OLD MAN RIVER interview

Here is my interview with Ohad Rein (aka Old Man River) that was published in this week's edition of The Brag...

Ohad Rein is having a hectic day. The Old Man River star has spent several hours sitting in traffic, criss-crossing the city for radio interviews and now he’s running late to meet me. That’s a hassle, for sure, but it’s nothing compared to the pressure of releasing his new record on a major label (Trust hits stores on 10 September) with big money gambled on video clips, overseas recording studios, advertising and so forth. Make no mistake: the heat is on. Yet when Rein arrives at Brag HQ he looks as if he doesn’t have a care in the world. He finds a couch, reclines back and then explains why he’s so unfazed.

Firstly, he’s used to being on the move constantly. Although Rein was born in Sydney, his family soon moved to the Netherlands and then Israel, where he grew up. Secondly, he’s handled far greater strain than anything he faces today. At the age of 18 he was conscripted for three years of mandatory Israeli military service. “It was pretty hard for me,” he recalls, “I was a musician beforehand, a free spirit. The army is the most extreme thing that can happen to someone like that. You have to cut your hair, wear a uniform, be on time and take orders from arseholes. I didn’t have enough time to play or practice music. The first year was very traumatic for me. I was depressed.”

But two more years gave Rein time to reflect and find ways to cope: “At some point you realise it’s all a charade; people wearing uniforms like masks because they have to play this game. I found a sense of sanity inside my mind. Even though I wasn’t allowed to leave the base at times, I was free inside my head.”

And suddenly a day stuck in city tunnel traffic doesn’t seem so bad.

After the army, Rein escaped to New York: “It was an amazing time. My writing ability improved enormously, I had a band, I was doing well - but then I started getting these dreams about India, this fairytale land. It was like a real subconscious drive.”

These visions turned out to be prescient. Rein has been going back and forth to India ever since. The country made a huge impact on Rein’s music, most notably on Trust, which was partly recorded in Mumbai: “I’m very inspired by an Indian musician called Jagjit Singh. He has the same quality control as The Beatles – everything he does is good. So we hooked up with his producer, Daman Sood, and he put together this amazing ensemble of Indian musicians. I deliberately omitted the sitar and tambura on this album because everyone already knows about those. Instead we’ve got more exotic things like the sarangi and santoor [both string instruments]. It was an incredible experience.”

But the international flavour of Trust is not limited to India. Rein returned to Israel to record piano and keyboard tracks in a former atomic bomb shelter-turned-recording studio: “It belongs to this crazy classical player. He’s got a Steinway piano in this room that was meant to be used if doomsday comes. It was pretty weird,” laughs Rein.

In fact, Rein seems to attract oddball musicians. Old Man River recently toured as backing band for Daniel Johnston: “Oh, he was a psycho! Off his fucking nut! Nothing was normal about the tour with him. We never knew what song he was going to play next or in what key – sometimes the set was 10 minutes, sometimes it was an hour. But he writes beautiful songs and it was a great experience for us – we were always on our toes!” Another of Rein’s friends is Aussie eccentric Luke Steele (The Sleepy Jackson, Empire of the Sun). Steele and Rein go way back (both were part of 2004 supergroup Nations By The River) and Steele remixed an Old Man River track on the recent You’re On My Mind EP: “When I first met Luke I didn’t know anything about him. I just saw him as a brother, an amazing songwriter. I didn’t encounter that ‘mad man’ thing at all. Sure, he can be unpredictable but that’s because he’s one of these rare characters who just constantly channels creativity.”

The new album is full of other notable collaborations, with co-writing from Gelbison’s Edo Kahn (“We’re childhood friends,” explains Rein) and production from You Am I producer Wayne Connolly (“The most chilled out dude in the whole universe”). Strings were arranged by Ori Avni in Israel before mixing duties were completed by Tony Hoffer (Beck, Air) in the USA. Which means, by my calculations, that Trust was created across four different continents.

With that sort of approach, it’s no wonder then that Rein’s music has sold in all corners of the world, even in non-English speaking countries: “My music was mainly introduced overseas by one song: ‘La’ [from debut album Good Morning]. The simplicity of the song helped people relate to it, and then they got into the other songs from there. You can tell, even if they don’t get the meaning of the words, they get the spirit. Whether we play in Italy or Japan, we always get the same crowd reaction.”

Rein is living proof that music has no borders. As he gets up to leave, I ask him where his hectic schedule is taking him next. I’m expecting to hear “Rushing to another interview across town” but instead he beams: “India! I’m going back to India next week.” Globetrotting again huh? I should have known.

Article by Andy McLean. Copyright held by author.
First published in The Brag, Sydney, September 2010.

Trust is released through EMI on 10 September.
Old Man River is touring Australia during September and October.