Where are you currently based?
The sleepy town of Kurnell, New South Wales Australia.
What’s been happening recently and how has your Covid experience been so far?
Covid was pretty tough on us financially as we all had our jobs put on hold. Creatively though it really forced us to finish off the album we had been recording at my place intermittently over the past year. We live together so it made it easy to knuckle down and put time into the recording and mixing process.
How did you first start playing music?
I first started playing the trumpet when I was about 4, haha. I picked up a guitar at the start of high school and haven’t looked back. We’ve all been a part of many bands growing up and all have metal backgrounds so playing the style we are now is really refreshing.
How did Beyond The Willows form?
Beyond the Willows formed after Matty (guitar) actually approached me to record a song for him. He was cousins with one of my best mates Harry who was hanging out with us during the recording process and we ended up having a jam afterwards.
We got on really well and the rest was history. We have had a few line-up changes since then but our current line up; Matt Joyce (guitar), Mitch Coelho (bass) and Liam Newman(drums) has been the driving force along with myself in putting this album together.
Your new single ‘Into The Sun’ is out now, what or who influenced the sound and songwriting?
Into the Sun is a song I wrote just under 3 years ago after I lost my best mate in a tragic accident. It had been stowed away for a long time and we decided to bring it out for this album at the last minute. We have a lot of blues and country influence in our earlier songs. Keeping it acoustic but still at a rock tempo just made it a lot more fun to play and kept the vibe of the song more positive than your traditional blues sound.
How did you go about writing Into The Sun?
Matt brought the music to me one day pretty much complete minus a few sections and we worked on it with some lyrics I had been writing at the time. It came together really quickly.
How did you come to work with Ruby Fields and how was the experience?
Ruby is one of my best friends and had previously released the song ‘Conny’ on her last EP. She had asked me to play the guitars on that song as it is about the same friend of ours. As soon as we started recording the song I wanted Ruby to be a part of our song as well as he meant so much to both of us.
Where and when did you record/produce?
We recorded and mixed the whole album in my house. It was a fun experience doing it all ourselves, Daniel Antix at Def Wolf Studio then mastered the record for us.
How did you approach the recording process?
Most of the songs I had recorded demo’s for with midi drums so they were pretty much complete tracks. We then started from the ground up and re-recorded each section again getting everything perfect. It’s a longer process doing everything twice but it just gave us the opportunity to really listen to each song and make any structural changes before we were too far down the rabbit hole.
What programs/instruments did you use?
I use Pro Tools and a UAD rig for recording. We play a selection of Gibson and Fender Guitars through Fender and Orange amps. Liam has a pretty nice custom Pearl kit and way too many Cymbals.
You have an album on the way, please tell about the creative process and a little idea of what we can expect:
The album is quite a bit heavier than any of our previous releases. We still have kept our roots however there is a heavy doom and psych influence throughout the album.
What do you like to do away from music?
We all live by the beach so surfing is our main hobby aside from music, besides Matt he’s pretty good at rock climbing and sinking beers though.
Who are you listening to at the moment?
All Them Witches new album has been on repeat the last few weeks for me, I can’t fault a song on that. We all have pretty heavy taste between us so a lot of Polaris and bands like Witch, Graveyard etc. Ruby’s latest release Pretty Grim is epic too.
What’s planned for the remainder of 2020 going into 2021?
Having plans in 2020 is almost laughable hey, I’m done with trying to plan anything and just taking each month as it comes. We are hopefully going to tour this record in Summer though! Fingers crossed Covid chills out.
Favourite food and place to hang out?
Kurnell Rec Club and the internal Chinese restaurant is where you’ll find us most of the time.
Into the Sun Single Launch
Brass Monkey, Cronulla Wednesday 30th September and Thursday 1st of October – both sold out.
Facebook https://www.facebook.com/beyondthewillowsband
Instagram https://www.instagram.com/beyondthewillowsband/
Spotify https://open.spotify.com/artist/7JaEpPwtQyyu7ciAK3YTtY
