the AU interview: Anthony "Tone" Catalano of Little Hurricane (San Diego) talks about their new album "Gold Fever"

In anticipation of the release of their brilliant new record Gold Fever, I caught up with one half of US duo Little Hurricane, Anthony “Tone” Catalano, to talk about the release, their recent SXSW adventures, that time they preceded a big hurricane in New York City, we learn about their musical connections with Australia, the blood, sweat and tears of The Grateful Dead and much more…

We almost caught up with you at SXSW, but by the nature of that crazy event we missed each other! How did that treat you two this year?

It was good! Our crazy little glimpse of it at least. Trying to move gear everywhere is always a headache. But it was fun. Met a bunch of new people and had a good time.

And I imagine it was a good opportunity to test out some of the new material?

Yeah, that was good too. I feel like the sound always suffers at South by… it’s all so thrown together… so hopefully it was well received. But we threw in a few new songs off Gold Fever throughout the different shows we did.

We’ve been enjoying it here in the offices over the last couple of weeks, and can’t wait for everyone to hear it. Let’s talk about the recording of it all. I understand you got to work in a pretty unique location for it. Can you tell me about that?

Yeah, we found this old apple packing house up on this apple orchard, and it was really peaceful land serene, the surroundings. So I think that affected the music. It’s pretty chill… some of the songs ended up being a bit more laid back because of that environment. But it was a great way to record an album in the daylight instead of in a studio cavern somewhere.

You can almost hear the birds chirping in the background

*laughs* yeah… although it would probably be more the deer, although they don’t really make any noises.

So you’re about to head off on the road… it looks like you’ll be in Salt Lake City on the day the album is released.

I think it comes out in Australia a couple of days after it does here in America, so we’ll be kicking off our tour a couple of days after it is released… but the timing works out perfectly. Originally actually, the tour was supposed to happen a little while after the album was released – not so close – but it kept getting pushed back. It was a bit worrying for a time there because without an album, there couldn’t be an album release tour! So we just scraped through in time. But we’re getting ready for it now.

How’s the prep for it going? Are you and CC rehearsing?

Yeah, we’re trying to put it all together and find the best mix of old and new songs, cover songs too… we’re doing an acoustic set in the middle of the show too, which is new for us. We have a studio here in San Diego that we’ve been rehearsing in.

So are you just playing the newer tracks acoustically, or are you revisiting and reimagining your older material, too?

Both. There’s a few of the newer tracks that lend themselves to an acoustic set. CC will play a melodica and a stomp box for them. We picked up the idea from touring with John Butler, he has this foot pedal stomp box thing. So we actually ordered one from Australia.

Keeping your toes in the Australian waters!

*laughs* yeah! The woodwork this guy does is incredible.

Maybe one day well get to see the setup in action down here in Australia!

Yeah we’ll pack it!

Any plans to make it down here? It was such a brief trip last time!

Yeah it was super brief. We’d love to get back. We’ve got to get through this tour first and then we’ll see where it takes us.

It’s a pretty extensive tour, it doesn’t look like you have many days off. I’m guessing you’ll be driving from place to place, from show to show around the US?

Oh yeah! We’ve got a van with all the equipment. And sound is really important to us, so this is the first tour where we’re bringing our own sound guy on the road with us, and all of our own mixing consoles with us.

As long as you have someone to help you carry all that stuff too!

I’ll be making CC do that *laughs* she’s stronger than she looks!

Have you have any nightmare load outs of venues?

Rain can make things a bit difficult when you’re playing an outdoor venue, as we were at SXSW… but the worst is when we leave something behind at a venue. Because we’ll probably never see it again. We’ve lost two rugs over the course of being a band. And that’s always disappointing. And it was probably laying in plain sight but in a rush we forgot it!

Looking at your tour dates, you’re getting to play with some great bands, and as mentioned it’s a fairly lengthy, comprehensive tour of the country. Anywhere you’re particularly looking forward to playing?

I’m looking forward to Nashville, we’ve actually never played in Tennessee. So that’s pretty big for us. And it’s a fairly big music town we hear.

So I’ve been told! *laughs

And then Portland… we haven’t been there in a while. We always love playing there and travelling around Oregon.

What are the crowds in Portland like?

It’s a great music city, so the crowds are great. It’s one of the few cities that supported us on the radio, too, for our last record Homewrecker. So ten times the amount of people come out to our shows there than they do anywhere else. So it’s always a welcoming surprise… “Oh, people like us here!”.

Do you remember the first time you heard a song of yours on the radio?

Before I heard it, the DJ from the station actually called to tell me that they were playing the song and had added it to rotation. I was just like “Oh cool, thanks, that’s very nice of you…” and he’s like “no, it’s a really big deal!” and what I didn’t realise was that that meant that they would be playing it three or four hundred times. So I guess it was a slow appreciation for that side of things.

You mentioned that musically things are a little more chilled out for the record – but that’s a bit misleading because it definitely still has that “oomph”.