Alan Fletcher is best known as the undeniably genius (who can cure almost anything) Dr Karl Kennedy in Australian soap Neighbours! Dr Karl Kennedy is best known for his constant poor treatment (cheating) of the wonderful Susan Kennedy who quite frankly, always deserved a lot better!

Alongside being one of the most long standing and loved characters on Neighbours, Alan Fletcher is also a musician and a well established one at that. Over the years he has played various styles of music on various projects such as his band The Waiting Room (great name) in which he and his band mates Tommy Rando and Chris Hawker mainly played covers. The band toured the UK 12 times over 10 years to sell out crowds.

Fletcher then went on to do various solo projects including working with Lachlan Bryan & The Wildes. Fletcher met Wildes’ guitarist, Damian Cafarella at a festival in Tamworth and together they worked on Fletchers Americana album The Point. To this day I believe Lachlan Bryan and Damian Cafarella are still Fletcher’s producers.

The Point is a raw and authentic album that holds Fletcher as a high calibre artist. Sonically, it’s stunning from the get go and throughout. A massive John Prine fan, Fletcher cites Prine as a huge influence to his songwriting.

Alan Fletcher is an artist to be taken seriously as a musician. If you are a fan of Americana then we highly recommend listening to The Point. The music is very easy to get lost in with its beautiful musicianship and Alan’s soothing, gravely tone that tells wonderful stories in such a way that makes you truly want to listen. Songs such as Hey You and Jack will pull at the heartstrings, How Good Is Bed will relate and Somebody will have you laughing with your partners!

On September the 8th of this year, Fletcher released his popular comedic track I’ve Got a Crush on Suzie K. The song has been loved by fans of Neighbours for a while, so its release had been eagerly anticipated.

With Neighbours also returning this week (Sept 18th) on Amazon Prime, Alan’s song I’ve Got a Crush on Suzie K is bound to hit even more popularity.

We caught up with Alan to discuss the song, the album The Point, his love for Americana and Country and more!

Hi Alan, how are you?

I am just terrific thank you – I am having a wonderful time talking about music, my passion for Neighbours and all sorts of things!

Where are you at the moment?

I am in London actually!

Are you responsible for the nice weather?

I am, I brought two suitcases and one of them contained the sun!

Haha thank you!

I leave on the 16th so I’ll probably take it with me!

(And yes, the weather went downhill when Alan left the UK)

Congratulations on the new single “I’ve Got a Crush On Suzie K”

Thank you, it’s a bit of fun!

It is! Obviously it has been a bit of a fan favourite for a while now!

Well I only recorded it to be honest Hannah because it was so popular on the Neighbours Celebration Tour. I sang it every night to introduce Jackie Woodburne (Susan Kennedy) to the stage, and the fans just kept emailing me and messaging me on Facebook saying “please release the song, please release the song” so I thought, yep, it’s got to be done, and what a better time to do it than when Neighbours is coming back! It was released on the 8th September and its very rapidly become one of my most downloaded songs.

I am pleased about that! What does Jackie think of it?

Oh she loves it! She has been very supportive. I have got a little video actually taken during the celebration tour where, as I am singing the song on stage to welcome her on stage, she is dancing like a lunatic in the wings to the song. She is very fond of it!

That’s nice to hear. I just saw you on the The Dr Will See You Now Tour in Cheltenham

Did you?

Yeah, it was so much fun!

It’s a great show to do. I am hoping to do a scaled down version of it in Edinburgh next year.

Oh really? When?

August next year!

Oh during The Fringe?

Yes!

Nice! The song is also available on The Lighter Side of Alan Fletcher. Can you tell us a little bit about that please?

Yeah! As I have been recording my Americana/Country-Folk music, I have written quite a lot of thoughtful and serious songs on life and love and my mum and all sorts of things but I can’t resist writing some comedy songs as well. Songs like ‘How Good is Bed’ which is about my love of a good lie-in. ‘For The Love of Lager’, one of my great passions is a good lager! Things like that! The lighter side of my songs, I thought it would be good to amalgamate them all on one CD. I put ‘I’ve Got a Crush on Suzie K’ on there as well and another song called ‘I’m Sleeping Alongside of Susan’ which is ‘Living Next Door To Alice’ with new lyrics. That was very popular in my Waiting Room days when I was performing rock music. It’s an opportunity for fans just to get hold of those lighter songs that I have written. I have popped that up on the shop on my website for people to get if they are interested!

You describe your sound as Australian Americana.…

Oh it’s interesting that! Americana is a very broad church as I am sure you know! I think that country music and Americana have lots of crossovers and I think in Australia we have strong crossovers between country and Americana as well. Australian country music is fundamentally homegrown. Australian Country is quite specifically Australian. That affects the Americana sound and the lyrics and what people write about. I like to think a lot of my music is Australian influenced in the songwriting. I have just written a country song, a country Christmas song because I love doing Christmas songs. I have written a country song about a typical Australian Christmas as a bit of a new slant on that, which we have just recorded.

That sounds amazing. It’s summer in Australia at Christmas isn’t it? So that certainly will be a new take and very Australian.

Summer yes and is generally very hot. We generally have a lot of seafood and at the same time as a complete in congress thing, we have the full Roast Dinner with Yorkshire pudding! It’s a really interesting mix of traditions.

Country and Americana, as you know, is huge in Australia. You have so many wonderful festivals out there and of course you have Keith Urban and Morgan Evans who are prominent in the charts.

CMC Rocks in Brisbane is massive. I haven’t played a lot of festivals in Australia yet. Getting on to the festival circuit is one of my great ambitions. I am slowly plugging away at getting on the festival circuit. Here in the UK too.

Have you heard of The Long Road Festival?

I have yeah! Very much so!

You have to play there, you will love it!

I try to come to the UK each year at different times so that I can go to some of the festivals.

There is a stage at The Long Road Festival which is one of the best stages I have ever seen and very unique. The Front Porch, it’s basically an old wooden house, one story and has smoke coming out of the chimney and the artists play on the front porch.

Oh amazing!

On Australian artists, I am actually quite a big fan of Tori Forsyth.

Oh she’s wonderful! One of my favourite Australian artists is Melody Moko! I would love the British Americana public to hear Melody Moko live, she’s fabulous!

We know you are a John Prine fan but who else within the Americana/Country genre are you a huge fan of!

Well I am John Prine nut! I write in the style of John Prine quite a bit. There is so many, Isbell is a bit hard to go past, Jason Isbell – He is quite remarkable. People say they can pick up Dylan influences is some of the stuff I write as well. I was also a huge fan of the TV show Nashville! It’s very interesting keeping an eye on people such as Charles Esten and so forth! If I go through a dance through my playlist, it’s an endless stream of favourite Americana artists. On my profile, I created a playlist of Australian Americana from my favourite Aussie’s. There’s a band called The Weeping Willows who tour here (in the UK) quite a lot. They are a two piece who I adore. One of my favourite artists of all time is Shane Nicholson in Australia. I thoroughly encourage anyone to listen to because he is remarkable. Lachlan Bryan is my producer, he is from Lachlan Bryan and The Wildes and his band are a preeminent Americana band. Mary Gauthier is one of my favourites.

You mentioned Nashville and of course Clare Bowen who played Scarlett is an Aussie.

Oh Yes!

Her and her husband Brandon Robert Young have started an Americana Duo together called Bowen*Young!

I wanted to talk about The Point! That’s a great album!

Thank You!

I particularly like the song Jack!

It’s interesting that you say that! I have just put it out to the Tamworth Country Music Awards as a Bush Ballad. They have a particular category called Bush Ballads. They have very strict entry requirements so hopefully I have met those requirements. Jack, the song is about my Grandfather. When I first came up with the lyrics and started writing it, my wife was listening to it and said “oh this is very boring”. I said “no I believe in this song and I believe it’s got life. I played it to my producers and they said “now this is fantastic!” So when we produced it and put it together, after we finished it my wife was listening to it and said “that’s one of my favourite songs on the album”. It was funny like that!

My Grandfather was an old fella who I only really knew as an old fella. I used to go up to his farm and he would sit in his rocking chair listening to Blue Hills on the radio and then he would go the pub and have a drink. He would take us kids along and we would play at the old war memorial there. He was very Aussie – Aussie Wheat farmer. After he passed away, I started doing a bit of digging and I found out all sorts of things about him that I didn’t know. He fought in the First World War at the age of 15. He got my grandmother pregnant out of wedlock and had to marry her in a big hurry. He got sent away to a little tiny country town that literally had only one building standing there and he had to really peak out a living in this non-existent place. He had such a rich history, so I kind of expanded on that and extrapolated it and came up with ‘Jack’.

Thank you sharing! It’s one of those songs that makes you wish you asked your Grandparents more about their life!

I think for me, the one thing that comes out of it with Jack is that we don’t spend enough time interrogating our elderly relatives now about their life. It was so easy to think of your grandparents as being a couple of endearing older people, forgetting that they lived very rich and interesting lives.

You mentioned that your wife really likes the song Jack but what is a family favourite of all of your songs.

Well I adore doing Somebody with Jennifer. She sings that with me. Jen plays piano in the band. We sing together a lot. Somebody was a song that we kind of developed together. It comes out of the fact that we joke about the fact that a lot of marriages get into trouble because people start blaming each other for things. So we jokingly now, if we want to remind our partner that something needs to be done, we say “somebody left the door unlocked” and “somebody did this and somebody did that” without naming names. It’s good because what it does is it diffuses the situation and makes it comic. We love doing that song together!

My favourite song on the album is probably ‘Hey You’, about my mum because she was a spiritualist who always said that she would be there looking down on me after she was gone and sending me power and most particularly guidance. I have always hung on to that. The song is a call out to her just asking “are you there? Can you give me a sign that you’re there?”. That has always meant a lot to me that song. Along with The Point which is a love song for my wife.

Your wife is also very funny! I really had a good time at The Doctor Will See You Now show and enjoyed you both performing ‘Somebody’ at the end!

Thank you! We have a great time together and music has really been a big part of our last few years. It’s a real joy and a real privilege in fact. Even if I had absolutely no success in music whatsoever, I would still do it just for the opportunity to play with her.

Awww!

You are so familiar with the UK now, you must have some favourite places to go? A restaurant or somewhere?

Oh well I am a bit addicted to getting a steak at Gaucho, they do nice Argentinian steak. In terms of where to go in the UK, I love it up north! I am very much a heart and soul Yorkshireman as well as Liverpool. I follow the Liverpool football club so if I get a spare moment, I will always try and go up there and see a game. There is so many places in the UK that I love to go. Cardiff is a very special place, its endless for me because the country is so spectacularly diverse. It’s so different from Australia. In the UK you can travel 20 miles and the accent changes and the attitude changes, the scenery changes, it’s beautiful!

That’s very true!

When are you back to the UK? Is that planned yet?

Yeah, I am working on it right now with my booking agent. The plan is for July next year.

Thank you so much for talking today, it’s been lovely so thank you!

Thank you so much Hannah, it’s been an absolute joy to chat!