Ahead of their appearance next weekend at Wollongong’s highly anticipated boutique music festival The Farmer and the Owl, we caught up with Luke O’Farrell from Sydney’s The Laurels to talk about the importance of events like this, growing up in Wollongong, The Drones, album number two, touring the USA and much, much more…
How important are events like The Farmer and the Owl for the local music scenes and what does this one in particular mean to you to be a part of?
I grew up in Wollongong and I don’t remember there being much of a local scene for me to embrace. None of the bands I wanted to see ever played shows there. And none of the music stores stocked any of the albums I wanted to listen to. I had to move to Sydney to find likeminded musicians because I didn’t know anyone who was interested in the music that I was. But I feel like that’s really improved over the last decade and it’s because of record stores like Music Farmers and venues like Yours and Owls who support and promote this kind of music. They are the ones encouraging a local scene to thrive and who are bringing in these bands from out of town. I didn’t really have access to that when I was growing up and I’m really supportive of them establishing these avenues for locals to discover music they may not have heard otherwise.
Anyone on the lineup you’re looking forward to seeing at The Farmer and The Owl?
The Drones, obviously. We’re all huge fans of Day Ravies too. We’ve had the pleasure of playing a few shows with them and they always sound amazing. I strongly suggest you get onto their new record, Tussle, if you haven’t already.
How has Wollongong treated you guys in the past?
Yeah, a few times actually. We supported Tame Impala at Waves a few years back and the only people in the audience were my mum and my aunty…
You’ve always made a point of setting your live shows apart from your studio recordings. Is this separation something you continue to focus on? Why or why not?
Yes and no. It’s not something I really think about when I’m writing songs. I guess we now have the benefit of hindsight after putting out Plains and having toured it for over a year. My favourite songs on the record were the ones that we couldn’t recreate live, so in that sense it’s a bit of a deterrent. Although I can’t say we ever really made a solid attempt at trying to emulate the more subtle dynamics of that record in a live context.
Part of me wants to delve further into studio experimentation and make some sort of spaced out dub/hip hop hybrid record like Massive Attack or Portishead – but then that’s going to require samplers, synths, sequencers and all this complicated technical shit that would make playing it live a pain in the arse. Another part of me just wants to make a straight up, noisy, punk record like (I’m) Stranded or Kick Out The Jams that would easily translate to the stage and that’d be fun and quick to make. So I guess there are these two extremes to choose from, though we’re yet to collectively decide on what we want to do as a band.
Plains got a release in the US earlier this year, almost a whole year after its Australian debut. The US market has for some time been heralded as immensely difficult to “break into”. Did you guys face any barriers in pushing your material overseas? What was the process like?
Well it was pretty fucking hard to get there in the first place – it’s like they don’t want foreign musicians to get into the country! There’s a lot of red tape and you really have to prove to immigration officials that what you’re doing is worthwhile. After the initial stress of actually getting there, it was ultimately the most fun we’ve ever had on tour. It’s essentially like starting all over again – no one really knew who we were and we were playing to different types of crowds. But the people who did come to our shows were incredibly friendly and supportive, plus some of the bands we got to play with really blew us away. We blasted Wooden Indian Burial Ground’s album a lot when we were driving along the West Coast!
How deeply into album number two are you at the moment?
We’re yet to scratch the surface! We’ve been on a bit of a hiatus – Kate and Conor both went on their own overseas jaunts, so we haven’t really had a chance to get together as a band except for a few sporadic shows. I’ll also be moving away for a while next year, so it’s going to be some time before we can start working on material together. There’s still quite a backlog of songs that we’ve built up over the last seven years, so I guess we’ve got stuff ready to go whenever the time is right. We haven’t really discussed what we’re looking to achieve sonically with the next record, so I imagine we’ll start thinking about that over the next couple of months.
Will you be playing new material in Wollongong? What can we expect from the show?
No, there won’t be any new material for this show unfortunately. But hopefully you can expect an incredibly tight performance considering we’ve been playing the same set of songs for the last year and a half. It’ll probably be our last show for quite a while too!
What will 2014 be holding for you?
Stability, I hope.
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Don’t miss The Laurels at the Farmer and the Owl festival in Wollongong on the 23rd of November. Tickets on sale now! All the details are here: http://www.thefarmerandtheowl.com
