Where are you currently based and how did you wind up there?

I’m currently based in the central highlands of Bali, Indonesia. The waves initially brought me here, I landed a 6 month surf coaching job just as the English winter was about to begin in 2010. It’s been my home base ever since.

How did you first start playing music and singing?

My dad taught me guitar at age 11 but a had piano lessons since I was 6. He and my mum were big Beatles fans and he would teach me a lot of their songs. I especially remember learning blackbird in the garden along with my brother – this was my first intro to fingerpicking. I overcame the ‘singing whilst playing conundrum’ pretty quickly somehow, so I was blessed in that sense, I learnt a bunch of songs from tablature from the internet and from my dads books ranging from Black Sabbath to Van Morrison. My first live song performance was at a friends living room and we only played one song, Daytripper!

How have you been dealing with the current COVID19 situation?

It’s a shocking time and I’m doing my best to stay positive. I’ve been keeping  busy inside recording, I have an album of songs ready to get down and my plan is to release them as singles as I go. I’ve also been getting into some gardening that I’ve been wanting to do for a while but never made the time – it’s nice to do something different and give my ears a break for a day or two. I really like the idea of growing your own food and being self sufficient, plus it feels great to be out in nature. It’s super easy to do in the tropics because everything grows so fast.

You have a new single ‘Lucky Kid’ out now, what influenced the sound and songwriting for this track?

Lucky Kid is a kind of postcard to myself. A reminder of where I’ve come from and what I’ve got to be grateful for. It came to me one day out of nowhere and I wrote the whole thing at the kitchen table in one sitting, which is super rare for me. I always have this nostalgic feeling when I play the song live and I wanted to capture that when it came to recording, which meant performance was key, so there weren’t many takes and it all came together quite quickly.

How did you go about writing Lucky Kid?

It was this rare moment where everything happened at once. I was hanging around downstairs with my acoustic guitar drinking tea and thinking of England and how I got to where I was, just playing around with a few chords and all of a sudden the verse melody came to me and I just started writing out what came into my head.

How and when did you record/produce Lucky Kid and what programs equipment did you use?

I recorded and released Lucky Kid in April 2020. I have a little wooden bungalow next to my house that I use as a studio. It’s helpful to have all my gear and instruments set up so I can just go in when I feel like it. I use an Apogee Duet as my audio interface and Logic X. My go to mic is the Rode NT1a, I also use other condensers and dynamics for different purposes. I started by laying down a scratch guitar and vocal and making sure the tempo is right, then add a live performance of my kick and tambourine and make sure it’s in time. Then once the song is mapped properly I can comfortably go for a real guitar take, then vocals/harmonica and slide guitars and light percussion were added after.

How did you learn how to record/produce?

I’ve always been messing around with recording since I was a kid and I used this Tascam 4 track that was my brothers, but never had any formal training. I schooled myself from copious YouTube videos and blogs and just learnt what I needed to know as I went along – a kind of trial and error approach. By no means am I a pro but I know what I want the song to sound like and I’m now proficient in the various parts of the process to get a decent version down.

Please tell us about how you came to send the mix to a guy in Amsterdam that he ran through his Ampex Analogtape machine, how did this come about and how did the process effect the track?

I sent the mix of Lucky Kid to a friend and we were discussing tape vs digital sound. We started riffing about sending digital mixes through a tape machine to see what it would sound like. I was curious to do an experiment, so after some googling I found this guy in Amsterdam at Lullabye Studios who had an Ampex Tape Machine from the 60’s. So I flipped him the mix and he put it through in various speeds and saturation and sent back 4 different versions. I could really tell the difference, the guitar and vocal and percussion seemed more present to me. I chose the 15IPS setting with normal saturation, It just sounded more full, thicker and clean. Some of the other variations sounded cool but at 7.5IPS with higher saturation it just sounded too gritty for this acoustic song. It was amazing really to be able to do this process remotely. It doesn’t beat actually recording everything to tape of course, but you can get a little bit of that analog colour on your mix for a small price, and I’m stoked with how it turned out. I’ll definitely be doing this with more of my recordings.

Where, when and how did you master Lucky Kid?

So I received the mix after it had gone through the tape machine and I mastered it myself here at home. The process it quite simple really, you are in essence just making the track louder and balanced. I usually just do a bit of EQ, light compression and make sure the loudness meets the optimised standard for streaming platforms like Spotify etc.

What did you find most challenging and rewarding through the process?

I normally have a hard time getting my acoustic guitar to sound good, it’s often quite boomy and involves heavy EQ in the mix, but I played around with some unusual microphone placements and found a spot near my strumming elbow that required almost no EQ whatsoever. I think mic placement is super important and it’s something I’ve overlooked previously.

Where can we listen/buy?

Go over to Spotify, Apple Music or any music platform to listen to Lucky Kid. Its available to purchase on iTunes and Bandcamp too.

Who are you listening to at the moment?

I’ve been listening to the Beatles recordings a lot at the moment, they are just fantastic and always inspire me to get into the studio. Been getting into some Dr Dog, Phil Cook and Hiss Golden Messenger to name a few.

What do you like to do away from music?

I really like to travel so I try and go somewhere new each year. I feel like it’s important to go somewhere so I can come back with new ideas and experiences that can weave their way into the music.

Favourite food and place to hangout?

My girlfriend and I have been trying out new recipes and there’s lot of yum food coming out of our kitchen right now. And since I decided to be vegetarian 2 years ago it’s opened my eyes to a whole new world of dishes, hence to say I’ve never looked back. So, actually here at home is my favourite place to eat and hang out right now, and it’s the safest! Plus all my dogs are here too, they love that I’m home so much.

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Where are you currently based? 

Sydney. Marrickville. Coogee. Ashfield. All bases are loaded. 

What’s been happening recently? 

Our debut single If I Knew has landed and we’re very glad that we get to share something new and exciting. On the back of that we’ve been finishing clips, building websites, and all the associated behind the scenes stuff that you need to do to be a band. 

Your new single ‘If I Knew’ is out now, what influenced the sound and songwriting for this track? 

We’d gone into the studio on a Saturday morning, and by Sunday afternoon we had the beds down for 10 songs. If I Knew was almost an afterthought, and made it 11. After waiting so long to record an album, the sound of If I Knew is the sound of us making a jubilant, celebratory, messy noise and loving every minute of it. We kept getting to the same point in the song and grinding to a halt, but each time we honed the emerging vision and got closer and closer to nailing that down. The ‘train track riding’ rhythm of the guitar only came out as we were doing the early takes, so each time we stopped it was a chance to really capture that seat of your pants chaos and energy of a song still forming. We’d played the Sebadoh song Magnet’s Coil in the studio, just as a reference for the energy we wanted to capture, and we feel like we got that, and possibly more. The recording is the sound of three friends celebrating the sheer joy of playing together, trusting each other, and having a tonne of fun on the way. 

Once the beds were down we did some guitar doubling, and then for the outro, added the duelling guitar lines and counter vocal melody. Josh sang lead and Eliot sang killer harmonies that really kick the song into another realm. Nick joked that what had started sounding like the Verlaines had ended up sounding like the 3Ds. 

How did you go about writing If I Knew? 

The song had been kicking around for a while – in its previous incarnation it had a feel like Iggy Pop’s the Passenger – so much so that we’d do the La La La bits at the end. It had almost been dead and buried but some songs dig in their hooks and don’t let go. The week before we were due to go in and record we started messing around with an alternate time signature and an alternate feel, but it really wasn’t until we got into the studio that the song found its way. Watching Wilco tear apart songs in the doco I Am Trying To Break Your Heart, and the love of jamming through different incarnations of an idea gave us the freedom to just try different things, which is a real theme across the whole album. If an idea worked it stayed. If it didn’t, it left. 

Lyrically, the song was also a rebuild, with the final lyrics only being completed on the morning the vocals were recorded. It had been another song about escape – but nothing that had been particularly coherent. Whilst that would have been something we’d settled on in the past, the opportunity to record doesn’t happen often enough for us to just waste the chance, so we set about tweaking, tuning and weaving a narrative in the verses, and leaving the chorus untouched. It’s now a song marking how lucky we are to have people in our lives who encourage us to play music, and to be there through all the twists and turns of a long partnership. So in a small way, it’s still a song about escape – that we get to play in a band and live in an alternate universe that’s not plagued by the logistics of jobs, and kids and dishes. It was also a chance to sing in honour of a Fugazi first date. 

Where and when did you record/produce/master and who with? 

If I Knew is the first single from our debut album You Don’t Have Time To Stay Lost. We recorded the whole album with Tim Kevin, whom Nick had played alongside in Knievel, and we’d all known to varying degrees through mutual friends. Tim has recorded Youth Group, Holly Throsby, Peabody, Toby Martin, Buddy Glass and stacks of other great records that we really loved. His Tempe River Studios is not in Tempe, but it’s close to the Cooks River and is located in a building adjacent to an old Holden Factory. It has great lino floors, and a hallway that people occasionally walk through as you’re tracking. We can and will always recommend people work with Tim – he’s talented, patient, kind and diplomatic – all qualities a great producer/engineer needs. We started recording in late 2018, and we mixed in 2019. The album was then mastered by JJ Golden in California. JJ’s a second generation mastering engineer, who has mastered albums by Sharon Jones and The Dap Kings, Soundgarden, Neko Case, Calexico and loads of others. 

What programs/instruments did you use?

The sessions were recorded using Pro Tools, with a stack of analog gear to warm things up at all stages. Tim has some beautiful ribbon mics, a collection of fine sonic toys, and some great tricks up his sleeve. Josh played a 1960s Fender Jaguar throughout the whole record, and it ran split through an old cream piggy back Bandmaster and a Vibrolux. He used the amp in Tim’s Ferrograph Tape Machine for the breaking up slide sound, and his Princeton amp to run a Hotcake through for the other outdo line. Nick played a very fetching green DW kit with Meinl cymbals, and had a second floor tom that feels like a truck veering off a highway when hit. Eliot played a Fender Jazz Bass running straight into a DI and then re-amped through a Hi Watt Head and speaker box with a touch of fuzz.  

How did you approach the recording process and did the single turn out as you first imagined?

Across the album we had an almost even split between songs we knew really well, and songs we didn’t. Consequently, there was a real sense of tension and of exploration. By the time we hit Sunday night, and If I Knew, we were really firing on the enthusiasm and confidence we’d built up over a weekend of tightrope walking. Everything we knew was going to work had, and the stuff we hadn’t know would work had locked into place too. It was one massive exercise in trusting ourselves, and each-other.  We were also safe in the knowledge that if it something didn’t work, it really didn’t matter. This was all about having fun, recording some tunes and making good on a promise we’d made to  each other a long time ago. 

In terms of If I Knew, it turned out WAY better than we had imagined. Just before we mastered it, Eliot made the call to kick the song off with the snare roll it now starts with, and that was that. 

What do you like to do away from music?

Hang out with our partners, our kids, our friends, our pets. Laugh, and love. Watch films. Eat cheese. Try not to despair when reading the news. Go swimming. Go walking. Talk politics. Talk music. Read books. Rediscover hope.

Who are you listening to at the moment? 

Big Thief. The Beths. Field Music. King Gizzard. Talking Heads. Aldous Harding. Tropical Fuck Storm. 

What’s planned for 2020? 

Ha! Who could have planned for 2020? Our plan is to (hopefully) release three more singles, and then our debut album You Don’t Have Time To Stay Lost in August. 

Favourite food and place to hangout?

Vietnamese. Mexican. Thai. Home. In a rehearsal room. In a cinema.  

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