Folk-roots artist Kim Churchill skips the didjeridu, shuns comparisons to fellow Aussie Xavier Rudd

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED ON FEB. 16, 2011

By Steve Newton

Transcontinental phone connections being what they are, it’s not always easy hooking up with someone halfway around the world, but when the person you’re trying to get a hold of still has his butt in bed, it’s particularly tricky.

After numerous attempts to reach Kim Churchill in Torquay, in the Australian state of Victoria, I had to call in a bigwig—in this case Churchill’s Vancouver-based management rep, Frank Weipert—to rouse him from his slumber.

Turns out Churchill wasn’t recovering from an overdose of Victoria Bitter the night before, as might be expected from any other 20-year-old Aussie surfer-musician. He was just exhausted after having to pull off a three-hour drive from a gig on the Mornington Peninsula to a crash pad outside of Melbourne.

“As soon as I finished high school I bought myself a camper van and left,” explains the slightly groggy Churchill over the phone, ”and I haven’t slowed down enough to find a place to live since then. It’s been almost three years.”

What the Aussie upstart has managed to do in that time is release his 2010 debut album, With Shield and Sword, which is packed with soulful folk-roots tunes and stunning guitar work befitting 10 years of classical training. Churchill wrote the bulk of the disc’s material since celebrating his 15th birthday.

“I grew up in a very small little town and had a sheltered upbringing in many respects,” he explains, “and With Shield and Sword is kind of a metaphor for me going out into the world with just my van and my guitar. But I think that everybody at some stage in their life has a moment where they have to get rid of all the securities and all the protections they’ve got and just wander out into whatever’s going on, and do whatever they have to do. That can lead to horrible situations and it can lead to great situations.”

The horrible ones haven’t been many for Churchill. His only real complaint these days is that he constantly gets compared to Xavier Rudd, another Aussie in the folk-roots realm who performs on various instruments—like guitar, harmonica, and foot percussion—at once.

“It’s been a subject of extreme frustration,” says Churchill, “not because I don’t appreciate and respect what Xavier Rudd does. I think he’s amazing. But that’s not my background—I didn’t go out into the world when I finished high school to emulate what Xavier Rudd was doing. I always listened to stuff like Dylan and Neil Young, Pink Floyd as well—all this stuff my dad was pushing on me.”

Churchill–who plays the Media Club on Wednesday (February 23)–was also sensible enough to avoid adding a didjeridu to his musical arsenal, which would have really invited comparisons to Rudd.

“There was a time when everybody was playing the didjeridu and learning how to circular-breathe,” he says, “and it was very Xavier Rudd–influenced. I thought about doing it, but at that time even I was starting to realize that—as a surfer with blonde hair and a stomp box—playing the didjeridu is probably not such a good idea.”

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