Jack Nolan is a Sydney singer and songwriter who has a storied music career which began in the 1990s – back when Sydney had a plethora of live venues around the city and audiences to go with them – has included six solo albums and one LP with The Kelly Gang in 2004.

Nolan’s latest album is Songs for Hemingway, which includes the single ‘Mother of All Storms’, which had its premiere on Sunburnt Country Music earlier this year. It’s a tour de force of a song and the album delivered on its promise. The album contains tracks that are elegantly haunting, like ‘Tofino’, and some which are muscular. There is at all times a sense that Nolan pays attention – to life, to songs, to creating in general.

Songs for Hemingway was made with Nashville-based collaborator/multi-instrumentalist/producer Justin Weaver (The Chicks, Wynonna Judd) and Nolan had only instruction for Weaver: no electric instruments were to be used on the record.

In this interview Nolan talks about working with Weaver, and about how he came to name the album for the late Ernest Hemingway. Nolan was inspired by Hemingway’s novel The Old Man and the Sea and the idea of being ‘too far out’ that it evoked – along with pushing one’s limits. Nolan is certainly not an artist who can be said to have rested on his laurels, given that during our chat it became clear that he approaches his craft, and music generally, with an open mind and a curiosity to explore what is possible, which is how it has been since his childhood, when older friends introduced him to the guitar and the joy of playing simple chords and songs.

Although the album is newly released Nolan is working on new music, as he now has time and capacity to do so. It’s almost as if the momentum that ‘Mother of All Storms’ introduced has carried on, and will keep carrying him into projected releases in 2025. But there’s still time to savour Songs for Hemingway and it is, indeed, a perfect album for slow summer afternoons when there’s a little more time to stop and pay attention, perhaps in the way Nolan does himself.

Listen to Songs for Hemingway on Apple Music

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