| | | |  | There's little about Augie March that could be called everyday. With singer Glenn Richards' distinctive voice, his sharp, literary lyrics and the band's off-kilter rock 'n' roll, the Melbourne band has created a niche for itself in the past 12 years,...
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| Interview | Access All Areas.net.au: Hey Edmondo, hows it going?
Augie March: Hey, how’s it going, how’s the weather today
Access All Areas.net.au: Yeah its fine, I’m good thanks.
Access All Areas.net.au: You have recently released your fourth record “watch me disappear” & are currently on a national tour in support of the release, how is the band going at present?
Augie March: Yeah we are about to go on tour for the new record & we’re excited to be doing so, it’s been a while since we’ve done some touring so it will be good to get back. We have had a busy year writing & recording the new album & we feel we have produced something that is a good quality record.
Access All Areas.net.au: Now let’s talk about your new record, with “watch me disappear” did you have much time in planning for what you wanted with this record, as you had so much success with your previous release?
Augie March: Well we probably took more time preparing for the record than we’ve ever done before, we did a lot of pre-production work by ourselves & spent a good few months in writing the album. We spent some time writing in the early months of the year & then we got the material recorded & yeh its all come together.
Access All Areas.net.au: With writing for the record, did you guys have the time off to sit down & write & did any of you go anywhere or do anything special to help get the ideas for the material you wanted to write?
Augie March: Well with the songs it’s Glen who writes the songs & to him, Tasmania’s always been in his heart. He has some family down there & while visiting them he wrote 2 of the songs on the album, one which was about the convict history of tasmania & another relating to the city of hobart. We get inspiration also from personal experiences & being on tour also gives us plenty of ideas & stuff to come up with our songs & on the record we feel we have made a good diversity of songs.
Access All Areas.net.au: With this record, musically it is very diverse, with a number of different sounding songs, was this the plan for you guys with this record?
Augie March: Yeah well it’s more something we’ve always done, going back to our first ep’s & through our first couple records. We would put a few lighter songs on & mix it with a few heavier ones to give a good mix. I feel it is good to be able to come up with different varietys of songs, some guitar driven, some more drum driven & some more medley driven to give the diversity & to make some good songs. On the record you could say we sound like a country rock band on a track & indie rock on another so we’ve mixed it up nicely we feel.
Access All Areas.net.au: Now with recording the record, you did the majority in Auckland I believe at Neil Finn’s studios, with some other minor recordings in other studios, how exactly did this come about to record with Neil?
Augie March: Well we were looking around when it came to where we wanted to record, we’d always done recording around melbourne & sydney so we wanted to get away, we thought about adelaide, but it seemed too close to home, so when the opportunity came up to go to Auckland & record at Neil’s place, we jumped at the chance. We made friends with Neil & the crowded house guys when we supported them on tour & we got a good relationship going. We became friends & when we were over there we stayed at Neils old place which seemed like some sort of palace. We were noticed by Neil as he had heard some of our songs & obviously we knew of them from split endz & crowded house, so we’ve always had a respect there, so it was all good.
Access All Areas.net.au: While recording, you worked with producer Joe Chicarelli for the record, how did this come about & do you feel it was the right decision to make for the record?
Augie March: Well to be honest, if we had more time I feel the album could have sounded different, however as we were tracking the songs we just ran out of time & had to settle with the final recordings we had. Working with Joe was really cool, he has great ears & having worked with some diverse artists such as Shania Twain, Tori Amos & the white stripes, it was interesting to see how he would work the sound we have. He sat down with us for a few days & arranged the songs to be more songs than performances & we spent about 5 weeks all up working with him. We feel we got a great record from him & are happy with our work.
Access All Areas.net.au: Now in recent years, you have had some great success with your previous works, including a no. 1 placing on the triple j hottest 100 with “one crowded hour”. Has this success over the years been a surprise or do you feel now after all the years of being in the band all the hard work has paid off for you guys?
Augie March: Well I think it’s pretty much a bit of both to be honest, when we recorded One Crowded Hour it wasn’t intended to be a regular single. We recorded it rather quickly & it was recorded in a smallish studio & we got it out there & were surprised at the response from the music industry. On the other hand, we can look at it all & feel that after 10 years we’ve worked our way up to be a band that really gets recognised for putting out good, quality music in the Australian music industry. The way the industry works, however, is a mystery to us & continues to dish up surprises to us & we will continue to roll with these surprises.
Access All Areas.net.au: Now as I mentioned earlier, you are currently on a national tour in support of the record, has it been difficult at all to adjust to being back on the road at all after the break?
Augie March: Well there’s some differing opinions of how the tour will be, some of us are looking forward to the tour cause they can go out & get drunk & others are looking forward to doing the shows. We always enjoy going on tour as the travelling we do takes us to some really great places & we get to play music for some interesting people along the way.
Access All Areas.net.au: On the tour you are getting around to heaps of cities & towns, are you guys excited to be playing so many different places on the tour?
Augie March: Well yeah it will be great to get out on tour, we are doing a show in tasmania which will be great as we haven’t played there in a while. The shows I’m looking forward to are the Perth & Brisbane shows, I always have a good time at these shows & the crowds are always great.
Access All Areas.net.au: With the tour, will the fans be able to hear much new material during the sets on the night of the shows?
Augie March: We plan to play the majority of the records material as well as mixing it up with some older songs & that will hopefully be enjoyed by the fans who turn up to the shows.
Access All Areas.net.au: Once this tour is finished up, what are the plans for the band, more shows or some time off or something else?
Augie March: Well we have another national tour planned for early next year which is being worked out, on that tour we’re looking to do some places we don’t usually go, such as cairns or darwin or somewhere like that. After that, we’re looking to hopefully get over to Europe to do some shows, we’ve always been told we should play there so we’ll be hoping to line something up. In Europe we’d like to play Germany, Switzerland & wherever else we can get to so people who like our musikc over there can experience it live for the first time.
Access All Areas.net.au: Well mate I’d like to thankyou for your time & all the best for the near future.
Augie March: Yeah, thanks mate & cheers for the interview, have a nice day.
Interview By: Ben Coby.
January 6 2007
Access All Areas.net.au: Your third album "Moo, You Bloody Choir" has just gone gold on the ARIA
charts, you must be stoked at how well the Australian public are taking
to the album?
Augie March: Yes it’s very flattering. We've had our fair share of positive critical response in the past but it’s a good feeling to have finally created something which the public actually likes. Haven’t received the gold record yet but I’m sure it will look great next to the junior cricket trophies and the PHD.
Access All Areas.net.au: You've just announced another Australian tour and this time you're
moving up in to some theatre-style venues which is a huge step up for
the band on a touring level. Have you been surprised with how the album
and your live shows are being received?
Augie March: We used to be rather unpredictable and inconsistent as a live act so we were usually surprised and relieved every time we got to the end of a song. But everybody practices much more now and we’re usually quite impressive on stage. Hopefully we won’t get too nervous in the big venues.
Access All Areas.net.au: Your third album has achieved so many accolades already including a top
10 ARIA chart position, a nomination for a J Award and the fact it's
gone gold, why do you think that 'Moo, You Bloody Choir' has taken off
so well?
Augie March: That’s hard to answer. I think getting played on the radio helps a lot. Augie March has had an intense, but cultish following for many years. Sometimes it’s been labeled as “difficult music”, perhaps because that there were plenty of catchy pop tunes underneat the layers, and maybe this time we’ve done a better job of presenting them.
Access All Areas.net.au: Touring with you this time around is Texan songstress Jolie Holland and
UK folk singer David Ford, why were they chosen to support?
Augie March: Jolie is a beautiful, world renowned singer although not yet hugely well known in Australia. We thought it would be a real treat for our fanst to get a chance to see her and her music should compliment ours very pleasantly.
Augie March: David is touring Australia for the first time and similarly fresh to local audiences, but he has been having great success in England and will be another secret weapon for our tour.
Access All Areas.net.au: For those who haven't experienced a live show yet, what can fans expect
to see at an Augie March show?
Augie March: We’ll play most of the songs from “Moo” and plenty of nuggets from the back catalogue. We might do a couple of cover songs too. There’ll be some loud bits, some soft bits, some happy bits and some sad bits. I might squeeze in a harmonica solo somewhere if I’m allowed to.
Access All Areas.net.au: Has anyone in the band got any bad habits that you've noticed whilst
going on the road together that you can tell us about?
Augie March: Yes there are a few I’ve noticed but I’m sorry I’m not sure I should tell you what they are!
Access All Areas.net.au: Post tour, what's next for Augie March?
Augie March: Don’t really know. Hopefully there will be a chance to tour overseas and make another record sometime in the not too distant future. But we’ve usually found planning too far ahead is the best way to a make a mess of things.
Interview by Adam Todd
Access All Areas.net.au: Welcome to AAA Glenn and thanks alot for joining us.
Glenn - Augie March: Thanks for having me!
Access All Areas.net.au: You released a solo EP last year and also did a bit of touring with that, so how has it been getting back into the band setting?
Glenn - Augie March: Well there's been alot of getting reacquainted with rehearsing and that sort of thing which is always an unpleasant side of it! It's all really hard work but it's good because that solo stuff was more just to fill in time for when we weren't doing the band stuff.
Access All Areas.net.au: The new album Moo You Bloody Choir debuted top 10 in the national ARIA charts. Did the band expect that?
Glenn - Augie March: No of course not, I mean I don't think we've ever gone higher than top 30, that may even be ambitious. To be honest I tend not to think about those things and when I was told I wasn't really that bothered. I guess it's hard to try and understand the significance of it. I think it means a bit more to the record company than it does to a band because generally you're out of the charts within a week anyway so it's probably a great thing in terms of being able to go overseas and try and get yourself a label over there you can say you've had a top ten debut in Australia but that's probably where the best part of it is for us.
Access All Areas.net.au: So are you looking at focusing on that overseas market at all this year?
Glenn - Augie March: It's been a bit of a confusing time because the record company that we were with merged with another record company and that changes everything for overseas labels. It looks we have a fair amount of interest from labels in America and UK this time around rather than just the US which happened last time.
Access All Areas.net.au: So does that mean you may consider heading over to the UK and doing some of their summer festivals this year?
Glenn - Augie March: That'd be fantastic, but as you know, when you release something here you really have to work it here as long as possible so that means that most of this year will be taken up with touring with this record and I think we'd probably be looking at early next year for anything overseas.
Access All Areas.net.au: And how has the feedback been from local fans?
Glenn - Augie March: As far as I know it's been pretty good. Most of the reviews have been fantastic and people out there are very willing to see Augie March do pretty well. I think they may be a bit happier with this record, because I think it makes a bit more sense to them than the other ones! (laughs) But very understanding reviews which are very good and all that we can ask for really. People genuinely giving it a listen. That side of things has been great and radio's been better than we've ever had before aswell.
Access All Areas.net.au: Yeah, One Crowded Hour has been picked up by some of the commercial radio stations, has that changed anything for the band?
Glenn - Augie March: It hasn't changed anything really. We've done maybe an interview or two with some of the more commercial stations but it's really only NOVA that has picked the song up, as far as I know anyway. We've had a little bit of interest from Triple M but the difference between that and getting blanket play is gigantic. So I think we've definitely seen it in sales, it shows. We're doing a bit better than we have before but there's not really that much that has noticeably changed because of the commercial airplay. We'll see I guess!
Access All Areas.net.au: Was it planned to release One Crowded Hour in a single format as it has been before the radio airplay?
Glenn - Augie March: No it wasn't really. Another mystery to me is why you wouldn't do something like that in the first place. I understand that people don't tend to buy singles much anymore. People like to download songs. But I regard it as an EP which is an opportunity to release tracks that you wouldn't otherwise and it's generally pretty cheap to get out an extra four or five songs on an EP. So yeah, it wasn't planned but then the song started to do well and then all of a sudden I found myself back in the studio recording two or three other tracks.
Access All Areas.net.au: So on the One Crowded Hour single there are a five acoustic tracks of released songs but there is also a track called "Passed Out in Clarkefield" which was previously unreleased, was that a potential album track that didn't end up making the final cut?
Glenn - Augie March: Yeah it was. It was one we recorded a lot of in our own studio and we ended up mixing it here on the computer which is always fun. You always keep songs like that hanging around for situations like this but I'm actually, as we speak, I'm right in the middle of doing another one for a myspace site. We're going to stick it on our myspace site and it's another tune that didn't make it to the album so yeah it's a great thing to be able to do!
Access All Areas.net.au: And I've seen the video clip to the single which is a nice, simple clip although I have to ask you about the relevance of the little bear?
Glenn - Augie March: (laughs) No significance whatsoever! It was basically the least we could do in this day in age of performance based clips which like to add a bit of surrealism at any cost. I think it's pretty funny but sadly the clip doesn't have a big narration happening throughout it but I prefer those kind of clips. It means you can focus on the actual song.
Access All Areas.net.au: In terms of the album's title, which is quite cheeky, I'm interested to find out the significance behind Moo You Bloody Choir!
Glenn - Augie March: Well it has been interpreted as a bit cheeky. Most people think it's a bit of a comment about our society at the moment, kinda herd mentality but it's a lyric from a song. When I was doing demo's for this record I was in Shepparton and it was at around 2am in the morning and I was around the corner from an abattoir where they were loading the cows into this awful joint. And the noise they were making was a little distressing and I stuck a microphone out the backyard and recorded some of it. That's where I got the lyric from because it did sound like some kind of choir! It's not a nice story!
Access All Areas.net.au: From a band and fan point of view, is there a favourite track sticking it's hand up out as single number two from Moo You Bloody Choir?
Glenn - Augie March: It's always a really hard thing with us because it's actually very rare that we have songs that stick its hand up as potential singles. There are a lot of songs that we could try but everyone's got a different opinion and you've gotta weight up that if the first song, One Crowded Hour, went so well then the next single can't really jar new listeners with a completely different track. We sort of think that "The Cold Acre" might be a nice follow up to One Crowded Hour rather than going with something like "Just passing Through" which would have a lot of people going, "well who the hell is this band!"...."who do they wanna be?". I think that if you're not used to Augie March then that's something that can turn people off because there's no consistency and it can be jarring for some people.
Access All Areas.net.au: You're about to kick off the national tour which is selling very nicely with more shows announced for Melbourne and Sydney is that right?
Glenn - Augie March: Yeah we're doing three in Sydney with the potential for four which would make a total of twelve shows which I'm not sure my voice would be able to handle at the moment! We tend to play pretty long shows, around two hours a night and that'll be my voice in! We also thought that three was a lot of shows and we're going to do another tour about two months later so it's just kinda getting ridiculous. But it's also fantastic that there's scope there to do four shows in a pretty big venue, it's unreal! We're all very geared up for it.
Access All Areas.net.au: Are you expecting the audience to change much with heightened popularity of the band?
Glenn - Augie March: It's sort of hard to know who's who and what's what really. There'll definitely be a lot of familiar faces there. People have been waiting a long time and it's actually been a nice discovery that people have stuck with us for the long haul. There were certainly people who got into us when they were sixteen or seventeen and for them to hang around until they're in their mid twenties it's kinda mad! Because often you grow out of bands, especially during that youth stage of sixteen and seventeen and even adulthood, your tastes tend to change dramatically but we've really maintained a solid audience. So they'll be there and there'll be a lot of younger ones and then there'll definitely be those who are more the commercial audience. I don't know if I'll be able to pick them though, everyone kinda looks the same these days!
Access All Areas.net.au: Now Glenn, before we wrap things up this is my first interview stint for Access All Areas so I'm trying to impress the boss with a scoop- is there a piece of news that you haven't shared with anyone that you can give to me first??
Glenn - Augie March: Let me think. A scoop? Well I'm currently working on an album with my brother and two pretty prominent musicians from Melbourne. We're going under the title of "The Dark Satanic Milles Bros" which was the name of an EP I put out last year. And that's going along pretty well. It's going along pretty slow so it may be out this year or it could be out next year. I don't know if that's a scoop though!?
Access All Areas.net.au: Oh look Glenn, a scoop's a scoop! We'll circulate it around the net and then it's a scoop!
Glenn - Augie March: Exactly it's a scoop then!
(laughs)
Access All Areas.net.au: Well thanks alot for that scoop and for chatting to us here at AAA, we really appreciate it and good luck with both the album and the national tour!
Glenn - Augie March: Thanks mate! |
| Biography | There's little about Augie March that could be called everyday. With singer Glenn Richards' distinctive voice, his sharp, literary lyrics and the band's off-kilter rock 'n' roll, the Melbourne band has created a niche for itself in the past 12 years, one that has brought multiple awards, taken it around the world and attracted an ever-increasing and loyal fan-base in Australia and beyond.
The world Richards has created for Augie March's fourth album, Watch Me Disappear, is certainly not everyday.
Barbarians have breached its walls and are wallowing in the chaos. Muggers mug, killers kill, dragons with bulldog heads inhabit the pubs and a wealth of richly-drawn characters trade punches, kisses and everything in between. It's a place of extraordinary beauty too, a beauty that offers escape from the evil, from the anarchy -- from the everyday.
Outside of these walls, high in his lofty turret, sits Glenn Richards, songwriter extraordinaire, musing on it all with a sense of wonder, bewilderment and compassion. In so doing he has created 11 sumptuous vignettes, brought to life with his characteristic poetic sweep and the band's easy chemistry and rootsy sensibility.
Richards explains the lyrical currency of Watch Me Disappear as ``the unravelling of the social contract that helps us maintain sophistication''. That's at the heart of City of Rescue, Richards' take on an old Blind Willie Johnson tune, I'm Gonna Run to the City of Refuge. Drummer Dave Williams sets this runaway train song in motion with driving snare before it turns into a psychedelic hoedown at the gates of civilisation. There's a similar exploration of nirvana, Eden, heaven and hell on the soaring title track, where Richards ponders the significance of 'dousing a burning flag with a plate of oily water'.
Watch Me Disappear is an album where, for the first time, Richards' imagination has taken precedence over introspection.
``I consider that a step forward,'' he says. ``That can still be quite moving, without there being any obvious personal motivation behind the tunes.
``I have to use my imagination because we've been doing this for 12 years and there are no new stories for me to tell from that point of view. In the past I've had to rely on some painful experience to infuse the song.''
You can hear this imagination at work on the stark acoustic folk ballad The Slant, a tragic tale of hard labour set in the pine forests of Huon Valley in Tasmania. So too on Lupus, where the geography shifts to the Dandenong Hills, a castaway looks down on the city below with a mixture of yearning and disdain: ``If I could sink my teeth into the dreams of ordinary people,'' he pines.
If this avenue of thought is a slight departure for Augie March after more than a decade together, so too was their approach to recording Watch Me Disappear.
The band teamed up with American producer Joe Chiccarelli (The Shins, My Morning Jacket, Beck), and between them they have fashioned an album that is the most direct of the band's career. It's lean more than mean, with melody and Richards' voice consistently to the fore.
It's what Williams calls their ``transition record''.
``Glenn's injecting something new musically into it,'' he says. ``It's about trying to realise Glenn's vision of the songs and trying to inject a different feel to them that hasn't yet been explored.''
Watch Me Disappear is the mark of a band whose career is consistently in the ascendancy. Those who marvelled at the lyrical grace and musical majesty of Augie March's last album, the award-winning Moo, You Bloody Choir, will identify with the soaring choruses here of the instantly hummable Pennywhistle (the penny whistle motif lodges in your brain and stays there) and Richards' breezy ode to the Id, Becoming Bryn.
There's room for a dose of reality in the Augies' songlist, however. Mugged By the Mob, ironically one of the most beautiful tracks on the album, was inspired by the ugliness of Richards being mugged in a Melbourne street earlier this year.
``It was a Wednesday night on Brunswick St,'' he recalls. ``I was pulling money from an ATM. They were just waiting there behind us, 14 or 15 of them.''
Richards penned most of the songs at his home in Abbotsford. If he got stuck, a wander down to the Yarra River was enough to get the juices flowing.
``If I haven't done the whole thing in one great burst of energy, which sometimes happens, I'll go for a walk and I'll have the melody in my head,'' he says. ``If I'm doing it the right way I can finish the song by the time I get back to the house.''
Once Richards had completed the material, the band spent three weeks fine-tuning it in a Melbourne studio before departing for Neil Finn's studio in New Zealand, where they were joined by Chiccarelli.
After overdubs and vocals were done back in Melbourne, Richards joined Chiccarelli at the Mix Room in Los Angeles for mixing.
Such overseas recording commitments have been rare for Augie March thus far. Their journey began in Shepparton, Victoria in 1996 where Richards, guitarist Adam Donovan and drummer Dave Williams had gone to school together.
Joined by friend Edmondo Ammendola on bass, Augie March released their first EP, Thanks For the Memes, on Ra Records (a subsidiary of BMG) in 1998 and followed it up with another EP, Waltz, which included one of the band's best-loved songs, Asleep in Perfection.
In 2000, the band added keyboards player Rob Dawson and released their debut album, Sunset Studies, to critical acclaim, if not huge sales. However the album, with songs such as There Is No Such Place and The Hole in Your Roof, alerted Australia to a band that was thinking outside of the square and whose singer was reading a few books as well.
As their momentum built, tragedy struck. In January, 2001, Dawson was killed in a car accident, causing the band to take time out.
Kiernan Box became the new keyboards player for the band's second album, Strange Bird, in 2002, an album that confirmed their credentials as a rock band with smarts as well as guts, one of few Australian acts existing somewhere outside the mainstream while on a major label.
When Moo, You Bloody Choir, was released by Sony BMG in 2006, it sparked 18 months of furious activity for the band. Accolades poured in at home, with the album winning them the Australian Music Prize in 2007. The album received four ARIA Award nominations, while the single One Crowded Hour topped the Triple J Hottest 100 in 2007 and was named song of the year at the APRA Awards later in the year.
Moo was also the album that finally brought Augie March critical acclaim and a swelling fan base in the United States. Four tours there in little over a year endeared them to new fans and critics, with Billboard calling the album ‘a classic-sounding blend of dreamy, folk-influenced rock that is rich with imaginative lyricism'. Entertainment Weekly called them 'Australia's great pop rock hope'.
The band topped off this flurry of activity by supporting Crowded House on their reunion tour here early in 2008.
Now Augie March are looking forward to bringing the next installment of their adventure to the paying public, not only in Australia but throughout the world. For starters, their national tour begins in Sydney on October 30 and they will be joined for the duration by fellow Melburnian Dan Kelly, who will bring extra guitar, vocals and keyboards to the band's grand design.
It should mark another giant step in the march of one of Australia's most original and constantly evolving bands.
Watch Me Disappear -- Augie March. The Breakdown.
Kiernan Box, keyboards: the man of many parts on Watch Me Disappear. Aside from his customary piano and organ, Box can also be heard on accordion, harmonica, vibraphone, clavichord, synthesizers and electric piano. ``We prepared more thoroughly this time," he says, ``so there's more of a studied synthesis between the musicians; in the past there's often been a fair amount of chaos in the arrangements and performances.
Dave Williams, drums: After the Augies put a Latin phrase on the cover of Moo, You Bloody Choir (Cogito sumere potum alterum -- let's have another drink) Williams's father was inspired to send him a Latin phrase before the band went into the recording studio. ``It was cor ad cor loquitur, which is heart speaking to heart. I wrote it on a piece of paper and stuck it to my snare drum. It's about finding the truth in the music.
Adam Donovan, guitar: superstition had no place in Donovan's thinking for the album, but bad luck played a part. ``Three weeks before recording I broke my collarbone,’ he says. ``I fell of my bike. The main problem was I couldn't play leading up to recording.''
Of the album, he says it's ``more of a pop record, in terms of Augie March anyway.
Edmondo Ammendola, bass: Ammendola believes the Augies can find a new audience with this album, although he's quite happy with the one they have already. ``I'm not precious about maintaining one
particular group of fans, he says. ``People will prick up their ears at the immediate sound of this album, but there's only so much you can change about a band. It's still very much an Augie March album. I'm just looking forward to going out on the road with it.
Glenn Richards, vocals, guitar, keyboards: the singer is happy he has taken Augie March on a slightly different direction this time, musically and geographically. ``I wanted to get us out of our comfort zone, so that's why we went to New Zealand and why we mixed in Los Angeles. And working with Joe was a new experience. He expects you to turn up and know your parts, so there's no messing around once you're in there.
Augie March are:
Glenn Richards
Adam Donovan
Edmondo Ammendola
David Williams
Kiernan Box
Watch Me Disappear is in store through SonyBMG on October 11th 2008. |
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