Peach in a Pickle is 20 Years Old

My debut album is online for the first time…..

2003 feels like it is both a million years ago…and only just yesterday.

The US led invasion of Iraq began in March and I marched in my first ever protest in Melbourne. Billboard’s number 1 song was 50 Cent’s ‘In Da Club’ (I still do not think I have ever heard that song). John Howard is the Prime Minister of Australia and I was a young, shy but newly inspired songwriter, looking out to the world and trying to find my own voice with a detuned nylon stringed guitar.

It was also the year I lost my dear Mum to breast cancer at the age of 55.

You see, my family built and ran a small boutique garden shop near the zoo in South Perth for about 15 years and as is customary in most family businesses, I had a full time job in my teens and all throughout my 20’s.

I also studied music and was often taking off around the world on adventures where music offered an excuse to get away from the shop. But there was always the pressure to come home and work the business.

I had just spent the last three summers in New Jersey teaching music at an arts and music summer camp when in 2003 I decided I should stay close to home as Mum was getting sicker with cancer. So in 2002/2003 I lived at home in South Perth, working at the shop (which was only a short walk away), taking Mum to appointments and playing music.

As you would imagine, I had good disposable cash from working full time, so I decided to record a bunch of new songs I had just written after my last trip to the States.

Peach in a Pickle is my debut album of introspective songs, written in one of the world’s most isolated cities and reflecting on the global state of affairs. All the while musing on my own mortality and grief.

I had recorded half the songs by the middle of the year with Rob Grant at Poons Head Studios when my Mum, Susanne Babb passed away at home. Me and family were with her as she passed and we all stayed close for some time after.

This was my first real encounter with grief and I remained in a daze for some time after.

Looking back now, I am surprised that in the later half of the year I managed to write a bunch of new songs, record them and release the album before the year was through. ‘Tears from the Kitchen’ was one of these songs (at the end there is a recording of me playing the family piano as Mum and Dad wash dishes in the kitchen)

There is a song called ‘Fooled by Oska’ which was inspired by The Tin Drum by Gunter Grass and ‘Gett’n’Late’ is a love song born out relationship I was in with a girl from New Jersey (sorry Allegra, I never really admitted this song was about you).

‘Great Divide’ and ‘Thin Sentiment’ deal with some of bigger questions of life and death with the backdrop of the Iraq war (and they are my most Nick Drake inspired songs)

The last song ‘Breve’ is great way to end the album. The steel guitar is strong and confident and listening to it now I feel the hope I was trying to feel, but was too dazed and confused to actually feel at the time.

I do admire how genuine this album is. They are true heart-on-your-sleeve songs and there are lots of flutes!!!

Shout out to Matt Willis who played some amazing double bass and to Rob Grant who produced and recorded this album (and 2 albums that followed). Here he is pictured about 15 years later on one of my visits back to Perth.