range of festivals, made his acting debut in Bran Nue Day, popped up on TV high-raters Spicks And Specks and Rockwiz, and started to get mainstream airplay. As a result his fanbase has widened to encompass everyone from twinks to grumpy old (wo)men.

Sultan’s photogenic mixed-race looks and sexy onstage moves (which had Clare Bowditch dub him “the black Elvis”) explains why 68% of the traffic to his website is female. They offer him marriage proposals, gifts like homemade perfumes and ceramic owls to complement his owl tattoo, and a lesbian couple asked him to provide the seed for their child. “Not sure how serious they were about that,” he chuckles.

He doesn’t take the sex symbol bit seriously. “I’m sure the way we (the band) look doesn’t hurt. But I used to weigh 130 pounds at high school and few girls looked at me. So now I’m lapping it up. This is justice!”

Thankfully Sultan remains focused on the music. He turned down offers from major labels to work on his corker of a second album, Get Out While You Can, which mixes blues, soul, rock and country. A collection of love songs, they’re not all Mills & Boon as Sultan points out: “Letter, about getting letters in prison, is a love song. Get Out While You Can is our most tender love song, it’s about refugees in a war torn place. The couple sell everything they own, and in the end they can only buy one seat to freedom. So the man lets his wife escape and he stays behind.” The song was inspired, Wilson explains, “by Vietnamese refugees I worked with.”

A large amount of women aged over 35 are drawn to the lyrical maturity that seldom comes out of a mouth of someone his age. Partly it’s that Sultan tended to surround himself with older people. “Especially when I was studying in Cairns, I hung with the older students because I didn’t like the kids in my class and they didn’t like me.”

Another reason is that his songwriting partner and guitarist, Scott Wilson, is 15 years older. A 40-something fan described Get Out While You Can as ‘the sort of record that holds your hand while you’re working through some hard times’. Sultan reacts, “That’s an interesting observation. That’s what many of the songs meant to me when they were being written, keeping me company. But different people get different things out of it. Some, for instance, just like the vibe that the band is great, and we’re obviously close friends.”

His career went into overdrive after he met Wilson at a karaoke competition. Wilson was taking a break from playing in rockabilly and roots bands to concentrate on his songwriting, but he noticed something special in Sultan, discovering they shared a love for the look and music of the 1950s. Wilson, who loves tinkering on his vintage cars and motorbikes, plays an old style Gretsch that he saw The Cramps and Duane Eddy play. Sultan’s pin-up boy is the soul singer and dancer Jackie Wilson.

The stage, Sultan says, “is the magical place. It’s all about the gig for me. I love recording, but all the other stuff, the interviews, the traveling, it’s about standing in front of a crowd and kicking its arse, and watching them dig it.”

DAN SULTAN and his seven-piece band play Byron’s Great Northern on Friday May 14 and the Brisbane Powerhouse on Saturday May 15, supported by Gin Wigmore and The Hello Morning. GET OUT WHILE YOU CAN is out now. www.dansultan.com

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