Kara ‘KJ’ Jayne of Sydney rockers The Art is pragmatic when it comes to the highs and lows of success.
“Nobody just sits around eating a lobster breakfast on tour – you’ve got to work really hard. We’ve learnt some valuable lessons, but there were some depressing ones as well!” she laughs.
Jayne is referring to their time spent on the road as the support act for some of her musical idols – Pixies, Nine Inch Nails, Sonic Youth, Thirty Seconds To Mars and Marilyn Manson. “I’m still trying to get my head around the fact that we toured with these people,” says the bassist. “I would say that we took away something very different from every band and every experience. There were little surprises along the way too. Marilyn Manson was very friendly and funny, while other bands that you’d think would be light-hearted were really quite serious.
“Overall, every band was very inspiring, and to see how each has its own way of operating was a very valuable lesson. What I took away from those tours is that there’s no right or wrong way – you’ve got to do things on your own terms and find out what works for you.”
That sentiment has always been at the heart of The Art’s approach. They’ve maintained their integrity and creative control over the past decade by looking beyond the current trends or fads in the music industry and staying true to themselves.
“We’ve learnt that success is tangible if you want it, and if you work really hard it can be a reality, so we were very lucky,” says Jayne. “And just being in that environment where there are so many people excited to see an artist or a band play live, there’s a certain energy that you don’t get to feel very often.”
The Art are hoping to channel some of that energy and excitement at the launch party for their latest single, ‘Minute To Madness’, a fresh taste of their forthcoming album Voodoo Storm. “We’re really excited to go back to the Oxford Art Factory – we had such a good time there last year. In fact, I think it’s almost exactly a year since we did our last show there.”
This time around, drummer Jordan McDonald (who also happens to be the booking agent for Frankie’s Pizza By The Slice) has pulled out all the stops to assemble a formidable support lineup of Sydney’s best rock bands.
“Jordan can always put together a great show,” says Jayne. “The Ruckus will be there and Bec & Ben, who are a cool Sydney duo that I really like – there are so many great acts that we’re all really into.
“We’ve been playing around with the guys from The Lockhearts in different bands over the years, so it’ll be kind of like a family reunion doing the show together,” she adds. “We’re all really close, and Sam [Sheumack] from The Lockhearts has helped us out a lot.”
The Art have long played an active role in the Sydney arts community, and reaped the rewards in exchange. Local filmmaker Mark Darnay edited and directed the band’s ‘Figment Of Your Imagination’ video clip on a shoestring budget, and it’s been viewed tens of thousands of times. Another friend of the band’s, Oliver Heath, directed the clip for ‘Dirty Girl’ and more recently ‘Dead Inside’, which cemented The Art’s reputation for producing weird, wild and wonderful visuals to complement their sound.
“We always collaborate with the filmmakers, and generally they’re our friends,” says Jayne. “We’ll all sit down and talk about what the song is about and how we see it, then they’ll talk to us about how they see it. We like that, because it’s good to get someone else’s perspective as well – and sometimes they come up with things that I would never have thought of.”
However, for their release of ‘Minute To Madness’, Jayne explains she’d like to try being the one behind the camera as well as in front of it. “I’ve actually been playing around with the idea of making the video myself. I have a camera and I’m trying to learn filmmaking, so I’m always paying attention to what everybody’s doing. When I wrote ‘Minute To Madness’, I was influenced by what was going on around me. I live in a particularly interesting part of Sydney – there’s a lot that goes on outside my door that I wanted to capture in a song, and that’s the inspiration for the clip too.”
After the single launch party wraps, prepare to see a lot more of The Art. “Voodoo Storm is officially in the can, so to speak,” says Jayne. “The album will come out early next year and we’re planning a tour for February, but there will probably be one more single leading up to the release.
“For the first time I can say that this album was a truly equal collaboration. Azaria [Byrne, lead vocals and guitars] started out as the main songwriter of the band and over the years I’ve started contributing more and more to the songwriting. Jordan has two or three songs he wrote on this album as well, and our new guitarist Nat [Connolly] has only been with us for about a year, but you can really hear her influence in the guitar work and a lot of the songs – she’s really left her mark on the album.”
Saturday October 3 is when The Art hitsOxford Art Factory, along withThe Lockhearts, The Ruckus, Graveyard Rockstars, Bec & Ben and more.
