Just before the WAMi Awards at the Capitol, I sat backstage with Patrick and Jamie – the Vocalist and Drummer, respectively, of highly acclaimed Perth band Sugar Army. Armed with a shitload of nominations (none of which they won, unfortunately – robbed!), and the headlining spot at the awards, we had a chat about what was to come – and what got them there.
So you guys are not only playing tonight at the awards, but you’re headlining – you must feel pretty chuffed! Are you looking forward to it?
Patrick: Yeah, I am really looking forward to playing it actually. We haven’t been playing so much this year, after we finished our last tour, which was in January; we’ve only done the odd show. Playing live is the most fun part about being in the band, and we don’t get to do as much these days. And because it’s a shorter set, we can just go for it.
Jamie: Yeah, by the time we get into it and get excited about it, we’ll be off!
Patrick: That’s true. We’ll have to hit the ground running.
Last year you also performed at the Festival and were nominated for 5 awards …
Jamie: Won Zero!
… but this year you’ve got 9!
Patrick: Well, 8… 9 if you include our manager. But she only manages us, so I suppose that counts! But yeah, last year we did play, I think at Metro City? That was pretty cool. It’s such a big venue.
Jamie: Was that the Saturday Spectacular?
Patrick: Yeah. I remember we had a pretty good time.
Jamie: We’ve never played the awards night though.
Patrick: No, no.
Jamie: It used to be at Beck’s Music Box, but before Beck’s Music Box was a big tent somewhere, on the oval. When it was out the back end of the concert hall. It would have been awesome. I wish we could have played there.
Patrick: Beck’s Veranda, yeah, that was a really special place.
Jamie: Now it’s the Capitol, *sarcastic* Yeah!
I get the impression they have raves here on weekends?
Patrick: Pretty much. Bands until 12, and then it becomes that. The bar out the back, the Amplifier, used to be the cool place to come…
Jamie: … not anymore!
Patrick: So many bands, both Perth and touring bands would have played there over the years. I mean they still have shows there, it’s just a different clientele, it’s a bit more mainstream. It’s changed considerably in terms of the type of people who come here. It’s a lot more aggressive, I know that much. And you need to scan your thumb when you come in, which is really not cool.
Jamie: It’s like Orwell’s 1984. Ministry of Truth!
Patrick: It’s really not cool.
Jamie: “It’s for the greater good, man”
So you’ve got the 8 or 9 nominations tonight, and you’ve been nominated for 11 before, but you’ve never won one, is that right?
Patrick: Never won one!
Who‘s your main competition this time around?
Patrick: There’s Karnivool, Birds of Tokyo, Gyroscope… Eskimo Joe! John Butler… the list goes on.
Jamie: But it’s kind of nice. If we don’t win any this time around, we’ll just refuse to be nominated again.
Patrick: We’ll just put a blanket on it, we’re hogging someone else’s spot. Give someone else a go! We don’t want to round out the numbers, just give it to someone else.
You have won a WAM award though, for best rock song last year, for “Acute”.
Jamie: That’s quite cool.
Patrick: Yeah, that was cool.
Does that count?
Jamie: Well you don’t get a Wamington (the WAMi award, which is a giant lamington).
What do you get?
Jamie: A thousand dollars.
Patrick: Did we get a thousand dollars?? We got to meet Johnny Young and shake his hand!
Jamie: Who?
Patrick: The Silver Fox? He was like a kid’s talent show host… do you remember the show?
Jamie: Simon Cowell?
Patrick: No, it was years ago. He’s an Australian icon that man! So I was quite chuffed with that.
Jamie: From the 90s?
Patrick: Yeah would have been. From the 80s even. So yeah, that’s a bit of a different thing to the WAMis for sure.
Talking about “Acute” for a moment, Greg Calbi (David Bowie, Bob Dylan, Interpol) mastered the track. How did he come into the fold?
Patrick: The guy we were working with, Dave Parkin, was sending a lot of stuff to Sterling Sound, which is where Greg works in New York. But he didn’t really do the job…
Jamie: Just because it’s mastered in New York doesn’t mean shit!
Patrick: We actually went with a guy from Sydney in the end of it, because we weren’t too happy with it. It was fine – but it wasn’t what we wanted. And to make changes was quite an effort – you had to pay every time you wanted a change. They don’t really let you tell them how you want it, and then charge you when you don’t like it. It just didn’t have enough colour. The album master we thought was a lot better, and that was done by William Bowden.
And that album was The Parallels Amongst Ourselves, released July last year – what’s that year been like? Has much changed?
Patrick: It’s been eventful…
Jamie: We’ve done a lot of things, but nothing’s really exploded into the mainstream of “wooo, we’re a band now!” We’re just still kind of finding our way. But it’s created a lot of opportunities, and good respect amongst other musicians, and made new friends. But it hasn’t been anything like, now we can quit our day jobs. But that’s fine – we don’t really want that just yet *laughs*
Patrick: We’ve started working on our next record. It’s great to reflect back and see what we liked about that record, and what we want to move away from. It’s given us a clearer direction for the new album, which we’re quite happy about. It was great to experiment and try new things. I think we surprised ourselves with what we were able to do on that album, in terms of breaking away from what we’d done before. It gave us a better idea of the type of music we wanted on the new record. It won’t be as dark.
Jamie: And because of how it’s gone, it means we haven’t peaked anywhere near what we can do just yet. Give us five albums and then we’ll be sweet. Some bands peak too soon!
How have you found the touring life to be? Because it was quite extensive this year?
Patrick: Yeah we love touring. It’s the sort of thing we’ve been doing for nearly 3 years now. It’s something we’re getting used to, getting our head around. It is very different to playing at home, but it’s a lot of fun. I guess it depends who you tour with as well. Like, we just did the BDO tour in January. We had a lot of people we knew of the bands that were playing, so we had a lot of fun just hanging out. There are a lot of tours you do where you don’t know anyone. It’s just us, and we get a bit sick of each other! Touring’s great. I love it, I think everyone else does too. We want to do more, go overseas, see more. That will come in time, hopefully.
Where would you like to get to? Have you done SXSW?
Patrick: No, never been to America! Although we’ve just started making some inroads over there, in regards to having a publicist and a radio plugger. So maybe next record we’ll go all over. I’d really love to go to Europe, personally.
Jamie: And Japan! Try and get a quick grant for it. Quick response to see Tokyo! That’d be awesome.
Patrick: I’d love to go to Japan. I’m intrigued by that place.
And having travelled around a bit now, how does the local scene in Perth seem to compare with what’s happening in the rest of Australia? It seems to be quite strong…
Jamie: The amount of venues isn’t, but the people are…
Patrick: It’s harder to comment on a local scene of another city, because we haven’t really experienced that. Like when we go over there, we’re in and out straight away, so we don’t really get to see what’s happening there. I think in terms of mainstream bands, Perth’s always been very profitable from that. There’s always been some big commercial acts coming out of Perth. But in terms of our local scene, it’s always been quite strong, but it’s not as strong as it used to be. When I say used to be, I’m talking 3 or 4 years ago.
What might have changed in that time?
Patrick: I think venues is the big one. It’s the smaller venues. The problem here is, there’s only 2 or 3 venues, and they’re 500 capacity. So if you’re a band just starting out, you just can’t get a gig in those places. And every band has to cut their teeth.
Jamie: The Hardy’s one.
Patrick: The Hardy was the big one, where every band started playing all their stuff. Saturday night, Sunday night, whatever… and that’s where you start to learn.
Jamie: 10 people would come, it’s brilliant!
Patrick: It’s really where you cut your teeth. And you can’t get a gig at a bigger venue unless a bigger band’s gonna put you on. So I think that’s a big thing. And I don’t know, there just doesn’t seem to be a lot of people playing music. There doesn’t seem to be a lot of new bands.
Jamie: We have moved away from the starting out scene. So things may have changed
Patrick: That’s true.
Jamie: But I do feel there’s not as much going on as there used to be.
Patrick: There seemed to be a lot of bands coming out at that point. Like every week you’d hear of a new band that was coming that you had to go see.,
Jamie: Every band that we started gigging with have mixed up and changed up and changed players. There’s no band that we started out with that has the same three or four members.
Patrick: That’s pretty interesting, I hadn’t looked at that. There were a group of bands that we started gigging with who have all gone off to form other bands.
Jamie: Except for Schvendes!
Patrick: But they started up before us, in the Snowman days.
Whatever happened to Snowman?
Patrick: They’re in London. Doing quite well I hear! The sort of shut up shop and left.
Jamie: They left on a good note though.
Patrick: I heard they’re doing a new record. I’d be nice to see them again, good people too!
Keep your eyes posted to
http://www.sugararmy.com.au/
for the latest Sugar Army news!
