1.Growing Up
My dad played records to us all the time – it’s how I first heard The Knack’s ‘My Sharona’. I remember getting a broom stick, acting like it was a guitar, and running around the lounge room pretending to play that riff at six-years-old, convinced thousands were watching me. Dad played a bit of guitar but I think them taking us to a church on a Sunday morning and hearing all the singing encouraged me to see maybe I could actually sing.
2.Inspirations
Radiohead was the band that took my idea of music and blew it apart. I remember a mate playing me OK Computer while sitting in his crappy Toyota Corolla. We sat there for hours just repeating the album. I think it was their song structures, the sounds, and the emotive movements that mesmerised me, and it was their sweet little hooks that kept me going back. I can’t help myself when it comes to songs with massive choruses and breakout sections that make you dance or make your mouth drop.
3.Your Band
The story goes: two guys from Melbourne move to the Sunshine Coast to start a youth work organisation that focuses on using music and film to engage with high school-aged people. They write a bunch of songs with no intention to use them outside of their job. People begin to hear these songs and say, ‘You guys should push these songs further than schools?’ So they thought, ‘Hmm, OK lets dabble a bit.’ So in 2014 they meet a couple of other guys, a bass player and a drummer, and give it a crack.
4.The Music You Make
We love the epic quality of the ’80s, the rawness of the mid ’90s and the rhythms that are coming out right now. We listen to Jack Garrett, Bruce Springsteen and The Bleachers. We recorded in Jamie’s Bungalow in Coolum Beach. We really wanted to capture a raw drum sound and vox, yet match that with some classic ’80s analogue synths. When you see us play, expect to have a smile on your face, expect to want to dance, expect that you will walk away sweaty and stoked!
5.Music, Right Here,Right Now
The music scene is what you make it: if you’re prepared to work hard then it will pay off some day, whether that be in relationships you build, the places you travel, or if you’re lucky, the career you have to live off. Also, we’re playing at ‘The Steyne’ in Manly so that must be a good place for music. Ha! Also, we love the Oxford Art Gallery.
Selahphonic hit the Moonshine stage at Hotel Steyne, Manly on Saturday August 27.
