Paul Greene

PAUL GREENE lives on the South Coast, at Culburra Beach. When the singer-songwriter is not on tour - a rare occurrence these days - he catches up with absent friends and spends time in his garden, pursuing his interest in permaculture. Last year, when he was actually at home for a decent amount of time, his collection of vegetables and herbs contributed something to every meal he made.

"I had a right-wing garden where everything was ordered and labelled in 2008. It looked like something from a Jamie Oliver television show. But this year I have a chaotic left-wing garden because the chooks got into it early on," the amiable Greene says. "It was just as good - I still managed to make my own tomato sauce."

The point, and this applies equally to Greene's burgeoning musical career, is that what matters is to be self-sufficient. As a resolutely independent artist, Greene has grown up outside the boundaries of the music industry, and now the touring circuit he's created show by show has fostered a sizeable following. In recent years Greene has sold 30,000 albums, most notably of his 2008 set Time Over Distance.

It's hard to query his work ethic. Greene, who performs live solo, recently played at Byron Bay's Bluesfest. He then packed up his family (his wife and two children, aged four years and seven months) to drive to Adelaide, beginning a tour of South Australia that started with familiar names and soon got off the beaten path: Melrose, Port Lincoln, Port Neill, Coffin Bay and Parachilna, to name some.

"Honesty is a very previous commodity," he says. "I did a gig in Corowa on the way back, a little pub gig, and it had been a while since I'd done a pub gig. They hardly have cover bands, let alone people who play their own songs, so I turned up loud and after a while the place went off. It's funny how people forget the rules of how they're supposed to react - they just feel it."

Green is 36 but says he feels 25 and looks 45. It's the kind of wry observation that crops up in the lyrics of his music - a mix of philosophical acoustic pop, country rock ballads and roots music grooves. If he's dedicated about his music it's not altogether surprising, given that he has a history of pushing himself.

In the 1990s, Greene was an elite track and field athlete, specialising in the 400 metres. He competed at the Atlanta Olympic Games in 1996, as well as several Commonwealth Games. He would always accommodate his music as well, busking wherever he was competing or training. In 2000, while half-heartedly preparing for the Sydney Olympics, he realised his priorities had changed.
"It got to the stage where the training started getting in the way of the music," Greene recalls. "The planets aligned and it was so blindingly obvious that I just had to concentrate on music. I just started doing it."

Inspired by the likes of self-made American singer-songwriter Ani DiFranco, Greene recorded some songs, pressed up 1000 CDs and started selling them after shows. When the first batch sold out he ordered another. He was self-managed, so events didn't always transpire as intended. An early album, Reset, was barely released because of business-related difficulties, forcing fans to bid for it on eBay.

Although he'd had a Sydney residency as early as 2002, at Glebe's Excelsior Hotel, Greene has developed out of the mainstream's spotlight. Two years ago he took on management and national distribution for his music followed. Now he's writing a new album, with a live DVD also in the works. What hasn't changed is his preference for songwriting over style.

"Something that running taught me is that success is not the goal," he says. "The perception of success is so far removed from playing and enjoying music that it's a waste of time thinking about the outcome at all. I enjoy what I'm doing, as opposed to chasing this far-off thing. A lot of people's idea of success is fame, and that just doesn't work."
- Sydney Morning Herald