Clancy Pye on the best things about ‘My Hometown’

Clancy Pye is an artist from the Central West of New South Wales who has released several memorable singles, including 'Hey Mama' and 'Days Like This'. Her latest is 'My Hometown'.

Pye grew up in Oberon, a town of around 3000 people, half an hour from Bathurst in New South Wales. Oberon has no traffic lights, one main street and, as she notes in the song, a part-time cop, a detail that says so much and which we discuss in this new interview.

‘Most things got sorted out in the community themselves,’ Pye explains about the part-time cop. ‘People looked after one another.’

That capacity to compress a whole social world into a single precise image is central to what makes 'My Hometown' work and to what makes Pye a songwriter capable of evoking place, people and emotions so well, as she has done consistently over the course of her releases.

‘My Hometown’ emerged during the pandemic years, when Pye wrote around 150 songs. Its catalyst was personal: her parents had just sold the family farm, the only home she'd ever known, and she found herself making more trips back to Oberon, feeling a particular pull of gratitude and loss.

The chorus came quickly. The verses took twelve months and somewhere between fifteen and twenty drafts. ‘I really wanted to go a little bit underneath the surface of what makes little towns like Oberon tick,’ she says. She wanted to write something specific enough to feel true, but open enough that listeners from any small town could find themselves in it, and she has succeeded beautifully at that.

The production was handled by Sean Rudd in Sydney, with Pye's brother Mickey – a guitarist and the founder of a music academy in Bathurst with over 300 current students – contributing a signature guitar riff that runs throughout the track. Drummer Pete Drummond of Dragon also plays on the track.

'My Hometown' is the fifth single from Pye's forthcoming debut album, which is due for release later this year, including a CD edition.

Alongside her own music, Pye has spent the past two years performing with Tania Kernaghan and Jason Owen as part of their Let Your Love Flow tour, travelling through New South Wales, Queensland and Western Australia. She also works as a physiotherapist – a background that, she admits, gives her a particular perspective on the physical demands of life as a touring musician, and we talk about that too. It’s always a great pleasure to interview Clancy Pye, and this time was no exception.

‘My Hometown’ is out now.

Listen to ‘My Hometown’ on Apple Music

Listen to ‘My Hometown’ on Spotify

Listen to ‘My Hometown’ on YouTube

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