QSC Aspiring interview: Majelen on turning the open road into a stage

Step into Australian artist Majelen's world of music, where every strum of her guitar echoes with the passion of a wanderer's heart. Her sound is a vibrant tapestry woven from Ani DiFranco's lyrical fire, Ed Sheeran's looping brilliance, and a touch of acoustic charm that's uniquely her own.

A graduate of the Conservatorium of Music, Majelen's journey began with jazz guitar, but it's her love for the raw energy of acoustic music that defines her artistry. 

Beyond mere sound, Majelen's music is storytelling at its most captivating. Her debut album, Stuck With You, recorded at London's Abbey Road Studios, marks a new chapter in her musical odyssey under her label, Liondance Records.

In this interview, the singer-songwriter reveals what it takes to make it as an independent artist, which is her favourite song to perform live, and why she doesn’t want to write sad songs.

Could you introduce yourself as an artist?

I'm Majelen. I'm an Australian, if you haven't already gathered, and I am a percussive acoustic guitarist and a singer. I have a loop pedal, and I travel around in my bus, which is where I'm sitting now – this is my house that I've lived in for the last three years. 

Myself, my wife and our dog travel around Australia and play shows. When we're not in Australia, we're overseas playing, and that's my life!

Which artists have had a profound effect on you and your artistry?

This is going to be a little random. My original inspirations were people like John Butler, and I loved Red Hot Chili Peppers and Tommy Emmanuel. I went through an Incubus stage in high school, so that was where it all started from, and that shaped it a lot. 

I studied jazz at uni, so I still love jazz music. At the moment, I love Ariana Grande and Mariah Carey's early stuff. Their voices are insane. I also love pop music. 

I love Ed Sheeran and his stuff, and obviously, he's a big inspiration for the looping thing. I listen to a lot of poppy dance music too. 

All of my jazz friends from uni would be like, ‘What is this?’ But I don't care. It's music and it makes me feel good!

Can you describe the moment that you knew music was going to be the path for you?

It was probably when I started playing the guitar. I remember the moment that I learned how to play a G chord. I love playing drums, trumpet, and I play bass, violin and piano, but I just love playing guitar for some reason. 

I found a guitar in my dad's shed when I was 13, and a week later, I was playing chords, and I thought, ‘This is amazing. I have to do this forever.’ For some reason, a fretboard just makes sense in my brain. I love it.

Later, I studied a degree in jazz guitar when I was 17, and from then on, I was a guitarist in bands. I never really wanted to sing because I was too scared, so I just played guitar. 

After a while, I realised that I could say more if I used words, and I could convey deeper meanings and tell stories. So I started my solo thing, but I still wanted to have a big sound like I was in a band, because I love dance music and I love rhythm. 

I love anything that gets people feeling a bit groovy. I've constantly been trying to figure out new ways to have rhythm and that is a huge part of what I do. You can do so much with the acoustic guitar in particular; you can get so many sounds out of this one thing. The possibilities are endless.

Where do you draw your inspiration from for your songs?

On the album that's currently out, there are a lot of songs that I wrote years ago about experiences backpacking and working on farms here in Australia. The album's first part is about that, and then the second part is about when I met Courtney. The song Waiting is the song I wrote two weeks after I met Courtney.

I was going to use Stuck With You to propose to Courtney, but then she beat me to it and said it, which is fine. I still got what I wanted! [laughs]. The music video is footage of our wedding day. So, instead of an engagement song, it became a song to celebrate us getting married. 

That whole album is a mix of things, but it's pivotal points in life over the last few years. The new stuff I'm writing is about travelling around the world with Courtney, our experiences, our relationship and things we see, and the world from my perspective. 

I try to keep things really happy and positive. I don't want to write sad songs, because there are heaps in the world. I'm not really a sad person.

What’s it like being an independent artist in the industry today?

My to-do list is freaking endless! I never feel like I get enough work done. I'm booking my next tour at the moment, and I'm also recording my next album. I recorded my last album at Abbey Road. Well, I didn't record it, but I mixed and mastered it. 

I've decided I'm doing my entire next project on the bus, because why not? Then you’ve got to figure out PR for stuff, and social media is a full-time job just on its own. The to-do list is cray cray. But at the same time, I have complete control over my own destiny, which is fabulous. It makes me feel like I could literally do anything.

For instance, I want to go to Bali next year, so I'm just going to book a tour in Bali, and we’ve got some friends who are going to meet us over there. They're Canadian, and they're in a band, and they're going to come and we're going to tour Bali together. 

My wife loves Japan, so I said, ‘We'll go to Japan and we'll do this project,’ and I've just started up another YouTube series that we're running on the bus too.

Courtney and I have too many ideas, so it’s about finding enough hours in the day to do all of them! You can do whatever you like. And because of social media, we've got so many opportunities to turn these ideas into something really awesome and really big, and no one's telling us that we can't.

What is your favourite song to perform live?

It's called Everything. It's not out yet, but it's gonna be on the next album. I wrote it for my wife because a lot of people know what it's like to lose someone they love. There was a time when I loved someone, and she died. I got the phone call saying that she'd passed away, and experienced that feeling of complete emptiness and, ‘Well, now what?’ 

Then you’ve got to get up in the morning and go to work and continue with life as though nothing happened, but something just completely destroyed your universe and your whole future has changed.

The feeling of being in that situation is horrible, and it's something that so many people experience. I know for a fact that no matter how much money I could ever earn, or any achievements I could create and gain for myself, or any accolades, none of that matters in that moment. There's nothing that you could do to bring that person back, but you'd give everything to try.

Now, I have my wonderful wife, Courtney, who's incredible. I'm so lucky because I've got love in my life, and that is everything, so I wrote a song called Everything for Courtney.

Tell us about your love of the loop pedal and how that has become a signature part of your live performances.

I'm using Ed Sheeran's loop pedal these days. He's got a company that makes the Looper X, which is the big one, which is very similar to the one he uses on stage. 

Then there's a small one, which is the BOSS RC-30, that's been out for a long time. I had the RC-30 up until I bought Ed Sheeran's one, and that opened up so many doors.

I freaking love it because I've got three outputs from my guitar, so they all go into there, and then my backup vocals go into there. I can layer things the way Ed does now and build songs. It's super fun.

What is the proudest moment of your career so far?

Recording at Abbey Road was very cool and an honour. It’s one of the most famous studios in the world. It's got so much history. I sang into the same microphone that Ella Fitzgerald sang into, and it was the same room that Pink Floyd did Dark Side of the Moon, and Amy Winehouse recorded in the same space for some of her last stuff. 

It was one of those moments of being like, ‘I have no idea how I got here, but this is cool!’.

What can you tell us about the new album at this stage?

I'm excited about my new stuff. It's a little bit different, but it's still the same sort of vibe, but a little more poppy. It's nice for me to start to think about the newer stuff because I can move on with my life. 

I'm constantly like, ‘Alright, what's the next thing?’ I'm really glad that the album's out and that it's a little snapshot in time. I'm already looking forward to the next step.

As you’re travelling lots to perform shows, what technology do you rely on for gigs on the road?

I use QSC because they're an amazing company, and they're a bunch of awesome humans. I recently got the KC12 column speaker with the sub, and it sounds amazing. I've got the TouchMix8 mixer too, and I've also got the TouchMix16, which I use as well – not just for live gigs, but also for our new YouTube series.

It's got the ability to record straight from the desk, and it sounds super clean and amazing, and it's so easy to use. That little 8 mixer is enough for what I do – it has so much space! I

can save templates for myself, or when we're on tour and I've had shows with other artists for consecutive shows in a row, I save a general scene of their set and what they need for them and their band.

You have to adjust it for the room, but it's half done before you even get there, which is super cool. It all sounds amazing. QSC stuff is where it's at.

What does the phrase Play Out Loud mean to you?

It's an opportunity to connect with people, because we're all so on our phones, and obviously there's streaming and you can listen to music everywhere, but it's different when you're actually in a live situation and you're playing out loud in person, and there's actual humans in the room.

Having that human connection is a conversation. I'm giving energy out to the crowd. I love lively crowds that are making noise, and they're yelling back at me and doing the dance moves, because it feels like a conversation. 

It's a cyclic thing we're all sharing together, and we're all part of that moment. It's not really about me performing; it feels like we're all creating a good time together. That's what playing out loud is about.