Greg Steps is back with his latest single, Town without a Face. It's a warm, nostalgic ode to his hometown of Brisbane. A welcome return after some time off and a great first taste of what's to come off his upcoming record due later this year. Hazy Days Music would like to thank Greg for taking the time out and having a chat.

 You released your incredible EP, The Overland, four years ago. What have you been up to since that time? It must feel great to be releasing music again.

So much has happened since I last put out music. My partner and I had a baby. That was a big life event, it’s a cliche, but it’s changed everything. It's changed the way I make music, what I write music about; it's just changed my life. It's pretty time consuming bringing up a kid, everything is done at a slower pace, and you have to be a lot more disciplined about how you use your time. 

It feels so good to be putting out music again. I feel like the last four years, I have been a musician in my head, in my bedroom or garage, but I haven't interacted with the world as a musician other than a few gigs.

Town Without a Face has a warm, melancholic nostalgia about it. How was the experience writing this song? What’s the story behind it?

Town Without a Face, was actually written in the room I am in right now; I'm at home in the garage. Since having a kid, you really have to squeeze it all in between other things. Like when I'm cooking dinner and have pasta on the boil in the next room. It gives me a few seconds to quickly swing in here and start doing a bit of strumming. 

I'm from Brisbane and have been trying to write a song about Brisbane that feels true to my own experience for a long time. I've written five or six crappy Brisbane songs, and I feel like I have finally nailed the feeling on this one. 

I really liked living in Brisbane. I have a lot of fond memories of living and growing up there. I had a good time. I left to live in Melbourne because Melbourne is a cool city, super cultural, and it's great to be an artist down here. But when I got down here, you meet all these Brisbane expats who are slagging it off, saying, Brisbane is so boring, Brisbane’s so this and that, which is somewhat true. It's less happening and less cosmopolitan. I think it would be hard to create a tourism campaign for Brisbane; other than the weather, what are the selling points? 

On the surface, it feels really bland but growing up there. It’s the little things that make it really meaningful. Your memories, friends, good experiences, the fun you had with people, that's what makes a place, rather than cool buildings, hip coffee shops, funky bars, or whatever the stereotype of a good city is.

In addition to your life changing so much over the last few years, have you found what influences / inspires you also change?

My partner and I have been watching the latest season of Master Of None. It was really refreshing to see people having babies, that life's a lot slower, showing domesticity on a TV show.

Often it's lots of young, attractive people with disposable income having fun adventures, and that is cool and exciting, but for me, that's not my life anymore. So it was really refreshing to see that, seeing lots of slow scenes. Like at one point, there's footage of this guy eating a burger for a minute, and nothing happens. It feels pretty true to my life. I think it'd be pretty interesting to watch that season if I wasn't where I am now in my life. I wonder if I would still find it captivating? Like now, I'm watching that, thinking this is riveting, this is my life, and if I was still in my twenties acting funky, would I still find it interesting?

You released a really lovely music video for, Town Without a Face. How was creating the music video and who helped?

It was really fun to make.

Town Without a Face was filmed over Lockdown last year. I'm studying a Bachelor of Songwriting and Music Production, and for my film subject, we had to shoot a music video. Usually, you have access to the school's fancy equipment, but obviously, being in Lockdown, we did it from home with what we had.

I filmed it all on my phone. It looks really lo-fi and not in that "cool old lo-fi vintage way". I think of it as a bad Instagram video. And for me, that's its charm.

I always wanted to release Town Without a Face as a single and make a film clip for it, but obviously, I couldn't go up to Brisbane and shoot the location shots. Back then, I couldn't even go outside the front of my house in Melbourne. 

My partner Sally is really good with crafts and stuff like that. Talking with her, she just said, we can make our own city. We saved up a few weeks worth of cardboard from our groceries and raided our art supplies. Sally's a school teacher, so we had a bit lying around and started to build our own city. It was great having my daughter involved. It'll be interesting to see what she thinks of it when she's older. (Is this exploitative or a really cool mark in time?) I wonder if she will look back on it and say - Hey, I was in the COVID pandemic, and I was one year old with my mum and dad, and this is what we did, and this is what our lives look like.

It was really fun making the city models. My favourite is the train I used to catch to school every day, it says Ferny Grove on the side which is the suburb where I grew up, it's in the northwest of Brisbane.

I’m so glad Sally came up with the idea. It was fun going on a trip down memory lane over Lockdown. Nostalgia is a funny thing. 

How different is your writing process now compared to when you first began?

My writing is really different now, and a lot of it is done on the fly. It’ll happen when I'm driving; I'll think up some lyrics, pull out my phone and type them up (I think it's probably how I'm going to die, haha).

It's just like anything. Once you become busy and want to keep doing something, you find the time and a place for it. Maybe you don't have the luxury of a whole day to focus on it anymore, but you fit it in where you can. 

The process is a lot more fragmented these days. I've noticed my songs have become a lot shorter. I don't have the mental capacity or time to create these folky five or six verse songs anymore, and that's something not on the new album. All the songs are structured more like pop songs and are two or three verses, and that's it. When you are writing in this fragmented headspace, you don't have the mental capacity to write these long, epic songs anymore. It's completely changed how I write songs, and I don't think it's for better or worse; I think it's just the place you are in, and for an artist, you go through lots of different stages of your life, and that's what dictates the work you make.

What can you tell us about your upcoming album? And when can we expect it to come out?

I'm so keen for this album to come out. I'm sick of it! (In a good way, haha). I've just been working on this album for such a long time. I can't wait for it to be released. 

A friend of mine was asking me about how I was going to release the album. If I was going to squeeze every bit of juice out of this album and drag it out? Or release it in one go? And I think I’ll go somewhere in between. I have this single coming out, and I can't wait to see what the reaction is like. Maybe I’ll put out another single after that, or I’ll probably just release the album then. I have this tentative date to release the album in August / September. 

The whole record has domestic themes. It's about being in your thirties, having a family, and having more responsibilities. One of the themes is a bit of a stereotype, you grow up and gain these adult responsibilities, and then your life becomes really boring. Having a kid is so meaningful, and even though I'm doing less and I'm not as funky as I used to be, life is more intense than ever before, even though I am doing less and have no freedom.

Can we catch you playing some shows anywhere soon?

I’ve been really timid / cautious about booking shows. Because of this latest Melbourne Lockdown, I feel vindicated. It just feels like, at any moment, the ground can fall out from beneath our feet. I would love to organise a launch show for the album. Hopefully, things are a lot less volatile then.

Stay up to date with Greg Steps on Facebook, Instagram and Spotify.

Posted on the 7th of July, by Jake Taylor.