Ricky Green is a familiar sight around the nightspots north of Mandurah.
The Secret Harbour native physically embodies the place: his long, bleached blond hair and beard tell of his love of surfing, and his manner of speaking shows a deep connection with the ocean.
It’s partly for this reason Green has become a fixture at pubs around Secret Harbour and other suburbs north of Mandurah, we’re an acoustic guitar and ability to tell vivid stories is well-received.
Green has spent years gigging locally, but for various reasons has not released any new music for a very long time – his debut EP, the first taste of his heartfelt and subtle brand of surf folk, was released years ago; since then there’s been three solid singles which have given hints to his direction, but not much else.
That time, it turns out, has been instrumental in Green finding his voice.
“That first release, I was so young. I'd only been playing music for two years at that point, so I didn't really know what I was doing. It was a steep learning curve,” he said.
“Since then I’ve mainly just learning, basically.”
“I've been playing as much as possible, in both studios and by myself. I've been doing demos and trying to work out the best way to get songs down, and I guess in that working out what I want to say.
“When I started, I was singing a lot softer, and my technique was pretty terrible.
“I think I was also… scared of writing and singing about what was really going on in my life. These days I think I’m a bit more liberal with that.”
A large part of Green’s time away from recording, maybe obviously, has been spent surfing; he spent two years travelling through Europe,the U.S and Indonesia, a journey which undeniably energised his creativity.
Inevitably for someone who’s music is so tied to their hobby, Green ended up writing as he travelled, originally bringing recording equipment with him to Indonesia.
And then his house was broken into.
“I lost basically everything,” Green said.
“I had the EP basically ready for release this time last year, and then I lost all of my hard drives, all of the masters, a lot of recordings. I was basically back to square one.”
Arriving back home, he basically only had one choice: record the entire EP again.
Rather than being a hindrance, though, the loss of basically all of the material for the upcoming EP forced Green to go back to the drawing board and see his work from a different perspective.
“It was actually a blessing, really, because I got to step way back. I didn’t have anything left, so I sort of had to re-discover my own songs again.
“In the end, some songs remained completely the same, and some ended up completely different.
“Each song on the new EP tells a story, in a sense, but there form over a long, long period of time, and from a really crazy range of places.
“It’s been pretty scary because some of these songs, they’ve gone in directions I never thought I would go. But I’m glad they did.”
Ricky Green’s new EP These Are The Good Old Days is released digitally on iTunes on July 7.
Green will tour in Summer 2017: check his website and Facebook page for event updates.
