Mess+Noise interview: Brent DeBoer of Immigrant Union, February 2011
An interview for Mess+Noise. Excerpt below.
Immigrant Union: ‘We’re Six-Sevenths Australian’
Dandy Warhol Brent DeBoer has made a fresh start in Melbourne with a new seven-piece band Immigrant Union and a down-home country-rock sound. Ahead of a residency at The Tote, he talks to ANDREW MCMILLEN about the farmhouse jam that started it all, the status of the Dandy’s new album and whether his residency claim is legit. Photos by CARLIN SUNDELL.
Take one part Dandy Warhol, one part Lazy Son and one part Galvatron and you’ve got Immigrant Union, a new Melbourne-based act that more readily adheres to the Dylan/Young model of country-folk songwriting than any of those aforementioned acts. After meeting at Melbourne’s Cherry Bar and discovering their mutual appreciation for strumming classic country on acoustic guitars, the Dandy Warhols’ drummer Brent DeBoer and The Lazy Sons’ singer Bob Harrow recruited keyboardist Peter ‘Gamma’ Lubulwa of The Galvatrons to record together.
Between each band member’s touring commitments, DeBoer – who now lives in Melbourne, and last performed in Australia with the Dandys in September 2010 as part of the Parklife Festival tour – brought Harrow and Lubulwa across to his hometown of Portland, Oregon, in March 2010 to record with producer Gregg Williams (The Dandy Warhols). Though the results of their sessions haven’t yet been released, Immigrant Union are set to play a Thursday night Tote residency alongside Stonefield throughout February.
I want to clarify a few things in the band’s bio. It says that 24 hours after first meeting, Bob and yourself “ended up on a farm outside Nagambie [in Victoria] drinking VB and strumming classic country rock‘n’roll”. Is this a euphemism for something else?
No, no! We met that night at Cherry Bar. Matt Hollywood from the Brian Jonestown Massacre and I were hanging out there, and Bob came up and said, “Are you guys playing a gig? What’s going on?” He thought that maybe Jonestown and Dandys were on tour together, or something. We talked to him for a while, and hung out at Cherry all night. The next day, we were going on a road trip to a family friend’s farm, and we asked if Bob wanted to go. He rode along, and we just sat on the porch and did what dudes like us do, which is sit around and strum guitar.That sounds like a pretty organic way to start a band.
Oh, hell yeah. It was just so fun. That night, Bob played a couple of the songs he’d written, and they sounded really cool. I did the same, and Matt did the same. Of course, Hollywood was really busy in a couple of other bands. But when I started dating Sarah – who is now my wife – I was here [in Australia] quite a bit, so I’d always call up Bob and we’d always end up doing the same thing, strumming guitars. Sooner or later, we started to realise we had quite a few songs going, and started recruited more members.And it just so happened that you and Bob were fond of the same specific genre of music, which you now play.
At the time, Bob was in The Lazy Sons. He was the lead singer, and they’re pretty hard-rocking. He sings really high and loud. It’s kind of in that AC/DC, almost Axl Rose style. Real extreme. It’s really impressive, but he also has a thing for Dylan, Neil Young, and stuff like that. He’s getting his ya-yas out at that side of the spectrum at the moment.
For the full interview, visit Mess+Noise. For more Immigrant Union, visit their Myspace.
Elsewhere: a video interview with The Dandy Warhols in Portland, September 2010; the transcript from the same interview.
