Somewhere not far from here.

When the tradition of writing folk music slowly became lost in the wind, perhaps at the turn of the millennium, there will always be a handful of people willing to hold the torch. One being JB Paterson. Just a young man living in Brisbane, Australia at the time.

At 21, Paterson took a strong interest in folk music after hearing the album ‘Times They Are-a-Changin’ by Bob Dylan. About a month later he bought a Sony TC200 reel to reel tape recorder to emulate the feeling timelessness of Dylan. With his new approach to writing, he could write a song or two per day, later recording them and busking with them to see if they were worth keeping. Most of them weren’t so good.

The early songs were never used apart from ‘Days’ and ‘Standing Four Feet Short of the Mile’.

He stated ‘They were the first songs that really broke a barrier within my writing, while they don’t resonate with me as much today I knew I was heading in the right direction.’

Within a year he was in the UK, living out of his guitar case, playing songs on the streets and at open mics when he was introduced to Rafael Pesce of the Spiritual Bar. Originally not much of a fan of Paterson’s music he still gave him the chance to perform at the bar. Not long after the two became inseparable until Paterson returned home to Brisbane 3 months later.

With no money and not much to do Paterson worked a few jobs to save money, ended up lying on a resume and becoming a media coordinator for 4 months until he had enough to go back. At this time he wrote his first album ‘In A Short Time, This Will Be A Long Time Ago’ named after a line in the New Zealand movie ‘Slow West’.

After returning it took about 5 months of performing on a gondola and shows at night to convince Rafael to record Paterson’s debut album. It was recorded in 3 hours at George Martin’s ‘Air Studios’ in Hampstead.

Paterson remained in London working at The Spiritual Bar for the following 3 months but found little financial stability and reason for staying

He returned home to Brisbane again and took up residence in West End for a year with his girlfriend at the time. Later moving to Melbourne but again ran into money troubles immediately, especially when his only acoustic guitar was stolen from the back of his friend’s car.

Giving up hope he moved back to Brisbane and got a job labouring with his dad for a year, throughout this time they began building a studio at a small cabin on his parent’s property in Cedar Creek.

With the money he was saving he began fitting out the recording studio for personal projects. Months later he began recording other artists in the area as well.