A period of inaction leads to a song that’s opening doors for Peter Denahy...
By LAUREN MITCHELL
Singer/songwriter Peter Denahy has plenty to talk about now but that wasn’t always the case. His runaway success track Sort of Dunno, Nothin’, from the new Picture in a Frame album has had 400,000 hits on YouTube since its release. And he owes it all to a severe case of nothing-to-say. Peter spoke to the Bendigo Weekly this week, ahead of a local in-store appearance this Saturday. “It’s an unreal thing. The song took me 20 minutes to write,” he said. “The hard part is getting an idea that’s going to stick with people. “When I wrote the song I thought, ‘I reckon this is going to go well’, but I didn’t plan to actually write it. “For three weeks I was trying to write something and it was dreadfully frustrating.” The song arose while Peter was waiting for some mates to drop by to rehearse some cover songs. “I was going through the conversation we’d have in my mind when they asked me what I’d been doing and I’d say ‘nothin’.” However this former Harcourt local is in no way an overnight success. From 1998 Peter played fiddle, guitar and accordion in childhood hero Slim Dusty’s Travelling Country Band. A regular solo spot on Slim’s show also allowed him the chance to showcase the lighter side of his broad talent and led to the release of the Petrol Head Fly album in 2000. If you haven’t heard it, Sort of Dunno, Nothin’ is a “duet” between a bored teenager and an annoying character, who asks the teen question after question, to which the reply are short, sweet and typical ... along the lines of sort of, dunno and nothin’. Humour plays a big part in Peter’s repertoire, with the very funny Dung Beetle also worth tracking down for a listen. “You write other stuff that you think is going to go well and it doesn’t go as well as the light, throw away stuff,” he said. Peter likened the experience to Geoff Mack’s I’ve been Everywhere. “That was also a throw away song that’s now known world wide,” he said. Peter is really grateful he had writer’s block. He will be at Leading Edge at Centro Lansell on Saturday, May 10 at noon to perform and sign copies of his new album.
