Australian singer Imogen Clark discusses new album, famous studios, moving away ahead of Pittsburgh debut

Australian singer Imogen Clark had a memorable first time in Pittsburgh earlier this summer, traveling here to see one of Bruce Springsteen’s concerts.

“It was great, but unfortunately it was a very short trip,” Clark said recently. “We really just came, we had some good seafood — it was delicious seafood — and then we saw the show, and then we had to leave. So we really didn’t see a lot, so I’m looking forward to coming back.”

Clark will get that chance on Oct. 23, when she opens for Robyn Hitchcock at Thunderbird Music Hall in Lawrenceville, with both playing solo acoustic shows.

“I love it. I really love playing with a band, but there is something very special about playing acoustically,” she said. “It feels like you could really tell a lot of stories, you can connect to the audience in a way that you can’t always do when it’s a bigger show. So it feels really like a lovely opportunity to get to know the crowd a bit.”

Having just moved from Australia to Nashville in May, Clark hasn’t done a lot of touring in the U.S., but she’s played plenty of shows in her new city as well as opening sets for Clare Bowen of TV’s “Nashville.” Clark is touring in support of her new album, “The Art of Getting Through,” which just received an expanded edition release earlier this month.

Clark recorded the album around the world, from Nashville to Sydney, with stops at famed sites in Los Angeles (EastWest Studios) and London (Abbey Road Studios). “The Art of Getting Through” is steeped in themes of inner strength, resolve and determination.

“I always say that it’s a record about the fact that the only way out is through,” she said. “So you have to experience things in order to get past them. And while we’d all love to skip the hard part, you just can’t do that. So it’s really about just the fact that you don’t get a fresh start necessarily. But you do get a chance to learn how to push through the adversity and learn from it.”

In a Zoom chat from Nashville, Clark went into greater detail on some of the new songs as well as an ambitious tour from a few years back:

For the song “Squinters,” you described it as your worst nightmare set to music?

That’s really a song about what my life could have been had I not chosen music and gotten out of my small town. Squinters is a nickname that we give in Western Sydney where I’m from to people who work in the city and they work 9-5, because they’re always driving home into the sunset, into the west, and squinting in the sun. So the song really came from that idea of what could my life have turned out as had I not chosen this dream and tried to do something that was a little bit out of the norm for the small town that I grew up in. And so, it’s kind of my waking nightmare in a way. … And there’s people I went to high school with who finished school and immediately got married, settled, bought a house and started having children. And it’s just not for me. There’s some sort of decisions that I know it wouldn’t make me happy. And so I think that’s kind of where that came from.

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Did you have doubters at home? Did they second guess your decision to pursue music?

Yeah, I mean, look, there’s always been people like that. And I think probably anyone in creative pursuit has folks like that who sort of doubt them a bit. And I think in my hometown, I was lucky that I had some great supporters, but there’s always sort of some people that are like, well, what do you mean you’re not going to go to university and you’re just gonna do this music thing? That seems so ridiculous. I’ve always been someone that’s been really driven by spite though. Like I find spite to be a powerful tool if you can use it in the right way. So I always just feel like, well, you know, I’ll show you. (laughs)

“If I Want In” was recorded in a pretty famous studio, Abbey Road Studio. How surreal was that to be in there?

Oh, that was incredible. Abbey Road is one of the most iconic places that I’ve ever stepped foot in. And it kind of feels like you’re in like a cartoon or in some sort of a surreal, like you’re in a movie set or something. You walk in there and it just feels so steeped in history and everything on the walls, records that have been made there and photos of famous recording sessions there, and you just feel like you get to be a part of this incredible history, and that’s so special.

In regards to the song “All Hard Feelings,” have you learned to let go of that baggage or is that something that’s a work in progress?

Look, it’s a work in progress. And unfortunately it is just like, I always say this when I play it live where I’m like, it is just unfortunately who I am. I have just learned that I hold a grudge like no one else. And I don’t think it’s necessarily a good thing, but I just kind of realized that it was something I just wanted to laugh about. And so when I went into the writing session where we wrote that with two other Aussie artists who live here in Nashville, Sinead Burgess and Blake O’Connor, we had such a good time. And I was just like, I just want to laugh about this. I just want to laugh about the fact that I do this. And I think it’s going to turn into a song that’s very me, it has a lot of me in it. And it turned out being one of my favorite songs from the record. So I’m very proud of the song and it’s very tongue-in-cheek. I like laughing about that.

I saw that you did a tour that was 100 shows in 100 days in 2022 in Australia. Did that actually happen? Did you finish all 100?

Yeah, it was pretty insane. And I will say, it was funny because some of them were very versatile. Some of them were actual shows, like in a venue with lots of people or a support gig, opening for someone else. Some of them were little busking things where I’d go and busk outside or I’d go and feature on somebody else’s show. I’d jump up and do one song and it was their show, but I’d hop up. So it was kind of just a very versatile bunch of performances over a hundred days, and it was insane, and I definitely collapsed at the end of it and needed like two weeks of sleep, but it was great and I loved it.