On first glance, there’s not a whole lot connecting The Jezabels with DMA’s – not much, that is, aside from the fact they’re both playing Bad Friday, a celebration of the diversity of Australia’s local music scene going down in Marrickville this month.
After all, the former is a group of pop-rock mainstays, minor icons enjoying their tenth year playing as a band, while the latter is a ragtag collection of upstarts, Britpoppers still firmly in the first stage of what one can imagine will be a long and varied career.
However, spend any time talking to both bands, and one quickly realises that they have taken to music-making with similar aplomb, each bypassing the strange kind of setbacks you have to face when you turn your passion into your career. DMA’s and The Jezabels’ music might not sound even vaguely similar – and they may have a wholly different attitude to onstage theatrics – but both groups now know that to survive on the road, you’ve got to remain realistic.
“The love hasn’t disappeared, but it does definitely become harder to maintain that love [for music] when you’re doing the same thing day in, day out,” sighs The Jezabels’ long-standing guitarist Sam Lockwood. And he would know. Even though the quartet has eased off touring lately – partially so keyboardist Heather Shannon can receive chemotherapy to treat ovarian cancer – they have certainly put in the time as a live outfit, travelling around the world over the course of a career that has seen them release acclaimed album after acclaimed album.
“We used to just do any show,” Lockwood says. “Any offer that we had, we would just take it up and do it, anywhere in the world. But now we’re just like, ‘I don’t want to do that because of jet lag,’ you know? We’re taking it easy. We’re lucky now that we’re kind of in the situation where if we do want to go to Europe and do a bunch of shows that we can just do them. We’ve got good friends who are promoters, and there’s enough of an interest in our band. But, I mean, you have to be aware that in order to maintain interest, you do have to keep going back there.”
Of course, even though The Jezabels are deliberately taking it easy, that doesn’t mean that all the anxieties and issues associated with making music just suddenly fade away. And when you do hit the road, even for relatively short spurts, it still definitely takes its toll.
“You do sometimes question what the hell that it is you’re doing with your life,” Lockwood laughs. “You’ve just got to try and stay productive. You’ve just got to keep telling yourself that you’re not a fraud. It’s a kind of extreme job. Touring is non-stop and then you get home and then you suddenly do not a whole lot of much. You just stay in and do writing. It’s quite extreme either way.”
That’s a sentiment one can imagine Johnny Took, guitarist for DMA’s, would wholly agree with – particularly given the year his band has just had. 2016 saw the Sydneysiders finally release their debut record Hills End, a rollicking collection of riffs they extensively toured, racking up show after show over the course of a jam-packed 12 months.
“Touring was hectic for us last year,” Took says. “It’s so full on, man. There’s just never enough time to get a lease on a house or something like that, you know? Or to get truly settled down and do something. So it’s pretty hectic. So I’ve just hung out all summer, resting up.”
Fans sometimes imagine that these intense tours mean that bands get to see the world, drinking in sights and sounds as they hop from continent to continent. But often touring just turns the globe into a blurred kind of mess, as countries fade into each other and tensions become heightened.
“Sometimes you get enough time in a city to get a taste of a city, but you never really know what it’d actually be like to live there,” Took says. “When you’re in Europe or shit, you’re in like little splitter vans. So you finish playing music, then you have to pack up straight after a gig, then drive another three hours so you can get to say, Austria, by the next day.”
That also means that bands frequently find themselves living on top of each other, and the life of a touring musician doesn’t offer much in the way of privacy. “We used to have these vans where you’d have to, you know, face each other, which actually wasn’t that sick,” Took laughs. “You know, you’re spending all this time playing with these blokes, then you just have to sit there staring at their heads. It’s a bit full on for ten-hour drives.”
Of course, this also has an impact on bands’ ability to write and record on the road. “I think I’m always thinking about material,” says Took. “But we do find that it’s a lot harder when you’re touring. You know, if you’ve just had a really long day that you’ve spent driving, you just want to get home and chill in your room. The last thing you want is just for some idiot to pull out a guitar or something. It’s just like, ‘Dude, shut up, I just want to chill out in my room and watch TV,’ you know?”
Again, that kind of frayed tension is something that Lockwood and The Jezabels understand all too well. Indeed, this band has faced more internal tensions than most, with the four members frequently butting heads in their early days. “We got past the [internal issues] back in 2007 I think,” Lockwood says. “I think for a lot of bands, if they don’t last two years, then they won’t last. The point of no return is that first intensive tour.
“I mean, we nutted out our issues. We had some pretty big falling outs. We were on tour in America, and we just had a sit down in a park and had a talk about it. And after that, you kind of just work out that the touring dynamic is very extreme and you learn not to take anything too seriously.”
It seems like DMA’s have learnt much the same lesson as Lockwood from their days on the road. Luckily for their fans, Took and his mob are past what Lockwood describes as the point of no return, and seem tighter and more cohesive than ever. “We kinda chill pretty hard,” Took laughs in agreement.
So, with band dynamics mastered, and the rigours of touring overcome, all that remains is playing music: something that The Jezabels and DMA’s both still adore. “I mean, it’s true that sometimes you play 26 shows in 30 days,” Took says. “It’s like, you’re doing a lot. But it’s good ’cause it’s like muscle memory. You can have fun with it. You don’t have to be thinking about playing a lot of the time.” He laughs again. “It is pretty great.”
[Bad Friday Promo 2017 photo by Sam Brumby]
Bad Friday 2017, featuring Royal Headache, Sampa The Great, Shining Bird, Green Buzzard, Bec Sandridge and more, is on Good Friday, April 14 at Railway Parade, Marrickville.
