Beaudi Dwan is usually the one working behind the scenes. The 27-year-old electrician works as support crew for major artists and touring acts at stadium concerts across Australia. But recently, Beaudi’s own musical projects have seen him stepping out from behind the backstage curtains. Yelo photographer and occasional word-slinger Ben Russoniello sat down with the Buderim-based musician as he celebrates the release of debut single, “Frames”.

I caught up with Beaudi at his place for an oat milk cuppa and chat about life, touring, music, and Bob Dylan.

Beaudi is a gentleman. And it’s not often you meet a new artist and the conversation just flows like you’ve been mates for 20 years.

For the best part of the year, Beaudi travels Australia as support crew for some of the world’s biggest touring artists, such as Elton John and Foo Fighters.

But despite being able to travel and work behind the scenes, he has big aspirations of his own: to someday have his own support crew.

He describes his style as American-come-dirty-folk-rock.

With hints of Johnny Cash, John Butler and a guitar solo straight out of the Mark Knopfler playbook, it’s easy to put this banger on repeat. 

Ben:

How does it feel to put something out into world that you’ve poured your heart and soul into?

Beaudi:

Honestly, I couldn’t be more proud, because it’s one of those things being the first one. I’m 27 now and my whole life I wanted to be a musician. But in the back of your mind you’re constantly like, do I have what it takes? Can I do this? You know what I mean? Is this just some imaginary fucking dream? Is it real?

To finally have one of my songs, that means probably the fucking most to me out of all of ’em, to be out in the world, after everyone worked so hard on the project for the past seven months, and for it just to be received and just have the most purest fucking outpour of love come back, that is completely humbling. So I was super happy about that, but in saying that as well, in my mind, I just started. So now I’m trying to be like, all right, I need to keep the momentum rolling and keep everything going.

Ben:

The song is powering along! How’s the reaction been from the new fans?

Beaudi:

Honestly, insane. Like I said to you, it’s been two or 300 personal messages of people just absolutely loving and relating to the song and obviously the streams and all the other fun stuff. It is humbling, dude. It’s actually amazing.

Ben:

The song feels very personal, one of those songs that comes along and everyone that listens to it will have their own take away of what it means to them, what’s your inspiration for Frames?

Beaudi 

So, funny story… I was 21 going through a heavy breakup, and fell into the obvious shit of partying every fucking weekend and being around the wrong crew and having all these “friends” – hundreds of friends – every weekend and shit.

And I got to a point where I was like, if I keep this life up, my music is completely gone and I’m going to be fucking dead pretty soon because of how much I was drinking. And so I moved back to my mum’s house out at Doonan (Noosa), and I lived there for a year, and pretty much just cut ties with everyone from my past; all old friends, all habits, everything, and just played music on my back deck and smoked a fuck tonne of weed.

I was sitting in my bedroom singing about the sacrifice you make to work on something you love so fucking dearly, whether that may be yoga or whether that is surfing or whatever that is – we all have that. You have photography and all that. We all have that one thing. And it comes to a point in time if you don’t get serious about that and actually make sacrifice and commit to yourself, it will not go anywhere.

So it’s about that time when I was in my candle-lit bedroom, playing songs to myself, when all my friends were out fucking partying and drinking and having a great time. So yeah…

Ben

So in a nutshell, you where reflecting on your life and putting it all into frame or the big picture.

Beaudi 

Yeah. And that’s where I was deep within this frame of mind, hitting a joint in my fucking room, with a candle, chilling.

Ben 

The production on Frames is on point, who did you record with?

Beaudi

So, Brian, who has a studio called Big Rock Studio in Coolum. He is a Sunshine Coast local, and everyone knows who Brian is, from Solbar. He is an absolute pioneer, gangster and a good friend, which I’m super happy to say.

Ben

I’ve actually been to that studio, it’s quite a cool little studio – good vibes.

Beaudi 

It’s awesome. It is the most humble studio. Everything you need with such a good feel. He’s just such a good dude as well. He never pushes anything on you. He’s just like, hey man, what do you want to do How do you want to do it? He was super supportive, especially as a first-timer. So we worked with him for all the mixing and tracking, and then we sent it all through to Paul Blakey on the Gold Coast, from 12th & Vine Post. He is very good at what he does.

Ben 

You can definitely feel that when you listen to the song, it’s very well produced.

Beaudi 

I’m happy to hear that. I was super in my head about it. I had three different masters to choose between, and that’s the one that we went with because the other ones were very base heavy and there was a completely different feel to the song. And I was about to go with one of the very base heavy ones in the first place, and then last minute I was like, nah, let’s go with this one.

I play rhythmic acoustic on this one and I did the vocals as if I was playing the song live. And then I paid all my best friends to come in as studio musicians. So Pablo Cuevas, my best mate, played all of the chorus, the lead and the harmonics, and also keyboard. And then Ani, she played bass, never played bass in her life on a track, but she just played the right thing.

Ben 

The one you were saying, she’s a guitarist and she just jumped onto a bass for this track?

Beaudi

She was like, I’m playing around with the bass, I’m having fun with it. And I sent her the track and she sent me this thing back and I came around the next day and played it. We’re just like, yeah, perfect. That’s it. And Rob Burr, who was a drummer from Barefoot.

Ben 

I know Robbie Burr, I used to hang around with his younger sister as a ratbag teenager.

Beaudi 

He is great! Small world! He is playing for Barefoot now, but honestly he is the closest thing to a professional drummer the Sunny Coast has to offer. He is so good!

Ben

Let’s not leave out your guitarist. It sounds like you’ve got Mark Knopfler from Dire Straits on the track.

Beaudi

That is the man, Corey Joslyn, who is super present on the Sunny Coast scene, so he did rhythmic. He’s playing electric throughout all the verses, and then also the chorus as well, just in a finger picking kind of way. And then he does that solo, which is just amazing.

Ben

You’re in a unique position as an artist. You’re quite familiar with the touring aspects of the music industry, and working support crew for massive touring artists like John Paul McCarney, Robbie Williams and The Foo Fighters. This is something that most new artists don’t know, they don’t understand, and when they start touring, they flip out, they freak out, I’ve seen it happen. Do you feel like your day job has given you a leg-up and prepared you for this next step of live shows and touring?

Beaudi

Sure. Yeah. It’s probably the most real insight of touring you could possibly ever have. And it’s not fucking pretty, and everyone thinks it’s pretty and shit. It’s not pretty. And it’s like everyone is like, oh, you’re fucking, you’re out doing all whatever the fuck you’re doing. It’s like, yeah, you are working your ass off, you’re not sleeping, you’re not doing much of that. So it’s a very raw insight of the reality of what the industry actually is instead of just having this glamourised fucking, don’t get me wrong, it’s glamorous, it’s great, but there is a lot of shit that comes with that too.

Ben

I’ve been fortunate enough to do a little touring with photography and as a tour manager, everyone’s like damn that must have been so fun. Yeah, yeah it was fun. But im going to sleep for a week now Fuck off and leave me alone.

Beaudi 

Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, a hundred percent. Yeah. I usually do three to four months and I come home, and you cannot talk to me for a week. Obviously, Em (Beaudi’s Partner) knows better than anyone don’t come near me, and I’ve tried to come home and be all fucking go out and do everything and do the thing. It doesn’t work. I need at least seven days minimum of just surfing and running mountains just to kind of realign back to myself and then we can start to slowly have plans again, get back to normal life.

Ben

Sure. You definitely do have a good platform and foundation for when you start touring then. Yeah. When you see these big artists, does it inspire you? What do you get from seeing them perform on such a large scale?

Beaudi 

So it’s kind of like, obviously I’ve worked with some of my favourite bands in the entire world, like Chili Peppers, Foo Fighters, Guns N Roses, all this kind of cool stuff. And it’s funny because in the beginning, the first summer of doing it, you could not touch me. I was on such a high, just like wow. And then the second summer it starts to set, you kind of start to adjust to what you’re seeing on a regular basis, but then every now and then there’d be an artist like the Foo Fighters for me. I am just completely in awe the entire time, the entire show of just like, wow. So I think as time goes on, I start to look at things different, even though every artist I work with inspires me in a different aspect, there’s certain ones within the mix that is just like, I want to do this. This is what I want to do. And it also, you realize that they are just regular people and they play bad sometimes too, and they play good sometimes too. And it is really just about believing in what you do and pushing that in a healthy way.

Ben

Alright, some rapid fires! Favourite artist?

Beaudi:

Of all time?

Ben:

All time.

Beaudi:

Fuck, that’s a tricky too Shaky Graves right now, to be honest. I love Shaky Graves an artist from Nashville and just is a super weird approach to music. And the later I go through life, it’s kind of like, I love that different shit that makes me be like, what the fuck was that? Shaky Graves Angus Stone too. Yeah.

Ben:

What is your go to guitar?

Beaudi :

Cole Clark! Fat Lady two. I’ve had that thing for five years and honestly I’ve probably never stray from Cole Clark ever. Yeah.

Ben:

Dream venue or festival you want to play at?

Beaudi:

It sounds like ridiculous. Blues Fest is huge for me. I know it’s not even that mention that it’s not even really a massive scale thing, but for me personally, I like the idea of doing amphitheatre. Actually, Red Hill Auditorium in Perth. Have you ever heard of that? you should check it out. I like the idea. Or Red Rock as well. I like the idea of amphitheatres, small theatres, nice intimate shit. That’s just like a dope setting thing. Hey, I do all the stadium stuff and that’s great and I’d love to do that too, but it’s not personal. I get more inspired by small shit. Less size than that kind of thing.

Ben:

Last one, any artist dead or alive you could collaborate with? Who would it be? You can say a couple if you want.

Beaudi:

Shaky Grapes. Angus Stone for sure. Kurt Cobain. A lot of my early influence was Kurt Cobain. John Ante from Chili Peppers – guitarist – I would love to have him jam him. That’d be fucking unreal. Johnny Cash. Bob Dylan. This is a hard one. That’s good. I took my mum to see Bob Dylan, he is one of her favourites.

Ben:

He is one of my old man’s favourites too, grew up listening to him.

Beaudi:

Yeah, it was awesome. What’s funny about it though, he does full three hours of nothing that anyone’s ever heard. He won’t play a single hit like on stage. He’s like, that’s my past. I don’t play that. I play what I’m doing now. I was just like, that’s fucking amazing. Yeah. Oh yeah.

Ben:

It’s probably as good as the old stuff too.

Beaudi:

Yeah, it is great. But when you’re sitting there and you don’t know the song you, you’re learning it. You just have To sit there you’ve got to be like, whoa, what the fuck? But if you heard it again, you’d be like, oh, sick. It’s just not familiar. It’s one of them things where you go to concerts nowadays and you sing all the words and you don’t actually experience what they’re giving you a hundred percent because you are giving it back a hundred percent of your energy. So if you’re listening to Bob Dylan play new stuff, you actually have to sit back and take it in, you’ll never see that again either as an experience that you’ll never have again because he’s going to play new shit next time. One guy who I would fucking do absolutely anything to work with, he’s not a musician, but it’s Rick Rubin. That would just be the absolute pinnacle of everything for sure. He’s worked with all of my favourite bands as producer, so yeah, for sure.

Ben:

Sweet. I think we’re all done, man. Yeah.

Beaudi:

Cool. That was fun. That was very much a first time for everything.

Beaudi Dwan’s debut single “Frames” is out now on all streaming services.