By Jonty Ralphsmith
There are 315 kilometres between Phillip Island and Portland as the crow flies and many more as the penguin waddles.
The penguins at Phillip Island have been known to travel to the far southwest coast of Victoria, but always make their way back to a tourist destination they have iconised.
As the world turned digital to stay connected across 2020-21, Dandenong North musician Samantha Sharpe was among the thousands that tuned in to the penguin parade’s virtual events.
That is when inspiration struck for her most recent song, ‘Home’.
“It was about how much I missed family who lived far away and how I couldn’t wait to see them,” Sharpe explained.
“Penguins travel so far the get to see family in burrows and I got really sad that we couldn’t do that.
“I made it about people being apart and how I couldn’t wait to see my family and how lucky I was to have people that I missed.”
An excerpt of that song is as follows: “I’d travel near; I’d travel far; just to be where you are; I’d travel far; I’d travel wide; just to be right by your side.”
Sharpe’s lockdown story was the archetypal Melburnian’s struggle: family members – her sister and six-year-old niece – lived too far away to visit and she yearned for their company as she watched the penguin broadcast with them.
That single followed her first EP, Gilded Cage, a series of five songs that tell a story of an the emotions of love and navigating a relationship.
Like Home, making her Gilded Cage songs relatable to her audience was forefront of mind.
“It was about being believable, I want to feel the music and what’s being said so it means something to my audience,” Sharpe said.
To write her songs, she leverages off a love of storytelling that saw her initially dreaming to be a librarian as a kid to allow her to read books all day.
Something musical can spark a brainwave for a new song, or it might be a word, phrase or piece of poetry: the notes section on Sharpe’s phone are full of phrases and drafted stories, some that need refining, others that might support another song or perhaps will never be publicised.
It did not take long before it became obvious that music was the best way for Sharpe to express her stories.
“Anything that was elevated was a stage so I was going to own that, that was my space,” she recalled.
“I always had that innate need to jump up and be centre of attention – I would perform to my 89-year-old Grandpa and he would be like ‘what is happening’ but I didn’t care because I loved it.”
By the age of 11, she had written her first song, Play it Cool, which dealt with themes beyond her age including being in a a relationship.
Affirming her confidence and passion, she performed the song at Waverley Gardens Shopping Centre.
She took a couple of breaks from music between her performance at Waverley at 11 and present, even reinventing her reputation when she went to Lyndale Secondary College where no one knew her but always knew music was her destiny.
Despite the warmth it brought to Sharpe, she could never stick at lessons for more than a few lessons, if that, trying guitar, piano and ukulele.
It leads to her occasionally feeling like a novice and has caused one disaster – her first gig with a guitar in hand.
While she knew she was underprepared when she accepted the gig, the opportunity sounded exciting – but the night substantiated that her suppressed apprehension was substantiated.
Playing at Young and Jacksons in Melbourne, she felt like all the eyeballs were on her, foot traffic and a pub full of patrons drinking compounding her stressed state.
She recalled feeling like the sweaty girl in the corner, trying to entertain the audience via her performing rather than through an embarrassing, awkward struggle between out-of-sync guitar and microphone.
Yet to master playing and singing at the same time, she gave up on the guitar as the sound crew packed up while she continued to sing.
Sharpe reflects on the event as a vehicle for growth rather than a source of lingering embarrassment and she is now confident and competent with the guitar after hundreds of subsequent successful performances and much practice.
“Looking back it was the right thing to do because it forced me to get better a lot quicker if I wanted to play at a gig again,” she said.
“I think it made me stronger knowing it can go that badly and I survived nothing really scares me anymore.”
There have been plenty of gigs either side of the pandemic but they will be scaled down going forward as she seeks to move to the next level, turning her attention to private functions and other events.
She closes by saying that she has at least one song in the works and perhaps more coming as she works full-time performing her own songs in between the 80 covers she knows, to support her career.
“The idea of working a 9-5, I can’t do it, I really enjoy being out of the ordinary and not having to rely on other people.
“I’m very big on if you want something, go get it.
“Having the option to fall back on would mean I would fall back on it because I would have the mindset that it’s okay, I can fall back on it instead and I can’t do that – I have to devote everything to this so it has to work out, the universe has to help me out here.”
And like the penguins at Phillip Island, she too wants to expand her wings into a wider ocean of opportunity.
“I’m working on mindset training with my mentor to stop playing small because I want to take this as far as I possibly can.
“I’m really serious about it, and it is the only job I’ve ever had that’s been the right fit so I’d like to do it forever but I can’t stay still for too long – if ever contented I wouldn’t be me so I have to keep pushing.
“I dream of playing at Rod Laver and travelling the world and going to the Grammys that’s where I want to be so it’s about making sure every day I’m doing something that moves me forward.”
