Feature artist – Rich Davies

The 6th edition of MOTH’s inspiring ‘Cocoon Project’ goes down on Friday 6 August, shining a spotlight on new work created by Melbourne-based folk artist Rich Davies while in isolation. 

“During that time, I realised that writing has been my go-to, it’s been my sanctuary since I was a kid,” the much-loved Scottish singer-songwriter explains. “When shit got real, that’s where I went: into my cave, my little dreamworld, to write songs.”

But the global pandemic wasn’t the only traumatic event that shook Rich’s foundations last year. “Everything changed for everybody and then I lost my brother, which was terrible,” he recalls. “So I had every reason to bloody escape into my cave. I think I spent most of 2020 in a dreamworld, ‘cause it was just like, ‘The real world’s pretty shit at the moment,’ you know? Just because I needed the therapy of songwriting so bad, there was a general potency of energy. So I just wrote so many songs!”

Rich estimates he wrote “about 30 songs” during last year’s Covid-enforced hiatus, many of which will be premiered during his upcoming Music On The Hill show. 

“I’m really glad for myself that I’ve actually got this method of processing – my songwriting – for my own emotional well-being,” Rich acknowledges. “There were a variety of things that I was thinking about and it was just what I had to do to get through that time.”

Because he’d been “gigging hard” before Covid hit, Rich says he really missed “the human connection” of performing live. “After a show, everybody’s smiling, right? Everybody has a great time and then the next morning you wake up and you’ve got a spring in your step, because you were out the night before. You go buy your coffee in the morning and you start smiling at the barista – you pass on the good vibes, basically… That’s a musician’s job: to just make people a little bit happier.”