While at Peats Ridge Festival, Larry sat down with Thundamentals to talk about the phases of music making, touring with Drapht, and their shows around Australia.
How did the Phillip Island show go?
Great – tits and death circles is all you can say! Those were the most memorable outcomes from the crowd.
I don’t imagine death circles are the most common occurrence at your shows though.
No, they’re not! That’s why it was awesome.
Well welcome to Peats Ridge. Is this your first time at this festival?
I’ve only actually missed one Peats Ridge, and that was because of the floods, so this is a hat trick for me.
Well it’s bringing an end to one hell of a year for you guys. Three national tours, your second album out – you must be looking back at the year pretty happy with how it’s gone.
Really happy! But we’ve only had about three weeks off so far. So probably January is when we get to go back to making music again for the first time in six months.
Is that every frustrating when you’re on the road and you want to make music, and you come up with ideas?
I took my laptop on the road with us, but it’s still difficult… and having a social life too. I feel guilty if I leave it for a couple of days, but at the same time we’re still performing heaps, so there’s more pros than cons. It goes in phases. You go from having not many gigs and having time to be at home and work on your music and such, to being out on the road. Which is just another phase, and then being in the studio is another phase. We’re always just jotting down new ideas, as we go, but sometimes when you’re in the studio you’d love to be out doing shows, and sometimes when you’re on the road you’d love to just be chilling on your house, so it’s kind of like a grass-is-greener thing sometimes.
There was one or two with Drapht where there were like five gigs in a row. We started off in Sydney and we ended up in Bundaberg, which is like half the east coast. And by the end you finish at Bundaberg, and you have to come back to Sydney, and you’re like, fuck. But they were all really cool, except for some of the crazy gnarly fights, in Bundaberg.
So those shows must be a bit harder when there’s shit like that happening in the crowd, because it’s not exactly what you guys are about is it?
Nah, I think Drapht has a bit of a different demographic than us. A bit more mainstream. Most of the shows were fostering the kind of music that we like to play and it was to people that you could potentially be friends with. It was really cool to see that the people who are really passionate about the music were intelligent and articulate, and seemed really genuine and cool, and that’s what you want really.
Were there any shows on your headlining tour that surprised you in any respect? Especially locations?
Cairns actually. They were screaming so loudly. It wasn’t huge – Cairns is a small place – but the show was at capacity. Melbourne as well, it was great numbers, great vibe, we’ve been to Melbourne a few times and each time we go it gets progressively better for us. This last one was I think the best yet. Saw a few familiar faces that we’d seen before at other shows, and Drapht came down with a few friends from our own show, so it was good. Sydney was great, Brisbane was good – we’ve gone to Brisbane a lot over the years and we’ve got a bit of a following in Brisbane now.
Now looking forward to 2012, you mentioned last month you might get a chance to record a bit of music. What can we expect for the year?
We’ve got the tour in March… I think as well just to see what kind of sounds we can come up with, try and get the next album out in 2013 – just come up with the best possible record that we can I guess.
Let everything percolate, work on your solo stuff. What can we expect from you in the show today? Lots of good vibes?
One of our most organized sets we’ve ever done… we’ve got some additional features that we don’t usually put in our sets. Should be good.
We look forward to seeing the show, and thanks for taking the time out to do this today! I wish all the best for you for the New Year!
Our pleasure man!
—
Transcript by Ross Hetherton
Edited by Emily Booth
