Tag: Melbourne

INTERVIEW: Sammy J (AUS), April 2012

Posted on by David James Young in Interviews

It’s rare that I get to do non-music interviews – well, Sammy’s definitely a musician, but in the realm of comedy. You get what I mean. Anyway!  He’s a fantastic guy and a great interviewee. This is a Q&A format; which isn’t preferable but I guess it suited the chat a bit more. Sorry about that. Blame my past self!

– DJY, October 2014

***

The skinny man. The piano dude. That guy with the juice box. That weirdo with the puppet. He’s known to Australian audiences under a myriad of guises, but all of these attributes combined don’t even come close to covering Sammy J. He’s one of the hardest-working entertainers and one of the most unique minds working within Australia’s comedy circuit – and, in direct collaboration with puppeteer Heath McIvor, he’s created an ingenious odd couple in the form of Sammy J and Randy. The two are currently performing their third show under the moniker, The Inheritance; and we spoke to Sammy J himself about the new show, working with a puppet and the most unlikely place for a comedian to succeed in this country.

Hey Sammy, how have the shows been going so far at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival?

Sammy J: They’ve all been pretty fun! There’s been no stinkers. Y’know, normally in the festival, you have a show or two that make you question your entire career choice. Maybe that will be tonight, now I’ve said that…

How long have you been performing The Inheritance now?

We opened it at the Adelaide Fringe in February, so we’ve probably got about 40 shows under our belts so far. In Melbourne, we’ve been doing it for the past 2-and-a-half weeks, with one-and-a-half to go. It’s been great. Our festival year starts in Adelaide, then goes Melbourne, Sydney, Perth and then over to Edinburgh in August. It’s quite a long stretch, so it means that we get constant incentive to make the show better. You don’t just sit back and relax – you’ve got new cities to win over!

With that said, how much has the show changed since it debuted in Adelaide?

A fair amount. My mum saw the show last night, and she saw the trial show back in January when we put it on for our friends and family. It was just a balls-up, that night. Everything was breaking, sets were falling over… so she confessed after the show last night that she’d been quite nervous when she sat down at the Forum with all these people there for a show that might not be all that good. [Laughs] We picked it up, did a lot of changes. The drive home from Adelaide to Melbourne each year is a very productive time for Randy and I – we do a lot of rewriting, we go through jokes that we don’t like and we cut some scenes out. It’s humming along now. The engine has been tuned, and we’ve put a few new seat covers on and stuff; to continue that metaphor.

Stephen Colbert is a comedian that’s best known for portraying the character of Stephen Colbert in his shows. It’s somewhat similar to what you do – you’re Sammy J, but you’re also playing a character in these festival shows called Sammy J. How different is the person on stage to the person you might meet in the street?

You’re right – I call myself Sammy J because it’s a nickname, rather than a character name. It’s what my friends call me and stuff. I think it’s just an exaggerated version of me – and I mean extremely exaggerated. Sammy J on stage will happily kill a dude or fuck a puppet and won’t really think too much about it. I mean, I still kill dudes and fuck puppets, but I do feel bad about it in real life. And I’m far more discreet.

We can only imagine that Heath isn’t as foul-mouthed when he doesn’t have a puppet on the end of his hand…

We’re both fairly tame. As much as we swear on-stage, every single “fuck” and “cunt” in our show has been put through a meticulous quality control process, and it’s there purely to serve the joke.

This is your fourth show with Heath, and the third show as Sammy J and Randy. Now that you’ve done this many shows writing with Heath in mind, do you think you’re more confident about writing with both of these characters as opposed to just putting a bunch of songs together and saying “that’ll do”?

Definitely. We’ve definitely learned a lot more about the characters, and how they interact with one another and the world around them. Having said that, we take longer and longer writing our shows now – we feel like we have more options and slightly more pressure to not fuck up. When we wrote The Forest of Dreams, we literally just sat around and made each other laugh for two weeks. We didn’t think that many people would see the show – and then, suddenly, we’re off to London and Edinburgh and doing the show all around the place. We knew we had to step it up from then on in. But, yeah, as far as writing goes, it’s still us trying to make something that we find funny – but it’s also balance that with not wanting to bore a crowd, as well. I’m very happy for people to hate my guts, but I’d hate to think that we’re doing something boring.

Is it very much a collaborative process, or do you still view these shows as your own?

It’s easily collaborative. We write everything together. When we’re writing songs, I’ll sit down at the piano and Heath will be there with me. Because we’ve still got our solo stuff on the side, we’ve got that outlet as well for whenever we want to be complete control freaks. When it’s together, though, we’ve both still got the same goals in mind. We battle it out, and it’s very rewarding.

With The Inheritance, it would have been clear from the start that you needed to make something better than Bin Night, but also something that was fresh and unique. What inspired the writing of The Inheritance?

With Bin Night, our challenge was to write something that was set over one evening. It was us, standing in the front yard of our house – and that was it. It was our bottle episode, if you will; a complete mind-fuck of a show with a lot of dialogue. Having achieved that, our direction turned to the complete opposite so that we could make something as epic as we could. In this show, Randy’s uncle dies in England – it happens in the first few minutes of the show. We go over to England to claim the inheritance, so it’s kind of the opposite of Bin Night. It takes place over a couple of continents and a couple of months. There’s some pretty big things at stake here, too – ghosts and family history and stuff. We pretty much did a 180 – we wrote a film script, to be honest – and thought we’d see where it would go from there.

Obviously, there is a bunch of new songs in The Inheritance written by you and Heath. When it comes to performing away from the festival, do you look at the list of songs you’ve just written and say to yourself “Fuck, I can’t use any of these songs out of context!”?

[Laughs] That is actually a legitimate concern. When you’re writing a show like ours, you don’t want the songs to stand out like dog’s balls. You want to have them within context and driving the show forward. The problem is, as you say, that you just can’t pull them out whenever you feel like it. It also means that when the people come along to the shows, they haven’t seen the songs on TV or whatever – so hopefully that means that there’s something fresher about them.

It’s worth mentioning that you and Heath recently re-wrote the opening song from Bin Night for your opening number hosting the Melbourne International Comedy Festival Gala. How did that come about?

Yes, indeed! I’m glad you actually picked that up. That was sort of our idea, because even though we had great numbers for Bin Night, it was still only a couple of thousand versus a couple of million watching on TV. When they asked us to host, we had to work out just how we were going to do it. People watching at home probably didn’t know us that well, if at all. We thought that one good way of doing that would be to latch ourselves onto a well-known comedian. So we asked Adam Hills, and he agreed to be involved. We then concocted this idea of how he was the “true” Gala host, and we would kidnap him in order to take his place. It was pretty cool, getting to whack Adam Hills with a brick. [Laughs] He literally flew in for 37 minutes to give us his time because he was shooting his ABC show. It was very helpful. He’s a gem.

What does the rest of the year have in store for Sammy J and Randy? Do you plan to write a sequel to the show? Maybe work with some new characters, or continue under the same moniker?

The Inheritance actually brings in a significant new character, which I won’t give away but you’ll see at the show. After Edinburgh, we’re planning on focusing more on our TV plans. Randy and I would like to do our own sitcom-type show. It’s a pipe dream at the moment, but we figure at some point you’ve got to make things happen. So we’re taking a few months off to just write that and then start hawking it around to networks and so on.

Would it be similar to your skits on Good News World?

I think it will have a similar sense of humour, but at the same time we’d like it to fit into more in a real world sort of setting. Less studio-based and more of us living in an actual shithouse.

It was also mentioned on The Little Dum Dum Club earlier in the year that you will have another project out soon in the form of a human life?

There is a human life I’ve been working on now, it’s making its debut in 2 months’ time. It’s not like a show – there’s nothing I can do now to make it any better. I did my job seven months ago, and now it’s like waiting for a film to be released. I think I did a fine job at the time, but I guess we’ll find out, y’know? The child in question will be accompanying me to Edinburgh in August, so it’s going to be a well-travelled baby!

Imagine being a jetsetter before you’re even turning one!

[Laughs] I don’t know how else to make money, so I thought that we should just do it. The poor bastard is being born in to a comedian family.

Do you think Randy would be a good godparent?

Look, I couldn’t think of anyone less equipped in the universe to guide a child through moral quandry than Randy. I’ll be keeping a couple of kilometres’ distance between them.

Just before we go, would you do us the honour of pissing off every other city in Australia and putting your money on the best place to perform comedy?

I would have to answer this question simply by pointing out that one can only decide on their favourite comedy city based on their own experience. Now, Melbourne is my hometown and I love it dearly. I’ve done 90% of my gigs here. Of course, that also means that I’ve had my bad gigs in Melbourne, as well. Sydney and Adelaide, both equal highs and lows. One city that I’ve always had good shows in, though, is the lovely roundabout-ed city of Canberra. I’ve only performed there four or five times, but each time has just been wonderful. So, simply from a percentage point of view, I would have to say that Canberra is my favourite city to perform in. I’m going there in a few weeks to launch my solo album, so we’ll see if it retains the crown.

What can you tell us about the album?

It’s a collection of songs that I’ve been performing solo for the past few years. It’ll be a bit of fun, it’s coming out on iTunes and that sort of thing. It’s called Skinny Man, Modern World.

Genius. We’ve got a new Dark Side of the Moon on our hands.

Indeed. That was my very humble ambition.

INTERVIEW: Calling All Cars (AUS), November 2011

Posted on by David James Young in Interviews

To paraphrase Max Landis, sometimes it feels like nobody gives a fuck about Calling All Cars, even if they think they do. Hell, I’ve interviewed CAC twice and I’m not entirely sure I give a shit about them. Still, they impressed a lot of rock pigs back in the day with some really tight live shows. Nobody bought their second album, but they should have because it was way better than the first one. The third album was… ehh. It was okay. I interviewed Haydn around the time it dropped and he was very despondent – barely got enough for a 900-word feature from him. James is pretty nice and is an okay interview; and as such, this one turned out passable. Who’d have thought an article by my 21-year-old self would trump one by my 23-year-old self?

– DJY, October 2014

***

A drunk guy at the Annandale leaps onto the stage, dancing like a maniac as the band plays on. A lead singer leaps off the stage in Warrnambool with a wireless guitar, heading to the top of the bar as some of the wilder punters figuratively dangle from the rafters. A young band simply grins in the face of an angry young bogan, who’s rocked up early to get a good spot near the front of a soulless stadium to see his dad’s favourite band. These stories might all be somewhat typical rock scenarios, but they are tied together by one band: Melbourne’s Calling All Cars.

Unquestionably one of the hardest-working rock bands this country has to offer, the three-piece spent the first half of the year prepping the release of their second album, Dancing with a Dead Man, hardly a year after the release of their debut Hold, Hold, Fire. The remainder was spent on an exhausting and extensive tour in support of the album.

“We had a lot of fun with those shows,” recalls James Ing, the gentle giant that brings drums and backing vocals to the trio. “It was a really good mix with playing a tonne of the old stuff and mixing it in with the new record. We were a bit worried about doing it half-and-half – we weren’t really sure how the audience would react. It all turned out really well, though. The reception we got was really good!”

Anyone who actively followed the tour’s progression, as documented through their social networking pages, certainly would have made note of the many small towns the band went through on the tour. “I guess we’ve come to expect more of a rowdiness from the more regional places that we play,” Ing says of the remote-and-regional audiences. “It’s kind of like seeing how far away a place is from a capital city or whatever to judge just how crazy the crowd is gonna get! It’s almost always worth getting out there and showing them something special, though,” reasons Ing. “You go through some towns and you can just tell that they don’t get very much when it comes to gigs and music at all.”

James knows all too well what it’s like to live somewhere with no following of live music – before relocating to Melbourne with the rest of the band, Ing lived in Narooma, on the far south coast of New South Wales. “Good beaches, surfing, nice for a holiday… not much else I could say or tell you about it,” says James with a laugh. “When me and Haydn [Ing, the band’s lead singer/guitarist and James’ brother] were growing up, it was music that was only our real form of entertainment, apart from surfing. We didn’t really have any neighbours, either, so we could pretty much play as loud as we wanted to.”

It’s certainly the loudness that first draws your attention to Calling All Cars, until it’s broken down into the sum of its parts: Hayden’s gravelly melodies and churning guitar, the thunder-rumble bass of Adam Montgomery and, of course, James’ relentless pounding that drives the songs. The craftsmanship of the songs is especially of note, too – they’re big songs, sure, but they’re certainly not dumb. The exploration of what they can do with their songwriting is what makes Dancing such a formidable release, and one that has had a great impact on the band and their fan base.

“It’s been very – I dunno, what’s the word?” Ing is attempting to describe the response to Dancing, something he is especially proud of but cannot quite articulate. “Warm? Supportive? Something like that. Everyone has really been backing the record. I think it was really important, as a band, that we turned over something like that really quickly. We’re stoked with how it’s turned out.”

“This album grooves a lot more,” he continues, as discussion turns to the direction the band took from a musical perspective. “The first one was a lot more straightforward, I guess – a lot of it was just building up towards the choruses, with really high tempos. With this one, we wanted to just play it cool and slow it down a little bit. We just wanted a little bit more space – when you’re playing in bigger venues and stuff, you definitely tend to notice that a lot of stuff gets lost in translation; the space between you and the P.A., the space between you and the crowd and stuff like that. We figured that the less notes we were playing, the more time it has to travel those spaces, so I think that’s something we really wanted to work on.”

In the lead-up to the release of the record, the band once again found themselves constantly on the touring circuit. Having opened for everyone from AC/DC to Grinspoon, the band were lucky enough to open for Queens of the Stone Age in February of this year. “All the support slots that we did were definitely an influence on this record,” says James. “Observing different crowds was really interesting. Watching the bands we were supporting every night made a huge impact, too. There’s a reason they’re playing to sell-out crowds and headlining festivals and whatever else. It was really good to sit back and watch how they do things.”

With 2011 nearly over, Ing is asked as to how he hand the rest of the band will be spending their time off after such a full year. “We’ll probably just go back to more writing, I guess,” he responds – almost incredulously, as if he cannot believe the trio will go right back to work. “It’s not like we won’t be enjoying the summer, though – my girlfriend just got me a new bicycle, so I’ll definitely be going to do some riding. I’ll hopefully get into some more graphic design stuff when I get some spare time, too. I’ve done all the graphic design stuff for the band, with the artwork and the logos and stuff like that. I’d love to do some more drawing, sketching… I dunno.”

You can audibly hear James shrug and laugh, in a typical laid-back Aussie fashion. “We’ll just take it all as it comes.”

INTERVIEW: Stonefield (AUS), February 2011

Posted on by David James Young in Interviews

I was a very big and very vocal early supporter of Stonefield. I dug what they were about, I loved their energy and I found them to be really exciting. Derivative? Sure, but sometimes that’s what you want – a bit of familiarity and some energy in it. We’ve since fallen out of love – I found both their debut album and headlining show at the Annandale last year to be quite disappointing. Maybe it was only fun when we were younger? Whatever the case, Amy was a quietly reserved and very sweet young lady to interview – probably the youngest person I’ve interviewed apart from maybe Adrian from Northlane? I think so. So yeah, this is from a much brighter time for the Findlay kids – for my money, anyway.

– DJY, October 2014

***

Amy Findlay is hanging out at her cousin’s house in regional Victoria – “Just relaxing, taking a break,” she says. Probably what most girls her age would be doing on a Monday afternoon during school holidays. With that said, it is here where the similarities between her and other girls ends. Give this girl a microphone, a drum set and a couple of siblings and she’ll show you Stonefield – one of the younger collective voices heard in Australian music right now, but easily one of the most exciting.

Having blitzed the competition of triple j’s Unearthed High contest under their former name of Iotah, the band scored high rotation on the station with tracks like Through the Clover and Foreign Lover, both of which were re-recorded for the band’s debut EP. For such a young band, it seems like it has all come to Stonefield quite naturally – and Findlay herself is quick to validate this hypothesis.

“We’ve always been interested in music,” says Amy, the eldest of the four sisters that make up the group. “Because we grew up in a country town, there wasn’t very much available in terms of music lessons – so we took dance lessons and singing lessons and things like that. Luckily for us, about five and a half years ago, a music teacher actually moved in next door to us! We all started playing around the same time – and, as soon as we could, started playing together as a band; ’cause we figured ‘why not?’”

Why not, indeed. Following a rapidly-growing interest in Iotah – now Stonefield after not wanting to be confused with Sydney performer iOTA – the band recorded the bulk of the Through the Clover EP at Atlantic Studios in the south of Melbourne. “That was really fun,” recalls Findlay. “The studio was really cool, too. There was heaps of old equipment – a Hammond organ, Leslie speakers, stuff like that.” The only track from Through the Clover not to be recorded at Atlantic was the title track itself, the stomping rocker with which you are most likely to be familiar with out of the band’s work. That track was recorded in triple j’s very own studio as a part of the aforementioned Unearthed High competition. Findlay also holds fond memories of this session, too – “It was amazing!” she says. “The studio was just incredible; and to work with Greg Wales was such a fun experience.”

With its glass-shattering lead vocals and crashing major chords, there is a very good reason Through the Clover is the band’s most popular song. Surely the group knew they were onto something during the songwriting process of that little number? Findlay is a little bashful, but eventually put this forward: “Y’know when you’re playing or writing a song, and you’d be smiling because you feel so good about it? That’s kind of what happened with that song.” Fair enough and all, but there’s just gotta be more to it than that! Perhaps the answer lies within the songwriting process, which Amy herself is happy to explain.

“Generally, it starts whenever one of us has an idea – whether it’s lyrics or a melody or whatever,” she says. “We just muck around with it, try a whole heap of different stuff and just jam. It’s the best way to get our ideas out there.” Hey, it’s worked so far, why mess with it? “Definitely,” says Amy with a giggle.

Outside of the studio, the band – rounded out by Hannah on guitar, Sarah on keyboards and the youngest, Holly, on bass – have also been honing their live chops. Of late, their biggest gig has been opening the Pyramid Rock festival, the annual Phillip Island festival. “We were pretty scared that there wasn’t going to be anyone there,” admits Amy. “But because a lot of people camped the night before, I think they were ready to see the first band. So there was a good turnout, and it was lots of fun. It was probably the biggest stage we’ve ever played on, too, so it was cool and challenging for us to try and fill that space.”

It won’t be the last time the girls of Stonefield will be filling big spaces – March sees the band taking to the Pushover festival alongside acts such as Children Collide and Violent Soho; while later this year the band will make their first ever trip overseas to perform at the Great Escape festival in May and what many perceive to be the best festival in the world, the Glastonbury Festival, in June. “That’s probably the biggest thing that’s happening this year,” says Amy with a nervous quiver in her tone. She might sound daunted by the big things ahead for Stonefield, but with a talent like theirs you can be sure they’ve got little to worry about.

INTERVIEW: Trial Kennedy (AUS), January 2009

Posted on by David James Young in Interviews

Not many people gave a shit about Trial Kennedy in the ten years that they were together. This year, people started giving a shit – indirectly, at least. Tim Morrison went on The Voice; and although he didn’t win, he certainly won himself an entirely new fanbase. Funny how things work out like that, isn’t it? Anyway, naturally I was one of the few who gave a resounding shit about TK, particularly around this era; when they’d just dropped one of my favourite albums of 2008 in New Manic Art. This was an email Q&A – admittedly, not ideal at the best of times; but I was fairly happy with the responses given. Worked out alright. Wish I’d properly interviewed them, though. That would have ruled. Ahh well, life goes on.

– DJY, July 2013

***

You had a massive year in 2008. What were some of the highlights in retrospect?

A definite highlight for last year was getting our record New Manic Art out, that’s got to be a lifelong dream for any young upstart. But all in all, the real memorable thing about 2008 was spending plenty of time on the road meeting heaps of people who got into the record and starting to get our creative caps back on to pump out the second record. Trial Kennedy are a band that like to keep busy.

How did you spend NYE? Was there a celebration for a great year, or were plans already being made for the next tour?

Two of the lads spent it up the Eureka tower looking down on the fireworks from above, our guitar tech and our drummer spent it down a beach having a laugh and I played a little fill in cover gig in town. Nothing for TK, but we did have a festival on the 3rd of Jan that was a bit of fun.

We’ve got a couple of really key tours left and then we’ve really being trying to get our heads into writing for the next record and keep the ball rolling.

How do you feel long-time fans (people who were listening to Pictureframe etc) have responded to New Manic Art’s success and the subsequent newfound support from radio and television?

I hope Trial Kennedy fans are right behind us in all of our pursuits. We are a band that obviously want to make music and this band our career but we’re going to do it with our musical integrity and creativity well intact so I hope that people that get into Trial Kennedy at any certain stage will see that.

A while ago, you posted a MySpace blog talking about every song on the album and their lyrics. The special edition of NMA also comes with a making-of DVD. Relating this to the old saying “A great magician never gives away his tricks,” do you feel a need to be perfectly honest about your music and what it’s about; or are there parts of the behind-the-scenes creation of Trial Kennedy’s music that is best left unspoken?

Some people like to hold their cards close to their chests and that’s cool, but we aren’t afraid of showing people how we create our music, we’re proud of it and we don’t use any secrets or tricks. I think each band is unique because of the members that make up the band and the way that they write, that’s their own formula and recipe that probably wouldn’t work for other bands.

We also personally love seeing how our heroes write the great music they do – check out the Classic Albums series, it’s amazing.

I have to ask about the sample used in Mississippi Burn. I believe it is Anton Newcombe from the Brian Jonestown Massacre talking, but others beg to differ. Where is the sample from and what is its purpose in the song?

The sample in that song isn’t Anton Newcombe, but that’s a good little rumour to put out there. The actual voice that you hear on that song is a guy called Tom Tapley who was an assistant engineer at Southern Tracks studios in Atlanta where we recorded the record and the words he speaks are words from an interview with Jeff Buckley talking about art. That song is a lyrical and musical sort of ‘pay your respects’ to Jeff Buckley and how he inspired us and so many others on so many levels.

The Not So New Manic Art tour is currently underway; what prompted this tour on so shortly after coming off the road with TBE?

Like I said before, Trial Kennedy are a band that like to keep busy and we really wanted to get back to some of the towns that we stopped off with TBE and get our full set to them. You have the luxury of longer sets on your own headliners so you can play some album songs and play with a few other little musical interims and stuff, keep it fresh and interesting for the punters and us.

We’re out with Birds Of Tokyo in March and then we’ll most definitely be writing our arses off and pump out a 2nd record. It’s all about momentum and capitalizing on that momentum so this all involves hard work and as much touring as possible.

Do any of you have a Colour Day Tours story of your own (ie wife, children, family, etc) when it comes to touring?

No one in Trial Kennedy is married or have any kids yet but touring is a time that you spend away from your loved ones and you do miss them but we’re lucky in that they all understand that we’re following something that we’re passionate about and maybe one day we can make a career out of it.

After experiencing so many different places on tour throughout the country, would you say you’ve located a most dedicated fanbase somewhere? I know Melbourne may seem an obvious choice, but perhaps there’s somewhere else?

Yeah, I don’t know what it is, but Newcastle and Adelaide always give us plenty of love. Sydney and Perth are close behind and we’ve got Brissy tonight so we’ll see if that changes anything in our favourites.
I’ll keep you posted

Weirdest gig (ie unfitting support slot, drunk crowd)?
We played a gig this year up at Mt Hotham that was a Rock, Skate and Pole party. Young kids skating and stuff, us playing in the middle and then a beautiful pole dancer. Funny stuff!!!

What’s the next step for the band? More shows, or maybe recording? Perhaps even a well deserved break?

No rest for the wicked. As soon as we finish the Not So New Manic Art tour we’re doing Melbourne Big Day Out and a big show out the front of Parliament House on Australia Day, then writing all Feb, out with Birds Of Tokyo in March then write April and hopefully get in the studio as soon as we can to pump out a killer second album.

INTERVIEW: Jen Cloher (AUS), November 2008

Posted on by David James Young in Interviews

Funny that I’m revisiting this literally a day after seeing the lady in question live once again. I’ve known Jen for years, and I count her as both a friend and a great inspiration. This interview more or less started that, although we’d briefly met once before in 2007 at a festival featuring Xavier Rudd, Ash Grunwald and The Audreys. Man, what a time hey? Roots takeover! This interview came prior to the release of Jen’s second studio album, Hidden Hands, which was one of my favourite LPs of 2009. She doesn’t turn out records often, but when she does… look out, son. Them’s some hot rekkids.

This was one of my favourite interviews from around this time – more for what ended up on the cutting room floor, interestingly enough. We were supposed to have a 15-minute interview and we just ended up chatting for a good 30 minutes. She’s just such a warm and interesting person, and I can never be in a bad mood when I’m listening to her music or seeing her live. We’re fortunate to have women like this around, folks. Anyway, enough from me. Let’s read on…

– DJY, July 2013

***

Over the past couple of months, a familiar face has re-entered the collective conscience of Australian music after a momentary lapse into obscurity. For a while, nobody knew where Jen Cloher or her band, the Endless Sea, had gotten to. “I know, right?” the woman herself laughs. “People have been like, – ‘What happened to Jen Cloher? First she was touring and doing shows and then… she wasn’t!’”

The truth of the matter is that there is no big rock star meltdown story, or even in-band fighting. Jen simply took some time away from the limelight to visit her parents. “My parents moved back to New Zealand about fifteen years ago when Mum got work here – they’re Kiwis originally,” she explains. “I made the decision to spend some quality time with them and help out where I could.” Whilst in New Zealand, Jen also came to write the bulk of what would become the Endless Sea’s second album, Hidden Hands. The album’s title – from Cloher’s point of view at least – “sounds a little sinister.” There’s a lot more to it than that, however. “It’s based on a quote by Joseph Campbell, this amazing mythologist. – ‘Follow your bliss, do whatever you are meant to do on this planet. Doors will open where there were no doors before, and you will be lead by a thousand unseen helping hands.’ I love the idea that there are forces beyond what we can see that will help us on our quest.”

Recorded at Woodstock Studios in St. Kilda – which was, up until recently, owned by Joe Camilleri of Jo Jo Zep and the Falcons – Hidden Hands was swiftly recorded live over a period of seven days. The band chose once again to work with engineer Paul McKercher, who has also worked with artists like Sarah Blasko and Augie March. “We worked with him again because we were really happy with his work on the first album,” says Cloher. It is also interesting to note that Cloher herself, as well as singer-songwriter/touring partner Laura Jean, undertook the album’s production duties. “She’s a really great musician,” Jen enthuses. “I’ve stolen her to play some piano and sing, as an honorary member of the Endless Sea.”

Jean’s inclusion in the Endless Sea is one of three new additions to the Endless Sea line-up, which now tallies up as a septuplet. The others are Biddy Connor, a viola/musical saw player who also performs as part of Laura Jean’s Eden Land Band, and Tom Healy, a guitarist that Cloher met during her time in New Zealand. So what’s changed this time around for Cloher’s music? “The differences between the first and second albums are worlds apart,” she says emphatically. Elaborating on this statement leads Cloher to compare and contrast her two works back to back. “Our last album (2006’s ARIA-nominated Dead Wood Falls) was kind of based around lovelorn characters, and it had a distant romantic, blurred-around-the-edges kind of thing about it. It was very much your singer-songwriter album. You could hear that these were songs that I’d written by myself in my bedroom.” And now? “This record is much more of a ‘band’ album because we really developed our own sound a lot with all the touring that we did. When I was writing these songs, I was very conscious that I was writing these songs to a band’s strength.”

Conversation moves to what Jen was writing about during her time in New Zealand. “It’s not about romantic love or lost love. It’s about…” She takes a moment to attempt a vivid description, but shrugs and jokingly comes up with, “…big stuff”. By ‘big stuff,’ of course, Cloher means “mortality, relationships, family, friends, creativity… Really, when I was writing the album, I thought that the most important thing was that these songs were true to me right now.” With this in mind, it must be asked if there is a song that means the most to Cloher out of her sophomore batch. After a moment of thinking out loud (“They all are, so much,” she sighs), she chooses a song called Watch Me Disappear. Written about her mother’s battle with Alzheimer’s disease, she says that the song deals with watching someone very close to you succumb to the illness. “It’s death itself,” Cloher states. “It’s watching someone lose their memory, their concept of time… it’s a really weird disease.”

Certainly, even with a fuller and more realised band sound, this is the sound of a singer-songwriter tacking very personal yet universal issues. If you haven’t yet already, don’t miss an opportunity to bear witness to two of contemporary Australian music’s most formidable talents and hear the beginning stages of what is certain to be a popular release of 2009, Hidden Hands.

INTERVIEW: theredsunband (AUS), October 2008

Posted on by David James Young in Interviews

My second interview and the first one that ever got published. They decided to hold out on the Adam Green feature so that it would get timed correctly with Meredith. I wasn’t complaining – people were gonna read my stuff, man! Holy shit. Sarah Kelly and I are… well, not friends, but we’re certainly acquaintances. Having seen her through several guises over the years – most recently with the excellent Good Heavens – I’ve always had a great appreciation for her songwriting.

She remains one of the more underrated performers in this country, but you’d never have guessed that by the way I interviewed her. I was a really big fan of theredsunband, particularly their Peapod record. Throw on any jam from that record and I’m immediately in a good place. As an interviewee, she was a little reserved and softly-spoken, but that was fine. It reflected her overall nature – and besides, I wouldn’t have exactly warmed up to some dorky teenager mouthbreathing down the phone, either.

– DJY, July 2013

***

You’d be forgiven for not remembering Sydney alternative rock trio theredsunband in 2008. Even on the band’s own terms, it’s been quite a while since they gently rocked our worlds with 2005’s Peapod. They subsequently played around the nation with countless Aussie and international acts, including one support slot for the legendary Sonic Youth. The obvious question, thus, to put to Sarah Kelly (guitarist, vocalist and brains behind theredsunband) is why exactly it had taken so long for their return in the form of their new record, The Shiralee.

“We actually recorded the album two years after Peapod ,” she explains. “It took a little longer to release, because we weren’t really sure of how we were gonna do it.” What followed was a refreshing and classically DIY mission of releasing The Shiralee: pay for the entire recording out of pocket (thanks to a lengthy 32-stop van trek across the country in 2005 and a songwriting grant) and release it independently through their own new label. “It’s been a really good experience, I’ve liked the whole thing a lot,” Kelly happily comments. “You learn a lot of different things about stuff that goes on that you don’t really notice when you’re on a record label.”

Kelly’s inspiration in her songwriting for the sophomore release stemmed from the Shiralee itself. Translating to “burden” in an Aboriginal dialect that even Kelly herself is unaware of, the book is, according to Kelly, “basically about this man wondering around in the outback.” Further independent research on the matter revealed the book’s plot to be somewhat deeper than this, depicting a man’s relationship with his child and the stressful ways of the outback Australian life. Regardless, it appears that theredsunband’s sound has mused upon the Shiralee’s environment rather than its characters.

“It’s a very spacious record,” says Sarah, before adding, “We spent a lot of time on the road, and I kind of think you can hear that on this album.” A request for further elaboration on this statement ironically presents further ambiguity. “It’s hard to explain. I don’t think you can necessarily explain why certain imagery comes into your head when you hear songs.”

True enough – especially when talk turns to what Toby Martin, singer and guitarist of long-serving Sydneysiders Youth Group, thinks of the record. “He told me that when he listens to that record, he gets a sense of a really huge, open space in the desert with lots of tiny little people walking around,” Kelly explains with a laugh. “That’s such an awesome thing to say.”

Australia will have their chance to experience this desert-sized sound for the first time as theredsunband team up with Youth Group for what looks to be one of the bigger Australian tours of this year. A double header, the tour takes the bands to a myriad of interesting regional places in addition to the capital cities – several of which neither band has ever been to.

“Neither of us has played in Wagga Wagga, or Currumbin or Noosa,” says Kelly as she tries to think of the places which the tour will take her. “I’m really looking forward to those shows and going to those places. We’ve played in quite a few unusual spots over the years, and tours like this are a really good opportunity.”

The tour was conceived after both Kelly and Martin appeared on the hugely popular SBS pub trivia show RocKwiz. The two battled it out as the guests on opposing teams, to be united later in the night with a surprisingly brilliant version of the Jesus and Mary Chain’s Sometimes Always. Martin took Jim Reid’s part, while Kelly did her best Hope Sandoval. Afterwards, discussing the touring plans for both camp’s new records (The Shiralee and Youth Group’s fourth release, The Night Is Ours, respectively), it was decided that “it would be great fun to do a tour together.”

“We’ve known various members of Youth Group for a very long time,” recalls Sarah, briefly before our conversation turns sweetly anecdotal. “I think the first time we ever played together was in 2002,” she continues. “That was [sister and keyboardist] Lizzie’s first show with the band. She was only 16 back then! Luckily, she had a fake ID under the name of Roxanne.”

‘Roxanne’ has long since grown up and established herself as the backbone of theredsunband sound, with warmly-toned organ and simple yet effective percussion such as the tambourine. It may seem a cliche to ask, but one can’t help but be intrigued as to whether it is difficult having a younger sibling on board in the band.

“People ask that all the time,” Kelly offers casually. “It’s not difficult at all. She’s a very calm person, always very cool. If anyone ever chucks a tantrum, it’s gonna be me!”