One Year Later: Jack River

It’s taken me a couple of years to find the confidence to stop thinking of myself as crazy and bossy. Rather, I am determined and organised.

Welcome to One Year Later, an Industry Observer podcast, presented by APRA AMCOS, where we revisit career changing moments, one year on.

In this episode, Poppy Reid chats to Holly Rankin, better known to music-lovers as Jack River. In addition to hitting the ARIA charts thanks to recent releases, Rankin is the driving force between festivals and initiatives such as Electric Lady and Grow Your Own.

This time last year, Jack River was gearing up to release her debut album, Sugar Mountain, having also delivered a keynote speech at the TIO Awards, and presented the most recent edition of her Electric Lady festival.

One year on from her keynote speech, and a few weeks after the deluxe reissue of Sugar Mountain, Jack River discusses the existence of the tall poppy syndrome in Australia, especially given her role as an artist and business owner in the country.

“For some convict ridden reason, we find it so damn hard to claim our successes, and by nature – in our beginnings – we have a real knack for tearing down great things before they even start,” Jack River noted in her TIO keynote speech.

“With my music – I don’t know if it’s just in my head or not – I feel like what I’m trying to do with my career is a bit different and it’s bold, and I’m trying to do things that artists don’t usually do,” she explained in the One Year Later podcast.

“In the beginning, I really did feel a lot of pushback, and ‘you can’t do that’, ‘it’s too much’, ‘just be an artist and be happy with that’.

“It wasn’t crazily-negative, it’s more just that it’s not crazily-positive, and when I’ve travelled to the sates, they have huge issues of course in their systems, but in their music industry, I just found a really different attitude at the base base level of attitudes.

“If you’ve got an intention that’s different, they’re going to be more inclined to say, ‘oh my God, tell me more about that’, ‘what can we do?’, ‘I’ll connect you to this person’, ‘that’s so exciting’.”

Jack River also discusses how her constant growth as an artist has managed to see her change management teams yet again, as she focuses on achieving her goals and surrounding herself with those that can help support her vision.

“I’m working now with my third management team in my career, which is something that a lot of artists go through,” she notes, “but something that I’ve driven and I’m still really great friends with both my previous management teams.

“But [I] realised at two different points that I needed to change that in order to fulfil, to feel comfortable, that my team was supporting my vision.”

Stream One Year Later with Jack River below: