Blonde on Blonde with Tame Impala
This week’s featured artists are pretty damn special for a multitude of reasons.
1. They’re amazing songwriters and musicians.
2. They put on a killer live show and pack out every venue they play.
3. They’re supporting psychedelic wizards Tame Impala tonight at the Tivoli in Brisbane.
4. Musicadium favourite family member Ashley Roulston is their manager, and that lady knows music.
5. The lead singer of the band Jack Bratt agreed with me one night after a few beverages that Rick Price is a solid musician.
Don’t let this put you off though, (Rick Price haters!), Blonde on Blonde are pretty much one of the coolest bands you’ll see and hear in 2010.
Musicadium’s own loveable troublemaker Trent Moody caught up with them for a chat about their own troublemaking as a band, John Farnham duets and a gossip about Ash.
You were drawn together by your love of smoking, Jack Daniels and a burning desire to quit your day jobs’ how’s that working out for you?
We still love Jack Daniels, and we still have day jobs we want to quit, so it’s keeping us together! We are also great friends and we love playing music together, so there are other reasons for us being in a band despite our substance abuse and work. We basically started the band because we were spending all of our time together anyway, eventually we had one of our “What are we doing with our lives” moments, and it made sense to do something more constructive then just drink. Being in band justifies our drinking a little bit. At least to us it does.
You gained a lot of popularity so far in Brisbane all without ever playing a gig before, why have you kept us in suspense for so long?
It has been more out of necessity than anything else. I was always very worried to show any of the music I had written on my own to anybody. When I eventually showed a few of my friends, they pushed me to pursue it further. I wanted to see if it was going to be music people would enjoy before we went out playing shows and really putting the hard yards in, so we recorded the EP and just sat back and watched. The response in the short amount of time since the release has been overwhelming.
Musicadium’s very own Ash Roulston is managing you guys at the moment, how’s she treating you?
She is a delight. We call her Mum. We are constantly yearning for her approval. She came along at the perfect time when we had really done all we could on our own. We are all such a bunch of troublemakers and she is very good at keeping us all in check and taking care of us, I really don’t envy her.
If you could play with any artist in the world, who would it be and why?
John Farhnam. We hope to one day be popular enough that we can invite him on stage with us to perform “You’re the Voice”, complete with bagpipe solo.
Your EP “Tease” featured Dave Atkins, who was the drummer for Wolfmother and also plays with Resin Dogs, what was it like working with him?
Dave is just a genius. He was really the driving force behind the EP. He has been a friend of ours for a long time, and Matt had been talking to him about the music we were writing for a long time. So one day Dave called Matt and told him he had booked time in the studio for us and gave us the dates, without even asking us first! It was panic mode after that; the songs were not even finished. So we had to buckle down and work like crazy to get everything ready. I remember being in the live room, playing guitar with him playing drums, I had the cheesiest grin on my face. He does things on drums you just don’t think are possible. And he is such an easygoing person to work with. It couldn’t have been a more pleasant experience. We would still not have our shit together if it weren’t for him.
Hopefully you’re going to tell us that you’ll be recording a new album soon? How long do we have to wait and what can we expect from it?
We are really itching to get back in the studio and make an album. The songs on the EP are getting quite old for us, so the concept of recording new material is very exciting. We are going to be able to spend a lot more time and money on the album, so it will be a lot more polished. The new songs we are writing have a lot more energy. There will be Lots of guitar riffs, and more provocative songs. We hope to have it recorded and out by the end of the year.
Check out Blonde on Blonde on 
Also check out their MySpace here.
