1.Growing Up
My dad is a huge fan of Bob Dylan, Neil Young, The Beatles, et cetera, and my mum loves Springsteen and The Monkees, so I grew up loving guitar-based music and super-catchy melodies. My uncle is a great musician so he was always a huge influence growing up. My sister got me into ‘Self Esteem’ by The Offspring when I was really young and that really kick-started my love for music.
2.Inspirations
The Beatles – duh [laughs] – but also bands like Silverchair and Nirvana were huge influences when I first started out. Hearing Neon Ballroom for the first time when I was a kid absolutely blew me away. Such deep, raw emotion mixed with heavy guitars and nice pretty orchestral sounds. Now, a big influence would be bands like Linkin Park or Papa Roach’s new stuff for the way they incorporate synth and digital sounds into guitar and drum-heavy songs.
3.Your Band
Sheldon, Grant and I have been playing music together since we were kids. We’ve only ever been in this band. Felipe joined us about a year ago after our original drummer Ben had to leave due to work and life and whatnot. Felipe instantly became part of the family. Love that guy.
4.The Music You Make
We’re currently gigging our debut album Evolution, which we produced and recorded ourselves with a lot of help from our friend Adam at his home studio. It’s a huge-sounding album with a big ‘wall of sound’ sort of vibe that we really like to get across live and have a lot of energy at our shows. We’re about to release the first single and video for ‘Will I Find You There’ on the 31st at Tattersalls Hotel.
5.Music, Right Here,Right Now
I think the music industry in this country right now is great. Rock music doesn’t really get a great deal of attention these days but there’s great bands out there all over the country. You’ve just got to look for them. I saw a band called We Without last year who just totally blew me away. Their songs and performance were so inspiring as a musician. I can’t understand why they’re not the biggest things in Aussie rock right now. It is good to see places like Spectrum and Oxford Art Factory to name a few still putting on great unknown rock bands – there’s even a few venues in Penrith that are now playing original live music. Great to see!
Catch them withStellar Addiction and 30three atTattersalls Hotel, PenrithonSaturday January 31.
