triple j mag story: Robert Forster interviews The John Steel Singers

This is a feature story which was published in the November 2010 issue of triple j mag, but it was an unconventional one: the editor assigned me to observe Robert Forster interviewing Brisbane pop act The John Steel Singers. Forster produced their debut album, Tangalooma, so there was a nice synchronicity to it all.

Click the below image for a closer look, or read the article text underneath. Photograph taken by the wonderful Stephen Booth.

Under The Bridge: The John Steel Singers

Brisbane-based six-piece The John Steel Singers release their debut album, Tangalooma, on November 5 through Dew Process. Produced by Queensland’s pop statesman, Robert Forster – co-founder of The Go-Betweens, the widely-loved pop group after whom Brisbane’s Go Between Bridge was named – Tangalooma showcases The John Steel Singers’ lively, colourful take on indie pop. We asked Robert to interview three of the band members for triple j magazine and sent Andrew McMillen along to a pub in Brisbane’s West End as the, um, go-between.

Robert Forster: What was the ambition of the band at the start?
Tim Morrissey (guitar/vocals): We always wanted to go overseas. Not necessarily to be ‘successful’ overseas, but to go overseas as an experience. Which we’ve since done a little bit of, but my goals at the start were just to play with certain bands and do certain shows.

Robert: When you started the band, was playing Splendour one of the things you wanted to achieve? [The band played there this year.]
Tim: I don’t know that Splendour was necessarily on my radar at that point, but a festival of that stature, for sure. I remember going to the early Valley Fiestas, though [Brisbane’s annual street music festival, held in Fortitude Valley], and thought it’d be really nice to play a Valley Fiesta in a good slot. Which we did, on the weekend! That felt a little bit surreal.

Robert: The John Steel Singers: realising dreams. What are the next couple of dreams?
Tim: A bridge!
Robert: Okay. I know the Lord Mayor. I’ll put the word in. So between playing Valley Fiesta and the magic heights of having a bridge named after you, what are the other steps in between?
Scott Bromiley (trumpet/keys/vocals): The healthy evolution of our music.
Robert: Oh, that’s good.
Scott: No radical left turns, or anything like that.

triple j mag: Is touring overseas still a goal?
Tim: Definitely. Go overseas, sell three albums, live in squalor for six months, then come back with egg on our faces.
Robert: Where overseas?
Tim: Anywhere that will have us, I guess. I’d love to go to the US, Berlin, UK…

Robert: Thinking about the band’s sound, where can you hear that being best received at the moment?
Scott: Ballarat.
Tim: Geelong.
Scott: Bendigo, perhaps. Albury. Wodonga.

Robert: Okay. Let’s get Tame Impala out of the way. Great album. What’s the vibe about going on tour with them in October?
Scott: We’re good friends with those guys.
Pete Bernoth (trombone/keys): We’ve known them since Southbound 2008. We hung out backstage and stole Faker’s rider together. We were young and stupid; we’re not like that anymore.
Robert: Are you scared that the next couple of songs you write are going to be guitar-oriented psychedelia?
Scott: Yeah. We constantly try to avoid that.

Robert: But playing with them, won’t that only bring it out more?
Scott: Perhaps. But maybe they’ll take in some of our influences, and start writing keyboard-flavoured pop gems.

Robert: You get the call to play Big Day Out. What do you say?
Scott: “I’ll be there in a jiffy.”
Tim: After hearing those stories about Grant [McLennan, Go-Betweens co-founder, who died in 2006] – definitely there in a jiffy. I want to play cricket with Coldplay, and stuff.

triple j mag: What are these Grant stories?

Robert: I got bowled by Coldplay’s drummer [Will Champion]. They are very good cricket players; they’re probably better cricket players then they are as a band. (Everyone laughs) Really! Chris Martin’s very good, and Champion bowled me on an off-cutter. Unbelievable!
Scott: I just thought of a montage: Chris Martin training in a tracksuit, with Brian Eno holding a whistle.

Robert: Okay, this is an imagined scenario. You’re in Adelaide one afternoon. You’ve soundchecked. You come out of the building, and there’s a young three-piece band on the street. They ask, “What advice can you give us – a) musically, and b) career-wise?”
Scott: a) Get yourself a disgruntled redhead trombone player. [referring to Pete]
Pete: Hook your claws into some stupidly talented dude who can play everything, like Scott.
Tim: b) If you’re in Adelaide, use the free bike paths. When you ride your bike, that’s a good time to think of songs.

Robert: Do you find cycling conducive to songwriting?
Tim: Damn straight. I’d say I write 70% of my melody ideas on the bike; 30% in the jam room.
Pete: My advice is that even if you’re playing to no-one, don’t treat it as a joke. Try to take every show seriously. It’s hard, and sometimes you fail miserably, but every show’s a show. Do your best.

Robert: Let’s say I’m from a record company called Dew Process. I’m an A&R rep, and I’m going to give The John Steel Singers $100,000 to record their next album. Spend it as you will. What are you going to do, what would I hear, where would it be done?
Scott: Well, you’d probably hear it about five years later!
Robert: Good! Brilliant!
Tim: We’d definitely stay in Australia. We’d go either Darling Downs, or the Sunshine Coast Hinterland. We’d hire a house out for six months, and we’d deck it out with some nice studio gear. We’d fly Nicholas [Vernhes, the Brooklyn-based engineer who mixed Tangalooma] out, and we’d spend six months recording. That’s it.

triple j mag: What did The John Steel Singers learn from their debut album producer?
Robert: You can’t ask that in front of me! I’ll go to the toilet. (He leaves)
Scott: Everything, really. There wasn’t much that we didn’t [learn]. Just what a fantastic presence he is in any given situation.
Pete: He took our songs back to basics.
Scott: That’s right. Robert’s got a way of distilling everything down to its purest form so that you can see what the true value of a song is, without it being hidden by production.
Tim: And he’s a very competitive ping-pong player.

Needless to say, this was a fun conversation to observe. Forster really got into the interviewer role, which really comes across in the article.

Elsewhere: an extended interview with Robert Forster earlier this year for the Mess+Noise ‘Icons’ series; a review of The John Steel Singers’ debut album, Tangalooma, for The Vine.

Rolling Stone story: Halfway

A story for the October 2010 issue of Rolling Stone on the Brisbane-based alt-country/rock band Halfway.

Click the below image for a closer look, or view the article text underneath.

Halfway: Between Alt-Country and a Rock Place
Brisbane collective embrace pared-back approach, Forster wisdom on third LP

by Andrew McMillen

Three albums into a ten-year career, Brisbane alternative country act Halfway have hit their stride with An Outpost Of Promise, released in July through +1 Records. If you’re unfamiliar with their earlier work, fear not: their latest is “definitely a good place to start,” according to Halfway’s John Busby, who alongside Chris Dale forms the band’s core duo. “It’s the least country record that we’ve done before, so maybe that makes it more accessible.”

Put Dale and Busby in the same room and you’ll soon find them finishing each others’ sentences. Both in their late 30s, their friendship was forged in the central Queensland city of Rockhampton in the 1990s before they relocated to Brisbane and formed Halfway in 2000. But while the pair are the heart of the band, they are bolstered by an extended family – all Halfway’s eight band members meet twice a week at ‘Halfway House’ (a room underneath Busby’s mother’s house) to “have a beer, play music, and just talk,” says Busby. “It’s never really toil. I love hanging out; it’s the best part of being in the band.”

The country tones that coloured their first two albums – 2004’s Farewell To The Fainthearted and 2006’s Remember The River – are marginalised on Outpost, which features 10 songs played “straight up, with tension and drama,” according to its producer and former Go-Between Robert Forster.

Forster’s wisdom triggered a shift in the pair’s approach to songwriting. This time, the pair ensured that every song worked with just guitar and vocal first, before soliciting embellishments from their bandmates. Busby suggests Forster gave them confidence by exposing each song’s acoustic core; “rather than just trying to make a lot of racket”. “That’s how we ought to go forward,” Dale concludes.

“Just let the songs do their thing.”

For more Halfway, visit their MySpace. I reviewed An Outpost Of Promise for Mess+Noise earlier in the year. It’s ace!