Kim Churchill on his love for Canada and his next project

Although Kim Churchill isn’t officially a Canadian, the Australian artist has a soft spot for Canada. He’s been performing in Canada since 2010 and this year, he planned his whole Canadian tour around being at the Edmonton Folk Music Festival (EFMF). 

This is Churchill’s second year in a row playing at EFMF. “You never expect to come to a festival two years in a row. You hope you get to come back ever, basically.”

He said Canada’s been a huge part of his life. “I was 20 the first time I came and I just did so much growing up,” Churchill said. “I’m 34 now and Canada’s been an enormous part of me growing into myself so it’s part of me.”

Churchill brings his camper van to Canada and comes for the summer months, admittedly purposely avoiding the snow. 

He just released a deluxe version of an album, It’s Lovely to Have You Here, which he released in October originally. 

“I held some cards specifically for the deluxe release,” Churchill said. “They were things that didn’t quite fit with the album but were part of this cycle of my music.” 

One of the songs was a collaboration with Shungudzo. He said he heard her song “Long Live the Billionaire” and loved it. Churchill shared the song on his Instagram and she thanked him.

“Then she was like ‘we should write together one day.’ And I was like ‘oh, that would be the coolest.” I forgot about it for ten years,” Churchill explained. “And then she just literally walked into the recording studio while we were recording the album.”

He said he only had eight days to record the album and she had a flight to Melbourne, but he thought it was fate. She cancelled her flight and they recorded one of the singles, “Raindrops.” The other song they collaborated on was “The Busking Song.” 

“[It] is an old jam that I used to play when I was busking at farmers’ markets, which is how my career started,” he explained. “I just kept playing it again,  it had been 17 years since I used to play it regularly, but it just started finding its way back into my life again.”

“There’s a beautiful, romantic, mystical, magical quality to treating it like a job,” Churchill says

When writing an album, Churchill said he had a process where he gets up at quarter to five in the morning, lights some candles, makes a cup of tea, and then writes until eight, or longer if he can. He does that usually five times a week for maybe six to eight months.

“There’s a beautiful, romantic, mystical, magical quality to treating it like a job,” he said. “It’s weird, but you just show up. Niel Young said ‘songwriting is the only job where you have to show up to work 18 times a day.’ You don’t want to push it, you have to take a step back a lot as well.”

Towards the end, Churchill said most of the songs are written but he still uses that time to agonize over the finest details. Then when he goes into the studio, he’s free and open.

“I can loosen up a bit and play it a little less than what I’d been playing it at during my rehearsals in order to have that creative flow and freedom and that sort of childlike play.”

For his next album, he’s likely going to be deviating from that process. A friend who was touring in Mexico told Churchill he should come to Mexico and do an ayahuasca ceremony and then record a psychedelic album.

“I have a few different references to Mexico in my lyrics. It’s been quite inspiring to me over the years and it comes up in different songs occasionally,” Churchill said. 

He’s starting to write with that idea in mind and has a working title in mind, Slow Learner. 

“I love the idea of … it being this bright, beautiful ray of sunshine, happy album,” Churchill said. “It’s still scary, you could go on to have an awakening and realize that I’m not meant to ever make any music again. An ayahuasca ceremony could be pretty life altering.”