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Filed under: Australian Idol, Image, Music, Wes Carr

11 comments

What’s in a name? According to Wes Carr, a lot. Who? I hear you ask. My thoughts exactly.

Not content with covering his guitar in old stickers to make it cool, this man is now having a personal image makeover too

The 2008 Australian Idol winner has been so tormented by the publicity (I use that term loosely) that generated the “character” of Wes Carr that he has been forced to perform under a different stage name in order to release his own music. That name…is Buffalo Tales.

Seriously. I’m not sure whether I should laugh out loud or laud.

Carr’s Idol win was one marred by bouts of anxiety, culminating in a nervous breakdown on a flight to Nashville which he claims was the “D-Day that ended it all”.

“I freaked out..I got out of my seat, walked up to the air steward and said: ‘How do I get off this plane fast?’” he told the Herald Sun.

“That was the moment I learned if you keep being untruthful to yourself, you end up in trouble.”

Under Sony Music, Carr scored an ARIA Number 1 with his debut track, You, and an ARIA Number 2 album with his second album, The Way the World Works. With their powers combined, he received a fair amount of success.

Fed up with Sony’s poptacular demands, he left the bigwigs in 2011 and is now releasing music independently. But without their support, his August 2012 EP, Blood & Bone, didn’t even rate on the ARIA charts.

At a meditation course I attended late last year at which Carr was a guest speaker, he spoke candidly about his anxiety and his troubles dealing with the pressure of fame at the height of Idol.

I couldn’t help but empathise for this man who so obviously lost his way during a time which should have been the most memorable of his life. Instead, it was filled with addiction and anxiety.

Luckily, he found peace in spirituality and is now an avid transcendental meditation enthusiast, which without he claims “I’d be sitting here wearing a straight-jacket”.

It’s a shame really. At the time of his win, Carr was a ruggedly smooth alternative musician, he had the charm of Guy Sebastian combined with the soul of John Butler. Australia loved him.

Now, he fits the typical Idol has-been cliché, whinging about the opportunities he has been afforded to help him achieve his dreams. I hate to say it, but it all sounds a little selfish.

Australians are empathetic, but when news breaks that an ex-Idol winner changes their name to something that has been ripped from a B-grade cowboy flick, our sympathies begin to stretch.

“I’m sick of that character. It is tainted.” OK, OK, we get it.

My advice? Ditch the Buffalo hoo-ha. Be thankful for what you have, accept your past, express your gratitude and find a new angle to score some publicity.

I for one, am tired of the moaning.

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11 comments

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- Knemon says:
  
  03:19pm | 13/02/13
  
  “I for one, am tired of the moaning”
  
  Moan about moaning…way to go Matt
  
  Reply
- SM says:
  
  03:24pm | 13/02/13
  
  We used to see him at The Robin Hood Hotel in Waverley before he went on Aust Idol. He was brilliant.
  
  Reply
- Andrew says:
  
  04:24pm | 13/02/13
  
  Reporter wannabe thinks he’s a life coach.
  
  Reply
- Mich says:
  
  04:26pm | 13/02/13
  
  Ummm, if he’s trying to disassociate himself from his former name, why seek out publicity on the decision?? What a tool.
  
  Reply
- stephen says:
  
  05:24pm | 13/02/13
  
  All our buffaloes are water ones.
  Do they tell tales, or are we supposed to make them up ?
  
  Funnily enough, only today I received in the post a blue-ray which I’d ordered called ‘Jeremiah Johnson’ which is a mountain-man film I remember seeing when it was first released, and on the cover is a picture resembling the chap up there.
  The film was based on a real MM who ate animal liver raw for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. (Jim Crow I think his name was.)
  
  I’d like to say that I know what he’s going through, but I, unfortunately, never played the guitar.
  Everyone wants to turn their back on something you know and be a rebel, a hero, and then to be anonymous and start all over again - except I wouldn’t, now, want to turn back the clock to ‘72 and want to be again a mountain man.
  
  Besides, Neil Young and Stevo would get mighty pissed off that the frilled buckskin was to be worn by an Aussie who got silly on a plane and wanted off.
  (‘Don’t sound like 4 & 20 to me’, they’d say.)
  
  Reply
- iansand says:
  
  05:28pm | 13/02/13
  
  What this article lacks is any explanation as to why I should give a shit. Let the bloke do what he wants, without burdening him with your expectations.
  
  Reply
- Joe Blow says:
  
  05:39pm | 13/02/13
  
  Wes was a nice guy. But some people just aren’t cut out for the constant attention and demands on your time that come with success.
  
  What does pi55 me off tho’ is musicians who want the money and support from major music corporations, but don’t want to actually produce a product that will sell.
  
  Can you imagine turing up for your new job and saying, I’ve decided I’m not actually going to do what I signed up for - I’m just going to do my own thing. I’d like you to keep paying me though.
  
  Reply
- chirpy chirpy cheep heep says:
  
  05:39pm | 13/02/13
  
  Aria awards and idol are about the entertainment industry and Wes Carr wishes to move back to music but he seems to hae retained the mindless PR idol spews out.
  
  Reply
- Whoah says:
  
  05:57pm | 13/02/13
  
  Wes Carr, the Idol winner, was an arrogant, big mouthed tool who wanted fame and fortune via a corporation and a talent show, achieved it with the help of the public, then whined continually about how his” prodigious” talent was being destroyed by Big Business in every medium he could whilst producing no output. He was the author of his own misfortune. He also managed to slag off other musicians and ignore his loyal fans in the process of spending his $200,000 artist development fund which no previous winner had enjoyed.
  
  If I were him I’d want to escape THAT guy too.
  
  Hope the “awakening” is permanent and not a faux attempt at regaining some credibility. I wish him luck.
  
  Reply
- JD says:
  
  06:16pm | 13/02/13
  
  Matt I think you’ve got this one completely wrong. It’s not uncommon for artists to release different music under different personas. “Wes Carr” will forever be known as an Idol winner and, as a result, will forever be expected to produce the music that shot him to Idol success.
  
  Obviously that music was not what he truly wanted to put out - it wasn’t a sound that he enjoyed creating and it seems he felt pressured to continue down a road he wasn’t enjoying by the publicity surrounding his Idol win. So now he is trying to distance himself from his Idol sound by performing and producing music under a new moniker and you attack him?
  
  Having the chance to meet Wes and sit and chat with him in a candid setting I think he’s very level-headed and I understood him when he talked about how unhappy he was continuing down the Idol road. Instant fame does not always equal musical satisfaction.
  
  I’d say Wes Carr is the opposite of an ex-Idol cliche as Casey Donovan, Guy Sebastian and Shannon Noll (to name a few) are still cashing in on their names and their time in the spotlight. Carr is rejecting that and deciding to pursue a musical direction more true to what he originally wanted to do. Not everyone wants to pump out the same, stale top 40-inspired sounds year after year, you know.
  
  Reply
- Bob says:
  
  06:44pm | 13/02/13
  
  Do you know the difference between empathise and sympathise mate?
  
  Reply

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