All posts tagged producer

  • triple j mag story: ‘Robert Forster interviews The John Steel Singers’, November 2010

    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.