Shortly after Song Summit in Sydney, we caught up with Cameron Potts of Dead Letter Chorus – the man responsible for the Vocals, Guitar and Harmonica. Indeed he’s a busy man on the stage, and we had a chat about the touring life, their pals Two Hour Traffic, successes in Canada and their upcoming album.
Hey Cam! Thanks for talking to the AU review. I imagine you’re on the road at the moment? Where am I speaking to you today?
Hi Larry! thanks for taking the time! We are actually having a day off in Sydney before heading off to Newcastle tomorrow and onto Brisbane over the weekend. We are going to play tour guide today, taking our Canadian friends out to some of our favourite Sydney spots.
How has the tour gone so far?
So far it’s been pretty amazing. We have gone and played in places we’ve never been to before, from sweaty football loving pubs to art gallery’s and cafes. The first two weeks were non-stop and we got to play some of our favourite gigs ever. Besides losing my voice in Melbourne everything has gone swimmingly.
You’ve got Canada’s Two Hours Traffic alongside for the tour – how did they come into the fold?
We had heard about them through our Canadian friends Hey Rosetta! and we hooked up a tour of Canada where we went out on the road with them for a weeks in March & April. We’re so excited to have them join us down here.
Can you talk about the writing process of your collaboration with THT – “Last Day In Your Town”. I heard it for the first time at Song Summit – so beautiful!
The song was written in one afternoon by Gabby from DLC and Liam & Alec from THT. Basically as part of our touring over there we took part in an initiative called “Sydney Meets Sydney”. We were teamed up with artists from the east coast of Canada to work together to produce original songs. Last Day In Your Town was written surrounding the idea of travelling and comparing your life at home to that of the places you go and the people you meet.
Is it their first tour down here? It must be fun showing them around – a constant party no doubt?
It is their first time. It’s been constantly fun for the past few weeks. We have been keeping an eye out for wildlife when we’ve been doing the long drives but so far the only time there’s been Kangaroo’s too see the boys have been fast asleep catching up on the sleep they missed the night before.
Canada has been a place of success for you guys – where are some of your favourite places to play over there?
Yeah the tour in Canada really took us by surprise. Our headlining show in Vancouver was a pretty amazing moment. It was weird to go to a place you’ve never been before and have a whole bunch of people come to see you. Toronto was also amazing. We did 4 shows there in 4 different venues and they were all incredible.
How do you find the music scenes in Canada to compare to those in Australia?
There’s definitely a huge community vibe in Toronto. It seems that everyone’s in a band or plays in someone else’s band. It doesn’t seem like there’s the pressure surrounding bands to protect their image like it does at times in Australia. There’s definitely alot more venues to play over there and the way the government supports the arts, music and touring of their musicians is really second to none. We could do well to learn from their grant structures and the public support of the arts culture. I think though Australia has some of the best bands in the world and we definitely wanted to show the people over there some of our favourite Aussie bands.
Speaking of Australia, where are some of your favourite places to play down here? It’s quite the extensive tour you’re on this time around!
Yeah this time has been the biggest tour we’ve ever undertaken. The Troubadour in Brisbane is one of our favourite venues, and Bon Amici’s in Toowoomba is such a great place to play. I think when the owners are generally enthusiastic music lovers themselves then they make their venues a great comfortable place to play and for the audience to have a great connection with the musicians. We are also really looking forward to playing the NEW room at The Sando in Newtown….we did our first ever gig there in the old room and we’re excited to be returning!
You’re touring off the back of a new single, “Covered By Snow”, taken off your upcoming album – when can we expect to hear the full album?
We are hopeful of getting it out in the spring time here but we really don’t want to rush it. We’re going to take the time we’ve got to make sure it fully represents what we want to achieve.
Is Covered By Snow a pretty good taste of what’s to come? What can we expect from the album?
I think Covered By Snow is generally what we’re heading towards. The album itself is going to be pretty variant from track to track. We’ve really tried to embrace the “chorus” aspect of who we are and have gone for a more collaborative approach to the songs, with all band members throwing ideas into the mix and really trying to challenge ourselves to produce a more concise and interesting recording. I think we might have found a way to have the same impact of our older 10-minute-long songs over a shorter amount of time.
It’s your sophomore record – how did making it compare to making the first one?
Basically this time we bought a producer, Les Cooper, over from Canada and we also enlisted the help of Tim Whitten to record and engineer the album. We expanded the space in our own studio, where we recorded the first record, by knocking out a wall. This time we have a clearer idea of what we want to do so i think it’s going to turn out just the way we hoped!
What have you learnt between albums?
… about the industry: I think the changing nature of how people consume music has meant that the “big” industry types have had to start competing with the smaller indie bands and labels. I think for us it means that we can create the music we want to without trying to fit into a mould that large labels and radio want us to. There is an audience for all types of music and the music makers need to realise that they don’t have to ascribe to the “norm” in order to be successful.
… about touring: We learnt a lot about touring in the past year. There are some real massive high points, we’ve also had our share of massive low points…there’s always things that go wrong on tour and the band has to be adaptable to be able to get up on stage every night and give it your all. We really treat every show as if it’s our last, we try to never have a show where we are thinking “let’s just get through the gig”, we want to make sure every show we play represents the band as fully as it can.
… and about each other: We have really learnt how to play together alot better, we are listening to each others ideas with open and valid ears, everything is up for questioning and everything is aimed at making the kind of music we all want to make together. There have been tough times as happens when you spend 24hrs a day with each other for months on end but we realise that we all want the same goal.
And my final question – who were you guys listening to while on the road in Canada? Did you make any interesting discoveries that all of Australia should know about?
About a million bands…..some definite ones to check out are Dan Mangan, Plants & Animals, Bahamas, Hey Rosetta!, Wilderness Of Manitoba, Deep Dark Woods, Jason Collett, Timber Timbre, Zues, Silver Starling, Final Flash….the list goes on…we came home with so much great music.
Thanks for chatting to us Cam! Best of luck with the rest of the tour!
A pleasure, thanks again.
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Don’t miss Dead Letter Chorus as they finish up their Australian tour with Two Hour Traffic:
Tuesday 29th June 2010: Beach Hotel – Byron Bay (NSW)
http://www.beachhotel.com.au
Thursday 1st July 2010: Lizottes – Central Coast (NSW)
Ph: (02) 4368 2017 – Tickets: http://www.lizottes.com.au
Saturday 2nd July 2010: The Sandringham Hotel (NSW)
Tickets: http://www.deadletterchorus.com or http://www.oztix.com.au + Fergus Brown
