1.Growing Up
I remember growing up, my parents made me learn church organ – no idea why, we weren’t religious and neither of them played. All I can remember is thinking, “Fuck, I don’t want to play this. I want to play rock’n’roll.” It wasn’t till I was a bit older a friend of mine got a guitar for his birthday, then it hit me that’s what I wanted to do.
2.Inspirations
Individually we all have a lot of different influences, which obviously comes down to our part in the band. So many different musicians always inspire you in different ways at different times. As for Chico, I think major influences are any decent rock tunes. Bands like RATM, Jeff Beck, Little Richard, Queens of the Stone Age, AC/DC, et cetera. I remember I heard ‘Would?’ by Alice In Chains for the first time whist driving. I deadset had to pull the car over as my mind was that blown I thought I would crash – epic!
3.Your Band
Our band consists of Matty Everitt (drums), Steve Buckles (vocals), Anthony Machon (bass), Adam ‘Shet’ Stephens (guitar). We’ve known each other for over 20 years growing up in the same area. Shet, Mach and Matty have all played in several bands and were accomplished musos before I decided to have a crack. We’re connected via our passion for energetic music with edge, groove and hooks. Musically we all have our thing that drives us; we definitely are on the same road pushing in the same direction when it comes to musical opinions. It’s always funny when we bring ideas and riffs down the studio – when you play it and no-one says anything, you think to yourself, “OK, maybe that needs a rewrite” [laughs].
4.The Music You Make
Our style I guess you could say is upbeat hard rock. We have just released our second album Go Again, which is the follow-up to our first album Walkdown. Reggie Bowman from Scream Louder Productions has worked with us on both our albums; he is an absolute legend guy. Our first album we recorded ourselves in our studio and then got Reggie to mix it. For our second album we decided to do it all down at Reggie’s studio, which was good for Shet because he could just concentrate on the guitar and not be strapped to the mixing desk. The studio is in a great location down in Warrandyte, north-east of Melbourne, far enough from the city to clear your head but close enough to get your brain licked if need be. His input was amazing and kept us glued together for the album process. When it comes to playing live, we definitely try to put a lot of, as Arnie Schwarzenegger says, “enargy” into our live shows, and hopefully get that energy coming back at us.
5.Music, Right Here, Right Now
I think the music scene overall is really good. There’s a lot of music out there – playing live is really where it’s at. It seems to be coming full circle again. We’ve been fortunate to have Shepherd Entertainment Group help us get out to all sorts of venues and play as much as possible.
Go Again by Chico Seeds is out now independently and available on iTunes. They play Frankie’s Pizza Wednesday March 9 andThe Record Crate Saturday April 9.
