Episode Transcript
Adam Burke: Welcome to The Cockatoo, reporting on what Australians are up to in music in the USA. My name is Adam Burke, and we're back from a summer break. Coming to you from Hollywood, California, which is Tongva and Chumash country. In these interviews, we get into musical journeys through the United States.
Today, we are joined by Sophie Payten, who performs as Gordi - musician, singer, songwriter, and doctor, originally from Canowindra, a small town about 300km west of Sydney.
Sophie grew up playing piano and released her first full-length album, Reservoir, in 2017, while still studying medicine. Gordi has been touring the world since she first released music, and often collaborates working with many other artists, including Troye Sivan and Ben Bohmer. Let's find out more about this journey direct from the source. Welcome, Sophie.
Gordi: Thank you. Thank you very much. Well done. Most people from Melbourne pronounce my first album, Reservoir, as if it's named after the suburb, but it is in fact, Reservoir. Well done.
Adam: Right. Well, that's a good start. You grew up in country New South Wales. Tell us about your upbringing, and where you grew up, and what that was like.
Gordi: Yes, I grew up outside a town called Canowindra, which you also pronounced correctly. That's a two from two, because most people say Canowindra. It's a little town of 1,800 people. I grew up on a farm that's been in my family for over 120 years. It was a very-- Yes, very idyllic, lovely upbringing. I spent time riding horses and moving sheep. I'm the youngest of four, and I've got a million cousins. I'm from that sort of country family.
Yes, it was lovely. I got my start singing and playing music in the Catholic Church, which I don't do so much of anymore. It was a nice-- The music there is beautiful. That was my intro, I guess, into singing and playing. Though the country is beautiful to grow up in, you do have a lot of free time on your hands, so I started to fill it more and more with music.
Adam: Right. Your mum was a music teacher?
Gordi: Yes, she is. She's actually a lawyer by trade.
Adam: Oh, very good.
Gordi: Then she had four children. I think her duties on the farm were growing, like she does all the book work, and it helps out there. Over time, she stopped the law and was contributing more to the work on the farm. She also teaches piano at the local primary school, but refused to teach me and my siblings because she said that if she taught us, we'd never practice, which was probably true.
Adam: Yes, wise lady. You growing up on the farm there, your first journey East, I'm guessing was to Sydney?
Gordi: It was, yes. I actually went to boarding school at the age of 12 in Sydney, which was yes. A bit of upheaval in my life, but it was a pretty amazing opportunity. In lots of extracurricular stuff, music included, my mum had grown up in Sydney. Yes, they worked hard to get us the opportunities that school provided. I went there in Year 7. Yes, basically lived in Sydney then for many years, all through high school and on to university.
Adam: Okay. Now, we're going to get into this very fascinating part of your biography, which is these dual careers. You're a doctor and a musician. Try and give us the breakdown of how those two things have related both time-wise and just in terms of your focus.
Gordi: Yes, it is unique, I guess. In high school, when I started at Year 7, The Sound of White by Missy Higgins came out, and I was addicted to that record. That basically took my love of music and singing into songwriting. I started songwriting, was songwriting all through high school, but just never thought about it as a career option. It just wasn't-- I thought I'd do it for the rest of my life, but I just never really entertained it as a career option. I was thinking, "What do I want to do as a job?"
I remember this moment in a science class in Year 9, actually. We were learning about the premise of practice makes perfect, because neurons and synapses are firing messages when you're hitting a tennis racket, or playing a chord on the guitar, and those messages get more and more familiar to those processes. The more you practice, the easier those pathways become. I loved that notion. I became so fascinated with the human body and thinking, that I wanted to know everything I could about it. That started the wheels turning about maybe doing medicine.
I, yes, finished high school. I got into the medical program at the University of New South Wales in Sydney. I took a year off after school, went traveling, and then started medicine. All the while, I'm writing songs in the background, but that's just humming along. Then I was at the end, I think, of my first year of university. In a bit of a full circle moment, I went and saw Missy Higgins play at the Seymour Centre in Sydney.
I was sitting in the audience, and she was playing a song from her first record, Any Day Now. I was just so moved that I left the show that night and thought, "I got to do that." That's what I'm missing, that performance thing that I do at school, but I'd never actually performed out in the world. As my medical studies are continuing, I'm starting to pick up live performance opportunities. This was like covers, gigs, pubs, clubs, whatever.
Around about this time, my sister starts going out with this guy, who's also a lawyer. I'm surrounded by lawyers in my life. He also has a passion for music. He starts helping me book shows. He listens to a few of my songs and he's like, "Yes, you should record these and get these out there." 10 years, or 10 or so years later, he's still my manager. Anyway, he and my working partnership starts to grow. I start to think about recording a song. This is now I'm in Year 2 or 3 of my university degree. I'm saving up my youth allowance checks.
I go into the studio to record a song in 2014. The song's called Nothing's As It Seems. I've saved up a little bit of money at this point, so I do a proper release campaign with the help of my now manager. It's stuff I've never done before, like get a PR campaign and a radio plugger and all this sort of stuff. Anyway, the song gets added on Triple J. That was sort of the beginning, I guess, of this hobby and thing that I love to do, becoming a job.
At this point, I'm in my third year of a six-year medical degree. The final three years of my medical degree are absolute chaos. I'm trying to go to all my lectures and go to all my placements and stuff, and also basically be a full-time touring artist.
My debut album came out in 2017, in August, and I'd spent a month that month touring around the US. Then I got back, I was on tour with Gang of Youths in Australia. The following week after that, in September, my final medical exams began. My bandmates recount stories with me backstage at the Gang of Youths shows with palm cards right before we're about to go on trying to study up. It was a terrible and amazing time of my life. I got to the end, and then 2018, I had a few loose ends to tie up. I was on tour pretty much the whole year. 2019, I took off music largely to just complete my medical internship, my first year of proper work. I did that at Prince of Wales in Sydney. At the end of 2019, I quit my job and thought, all right, back to music full time, had a whole year of touring lined up. Then the pandemic hit.
Adam: Yes, that is unique. We never heard of anyone launching a music career and becoming a doctor at the same time so congratulations on that.
Gordi: Aw, thank you.
Adam: Obviously, the pandemic puts a pretty big barrier right in front of you. What did you do during 2021?
Gordi: Well, I basically had-- Well, as I said, I'd quit my job. I'd moved out of my apartment in Sydney. I was like I had a whole year of touring with the likes of Monsters and Men and Bon Iver all through North America and Mexico. Instead, I was unemployed. I had this album ready to put out in 2020. I was in lockdown in Melbourne by this point because I'd moved down there because that's where my partner's from.
Then in the middle of the year, that record came out, and I played it in full at a show at the Opera House with no audience, which was recorded and livestreamed to the world.In the same week, I did Triple J's Like A Version. As I'm doing these things in Sydney, I finally get a call from the DHHS, like the health government service in Victoria saying, "Okay, we need all the help we can get." Basically, from the middle of 2020, really until the end of 2021, I went back to the hospital
My plan in that period had been to move here to LA, and that was completely canned. Instead of doing that, I was donning PPE for a 10-hour shift in Mildura, thinking, "Wow, this is not what I had planned." That's how the cookie crumble sometimes.
Adam: Well, let's jump to that. When do you actually move to the US?
Gordi: At the end of 2021, as the heart of the pandemic is wrapping up, I guess, I started to come to LA. I've been coming to LA for 10 years but just trips here and there. Basically, from the end of 2021, I started to make a concerted effort to gradually start relocating here. Someone once told me that in the music industry, it takes you 11 times to move to LA, which I think is probably true for most people. It was the same for me. I'd come over and get a house-sitting gig for a few months, and then go back to Australia. I did that all through 2022, 2023.
Then basically from the start of this year, I have had a regular ongoing place. I still think of myself as splitting time, and that time is more and more becoming LA maybe 70% of the time, and Australia and Melbourne 30% of the time. Australia is still a really core part of my business. All my family are there. I also really care about the scene there still and want to still be involved. I'm just trying to figure out the best balance of doing all those things while also doing what's best for my career, which at this point in my life is being in LA.
Adam: Tell us about the personal elements of that move, how it went down. How did you go about it in terms of your relationships, in terms of just practicality of your things and where you put them, getting housing? How did that all pan out for you?
Gordi: Yes, I'm very lucky in the sense that my partner is a musician as well. She and I doing it together, which I think that in itself makes it at least twice as easy, if not more. In real terms, we moved our shit into storage in Melbourne. We basically like-- I think you have to get really good at just living like with the bare minimum. For those first couple of years while we really didn't have any sort of home base, we basically kept a storage cupboard in LA with a blender and a yoga mat. The things that I guess, we say is essential to our living.
We would go on like "The Australians in LA" Facebook page or put calls out on social media and basically find anything we could that was some sort of short stint.
LA is a hard city to live in. You can't jump on the tram and go anywhere like it's-- You've got to have a certain amount of infrastructure set up around you in order to make it accessible and easy, and that stuff costs money. I think that, unless you're in a really lux position, that stuff doesn't come quickly. It's taken us quite a while to build up just enough of that basic stuff that we can feel comfortable in living here and happy.
Through a particular circumstance, we met a couple of friends who are from the States, from California, and they really welcomed us with open arms into their existing community and network. That changed the game completely. That's really been in the last couple of years. I've started to be able to see LA not just the summer I'm coming to work, but somewhere that I can comfortably live and find community and things that are familiar.
Adam: Throughout this journey, you've been talking about a lot of, big tours that you've managed to get yourself on, big collaborations. You've collaborated with Troye Sivan, one of our absolute superstars, S. Carey from Bon Iver, you've worked with him.
We actually featured you on KCRW's Global Beat on a collaboration with Josh Pyke out of Sydney. There's so many more. How have you become so effective at making these connections? What's your hustle?
Gordi: Well, that's the thing. I don't think I'm very good at the hustle, to be honest. I struggle with it. I feel really, to be honest relationships that feel inauthentic to me make my skin crawl. I really struggle with anything that doesn't feel genuine. I think that that's-- Well, I guess the first part of this is talking about those sorts of collaborators. I don't know. To be honest, a lot of those opportunities, I think, have come just from my work. The music I've released or whatever I've done has meant that I've fortunately been invited into some of these spaces. Troye Sivan found my EP in 2015 and tweeted about it, and then we got together and wrote a song for his second record, and then he hit me up again to write a song for a film that he was in.
For Sean, I was asked to, in 2015 or something, I got a random email asking if I would fly over to New York to sing with Bon Iver on the Jimmy Fallon show. It was like I'd won a lottery ticket. Yes, that stuff has really come, I don't want to say it's luck, because I do feel like you work hard and you earn a right to be in some of those spaces. For sure, there's a little bit of luck along the way.
Then on the flip side of that is the LA hustle and being in LA. I think that converse to what I've just said about inauthenticity making my skin crawl, there's something I love about LA in that everyone here is hustling, and you just know that. Every coffee you have, every whatever, someone's probably trying to get something. I think because it feels really upfront, it doesn't bother me as much.
My attitude with all of that in LA is basically to say yes. If someone's invited you to a party, or a coffee, or a session, or something, you just say yes, because even if that, even if the session you say yes to isn't going to manifest in some epic song, it might manifest in a relationship that then becomes really important or creates another opportunity for you. I do think a big part of the pull of LA is that it is the town of serendipity.
You'll be somewhere and someone's at some party. You meet them and they're like, "Oh, you should come and check out this thing next week." Then out of that, you get some crazy work opportunity again. I do think that L.A. is second to none when it comes to those sorts of happy coincidences in networking, if you will.
Adam: Absolutely. A couple of years in now and clear of the pandemic, what's your reflection? Is there anything you'd tell yourself going back a couple of years about the permanent or semi-permanent move to LA?
Gordi: Yes, I think. I'm actually really happy with the way that we've done it, which is in bite size increments. I do think that even though it was a really challenging couple of years where we just felt like we had no anchor, like no home base, we were we just had stuff all over the place. It was a great growth process to just learn to live with that and be comfortable with it. I think that it's good for a person to have all those things, all those comforts stripped away every now and then. It felt like it made me really refocus on my goals, and what I want in life, and why I'm doing all this, because it was so uncomfortable for so long.
I think I'd just tell myself that it's going to work out. Little by little, it's going to work out. You just have to have faith in the process. Say yes to a bunch of stuff that you might not feel like going to, but that you'll meet someone they'll say, "Oh, I know my friend's got a place actually that they're not going to be in next year, which is exactly how it came up that we're in the place we are now. So you just have to be around and be active. Yes.
Adam: In the mix.
Gordi: Yes.
Adam: Well, it's great advice and what a story. It just shows how much one person can achieve if they put their mind to it. Serious congratulations on that. Yes, you've got a-- I'm sure an incredibly and wonderful way to go in your career, wherever it leads you, whether you're back to medicine or continue in music or both, it's a fantastic story. Thank you very much for sharing some of it with us today.
Gordi: Yes, thanks so much, Adam. I appreciate it.
Adam: Fantastic. We've been talking to Sophie Payten who performs as Gordi, a singer, songwriter, musician, doctor, living now in Los Angeles. This is The Cockatoo interview. We are the Pitchhiker Foundation of 501c3. Support us in any way you support nonprofits, but also please share what we do with your family and friends. We hope you enjoyed the chat today, and we will catch you on the next edition.