The song has no words and no title yet, but Tash Sultana knows it’s gold. “We’ve been playing it live forever,” says the self-made music mogul, cueing up a computer above a massive mixing desk. “Every time I upload [live video grabs] it goes viral. So to me, that’s the indicator that that’s the one.”
We’re sitting inside the artist’s own recording studio in a Brunswick alley. It looks from the outside like a graffiti-scarred, cream-brick ghost: an important illusion when you’ve poured $1.5 million into acoustic design and construction then filled the joint with a small fortune in musical instruments.
The loop-pedal busker turned global festival sensation can play all of them. But when the song-in-progress is unleashed, it’s a collective we hear: a full band which they – Sultana prefers gender-fluid pronouns – will reveal to Melbourne for the first time at the Royal Botanic Gardens in November.
“It’s still a solo show; the band comes on for a section in the middle,” the singer-guitarist clarifies, the astoundingly dexterous one-person ‘wow’ factor having been a big part of their appeal since a multi-layered track called Jungle smashed YouTube eight years ago. Tash Sultana’s streams are now in the billions. Not bad for two hands.
Sultana on stage at Melbourne’s Laneway Festival in 2017.Credit: Darrian Traynor
But the band is significant. Back then, I recall meeting a fiercely independent 21-year-old with a backstory about bad choices as a teenager and a steely will to go it alone. Today, as CEO of a beverage brand, an artist-booking agency and an LGBTQIA+ support charity on top of the music career, community seems to loom larger.
“I was pretty f----ng confident,” the 29-year-old reflects with a laugh, recalling that heady moment of ignition. “But I was not ready. I mean, think about someone that is that young, has all this heat on them, new management, no PR training, no publicist wording me up on nothing. I was just thrown out into the wind … OK, that’s life, but it’s amplified life: on the world stage, for everybody to have a slice and judge.”
From here, the young prodigy’s progress looked like clear sailing. From Hottest 100 hits to American chat shows, from Sidney Myer Music Bowl to Colorado’s Red Rocks Amphitheatre, from ARIA-winning album, Flow State, to the European and American tours that have made hometown shows so scarce since COVID. But the unfiltered superstar sums up the big picture in one word: “Snake-pit.”
“I just presented some awards at the Gold Coast Music Awards ... I was looking at all these young aspiring musos: 17, 18, 19 years old, at the very beginning of all this shit that’s ahead. They’re thinking it’s great. They’ve got the free food and the free booze and they’re all mingling … relationships will be formed out of that night; they’re receiving their first awards and it’s a real special place to be.
Streams of Tash Sultana’s songs are now in the billions.
“And then with time, that can really tarnish because it goes from being about the music to being about a business. And what’s right for your business is not necessarily right for [the ideals] you started with.”
The Sultana solution is control. In partnership with co-manager Regan Lethbridge, Lonely Lands Agency was established in 2019. Today it books shows from the Pacific region to Africa and the Middle East for about 75 artists, including the Cat Empire, Boy & Bear, C. W. Stoneking, Budjerah, Hockey Dad, Ocean Alley, Mo’Ju, Tones and I and, of course, Tash Sultana.
Lonely Lands Liquids is a more recent start-up: a seltzer range built “from the ground up” by the rock star and their wife, Jimi Sultana, who also plays a key part in another related venture: the I Am Me Foundation.
“Fair medical access for people that are trans or non-binary, gender non-conforming, is not generally covered by Medicare,” says Sultana, who describes on the charity’s website the personal liberation of a double mastectomy in 2018.
“Cosmetic, surgical, hormonal procedures; even just therapy, are usually out of reach. A lot of these people go into unemployment because of social backlash in the community. So we provide grants for people to be able to get what they need.”
Sultana’s DJ party next week at Howler in Brunswick is part of a seven-city DJ tour to promote Lonely Lands Liquids and the I Am Me Foundation (the seltzer range is part of the fund’s business plan).
“I’m not telling anyone what they should do or shouldn’t do. We’re just here to financially aid people who have made their own conscious decisions, and there’s a very long screening process that happens before anyone is even selected … The first grant recipient was a 38-year-old trans man who wanted to transition for their entire life.”
Sultana says their own gender-affirmation experience has been “controversial; met with lots of hate, lots of backlash”, from the public, but more acceptance from within the music business.
TAKE 7: THE ANSWERS ACCORDING TO TASH SULTANA
- Worst habit? Checking my phone before I have even truly woken up.
- Greatest fear? It used to be death but now I’m accepting of it being a part of life. You don’t get one without the other. My worst fear has not come true yet and I don’t want to let it out into the open in fear it might.
- The line that stayed with you? It’s a simple one: “It is what it is.”
- Biggest regret? I truly don’t have any that I haven’t gotten over in time. I just don’t want to live with that kind of energy festering at me.
- Favourite book? I have many; I am an avid reader but Sapiens [A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari] would be up there.
- The artwork or song you wish was yours? Didn’t Cha Know by Erykah Badu.
- If you could time travel, where would you choose to go? Back to some of the very beginnings of my career to relive those moments that felt so surreal. I feel very nostalgic at the moment. Maybe it’s what happens when you’re close to 30.
“The entertainment industry is well and truly more advanced in these spaces than everyone else. We’re accepting of what’s not ‘normal’. The kid at school that’s not normal becomes the biggest star, you know? And then everyone wants to be like them.
“Sport? It’s well behind. I have trans friends that play sport. It’s really hard for them. I have trans friends that aren’t even out because they might lose their job. Until you have direct relationships with people like that, it doesn’t affect you. But that doesn’t mean there’s not a section of the community that needs that type of support.
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“I’ve got grandparents, generations way before us, who lived through so much shit, and even they’re on board with it. So it’s just about education and willingness to understand.”
November will mark a year since Sultana’s Instagram announcement of a hiatus from performance. Second album Terra Firma had been widely toured overseas, but not Australia. There’s been the odd, typically very large gig – last month’s Festival Hera in Mexico City also featured Demi Lovato, Evanescence and Kesha – but the coming show at Melbourne’s Royal Botanic Gardens will break a long home-town drought.
“It’s different now. Music is one part of this whole thing, whereas back then, it was just music and ‘we’re gonna go for it’,” Sultana says. “I’m still doing that, but … there’s a broader spectrum of things. My marriage is one, and my family and close relationships, and having normal time surfing and maintaining fitness and good sleep and meditation …
“I mean, album three is happening now. They’re stories. So every piece that I’ve done is where I’m at … People will drop off and new ones tune in, or they tune out and tune back in,” Sultana says.
“And, you know, there’s always the next big thing, and that’s only you once or never. And that’s exhausting. So I just do what I want.”
Tash Sultana’s last Australian show of 2024 is Sunday, November 24, at Royal Botanic Gardens, Melbourne. www.liveatthegardens.com.au iamme.org.au