The final judgment, almost always, has to come from within because when it comes to making money in the music business, the odds are heavily stacked against success.

Ben Leece, the co-owner of Novotone Studios rehearsal rooms at Carrington with Ryan Wilson, has invested 15 years in the Newcastle music scene. And, as a working musician and studio owner, music remains a sideline, like an unrequited passion.

Leece was raised in Quirindi, on the Liverpool Plains south of Tamworth. He grew up with guitar in the family home, and formed his first rock band, Wooden Jesus, with mates in Quirindi as a teenager.

After spells in Sydney and Thredbo, he moved to Newcastle in 2003 to play in a rock’n’roll band, Dragline – he had successfully auditioned to be the band’s lead singer. But that dream was a dead end. “We didn’t get anywhere,” he says. “Eventually it fizzled out.”

He played in No Heroes (“a southern rock metal type thing”), Every Word (“hardcore”) and then led Delta Lions, which began with high hopes before crashing. I reviewed the Delta Lions debut CD Post Code (“Hammering guitar riffs, catchy lyrics and full throttle tempo”), giving it 3 ½ stars out of 5, but never saw the band live.

Delta Lions was a huge reality check; the end of that band pushed Leece in a new direction.

Leece, now 36, admitted to himself that the band was not as good as he had perceived.

“We definitely could have been better,” he says during an interview in Novotone Studios in mid-May, at the end of recording a solo music video for the Herald Sessions. “I was always a bull at a gate to put things out. I would just rush things. Like we’ve had a recording deadline because I had a tour booked.”

The pressure and expectations he had set for himself and the band had worn him down.

“By default I’ve always been the organiser,” he says with healthy perspective about the Delta Lions experience. “You resent the other guys for not doing anything, but at the same time you’re not ready or willing to relinquish control. We were always 25 per cent share [each]. But I think you always need someone dominate to tiebreak. Towards the end we were pulling different ways.”

But he swallowed the bust-up: “I was pretty bummed out for a while, but realised it was for the best. And we’re all still pretty good friends.”

What came next was a new commitment to the value of the song. He’s playing now as Ben Leece, and it is on his own name he will make it, or not.

He also listened to himself, and paid attention to other voices, like Steve Earle. He’s reading more books now, after paying heed to a line he heard in an Earle interview: “you can’t write if you don’t read”.

He’s gobbled up books by diverse talents like James Baldwin and Tim Winton. He still obsessively jots down new lyrics and taps out new rhythms.

His voice has never been an issue. It’s made for rock’n’roll, loud and clear and melodic. But shifted toward alt country, it’s more exposed, carrying emotion and tension in with sensitive masculinity. 

He recorded an album with 10 original songs in 2016 RTN studio in Mayfield, but chose not to release it.

“I just wasn’t happy with the songs,” he says. “I didn’t think it was good enough, no detriment to the studio.”

He took a few of the songs and recorded a 7-inch album on the Central Coast with Trent Crawford. He still wasn’t convinced he was on the right path.

On Crawford’s advice, he took 10 songs to Shane Nicholson in June 2017, one of Australia’s most successful singer/songwriters who has increasingly been working as a producer, recording artists at Sound Hole, the studio on the bottom floor of his Copacabana home on the Central Coast.

Nicholson was honest.

As Leece tells it: “He said don’t stop writing. For love or money I thought that was the best 10 songs I had in me. By the time we began in November I had 54 demo’d songs. His theory was, ‘the more you have written, the more chance you have of an album of good ones.

“I wrote them all on my own. He gave me this challenge. Of the 54, only one is from the first 10, which is pretty funny.”

The intense focus on songwriting has already paid some dividends. In March of this year Leece won top honours in the Alt Country Song Of The Year category at The 16th annual Independent Music Awards for his song Trace. Also in March, he was named as one of 15 finalists in the Australiana Americana Music Prize for his song Smoke Signals.

Leece recorded 11 of his original songs with Nicholson at Sound Hole. Nicholson played various guitar parts and brought in some polished talent for the recording sessions (Katie Brianna on backing vocals, Pete Drummond on drums, Luke Moller on fiddle and Jason Walker on pedal steel.

Judging by the early mixes, Leece has taken his talent to a new level. The working title of the new album is No Wonder The World Is Exhausted. The first single may be released by August. 

Leece will tour with the album, doing some shows solo and others with his own support band, Left of the Dial.

“The album is ready to go,” he says. “I am conscious once it’s there, it’s gone. Once it’s out there, I want to give it the best opportunity.

“A lot of time, energy and money has gone into it. I would like to do it justice.”