1.Growing Up

Contrary to the popular belief that I was raised by wolves, I actually grew up with my mother in Canada’s rural north-west, a few hours’ drive from Alaska. Highlights included finding my fiddle hidden in the compost pile for my seventh birthday. Every summer we would pile into our camper van and tour through the northern music festivals, which is where I first fell in love with freaky folk music and inebriated fire juggling.

2. Inspirations

When I was 14, I became an apprentice of a great seven-foot-tall Canadian, mohawk-bearing “off-road fiddler”, Oliver Schroer, who taught me the dark arts of the violin. He introduced me to all kinds of of amazing music, from Tuvan throat singing, to obscure Frank Zappa recordings, to south Indian Carnatic violin virtuosos.

3.Your Band

The glorious yahooligans in The Opposite Of Everything come from all walks of life. Our drummer Steven was the child of German new-wave rock stars, who now spends most of his time playing garage rock arrangements of Shostakovich string quartets at impossibly hip underground warehouses in Brooklyn. Our bassist Alan was a disenchanted jazz school virtuoso who spends most of his time in Stockholm, learning Norwegian tunes on the mouth harp. Our clarinettist Sam has his roots in classical music and Klezmer, and now produces electronic music and gives Richard Dawkins electric saxophone lessons (true story!). On the accordion and shawarma-sized synthesiser we have Kelsey, who plays in a Dixieland New Orleans band, and writes surf-rock Christmas-themed horror movie soundtracks in her spare time.

4.The Music You Make

We’ve been told we sound like The Punch Brothers on acid, or like Arcade Fire on welfare. We’ll have a special advance preview version of our new album for this Australian tour, titled Hoop Snakes Sneak Peeks!

5.Music, Right Here, Right Now

I think the biggest obstacles musicians need to overcome is the pressure to turn their art into a career too soon. It’s important to encourage artists to keep working on their craft for the sake of the music itself.

Jaron Freeman-Fox and The Opposite Of Everything play theFactory FlooronThursday March 24 with Edema Ruh and The Jerry Cans. Also appearing at Blue Mountains Music Festival, Friday March 18 – Sunday March 20.

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