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ON THE COUCH WITH: Eskimo Joe

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ARTIST INTERVIEW

Access All Areas.net.au: Hey Stu, how’s it going today?
EJ – Stu: Hey mate, i’m doing great, just taking some time out to do some press & other things today.

Access All Areas.net.au: You have been back touring amongst other things over the last month or so, how has the band been doing?
EJ – Stu: Yeah, things have been going really well for us, we got back to playing about a month ago up in Noosa & things have been going amazingly well. We’ve had a heap of fun getting back to doing what we love... playing music & we’ve really had fun so far.

Access All Areas.net.au: Your latest record has just been released, has it been exciting times for the band?
EJ – Stu: Its been really exciting, we worked really hard on this record & we can’t wait to see what our fans think of it. Its been a while coming, you know from the time we finished it to now that its been released its been nervous times, but it seems to be doing well.

Access All Areas.net.au: With this record, being the first record after your massively successful “Black Fingernails, Red Wine” release, was there much pressure on the band to take the music up a level?
EJ – Stu: Well i think we have a loyal group of fans from over the years that we didn’t really need to do anything that special, just write some great rock songs & our fans would be happy. We got lucky with the last record doing so well & cause of that we were able to relax with this record as we knew we’d have a lot more exposure i guess you could say once it would be released. So far as i said the response to the material we’ve put out has been amazing... just gotta hope it continues.

Access All Areas.net.au: With the record, how was the writing process... did you guys do anything different or go anywhere interesting... or just the usual process for the band?
EJ – Stu: Well i guess it was done differently in a sense as we wrote the songs backwards. I say backwards because we wrote the music first & then made the lyrics around that, starting with our guitars & then getting a drum loop & then putting in all other musical parts & then we’d start on the vocals & lyrics & work like that. We did this to be creative, i guess after writing a certain way for 3 records you need change to keep interest & we were able to write some songs that we really love & love to play, so its worked well.

Access All Areas.net.au: Well you’ve managed to write some musically really kicking rock songs, was this the plan to continue the rock style you had made or were you looking for something different this time?
EJ – Stu: Well we never really had a direction in mind, we were really just trying to diversify all the sounds we had forged over the years together. I mean we have some real upbeat songs which represent our more recent works & then theres the lighter songs which revisit our earlier works, so its a good mix of the old & the new to make the new & really fresh Eskimo joe songs for the record.

Access All Areas.net.au: With the recording of the songs, was it an easy experience for the band now you have recorded a few records?
EJ – Stu: Well i guess we still managed to make our own challenges, for instance for the first time we brought in a producer to oversee the recording, so that was a challenge as we let go of some of the control we usually keep for ourselves. We had fun working with our producer though, we had all the songs finished up by the time he came in, so he couldn’t really do anything to change them up & he worked well with us to help us get the record we have. The recording experience was fun as usual & we got to put down some great tracks which are now finally getting released to our fans.

Access All Areas.net.au: With the record, you released a single in “Foreign land” how did you guys find this song was received?
EJ – Stu: This song was received incredibly well, in a short span of time it went to being the most added & requested song on radio in Australia, which blew us away. On stage, its becoming a favourite & the fans seem to really love it, so its been really good for us.

Access All Areas.net.au: On the weekend, you played the Triple J One Night Stand in Sail, Victoria... how was this for the band?
EJ – Stu: Yeah, this was amazing... despite it pouring with rain haha. We had such an amazing time & despite the rain, the people turned up in the thousands... would’ve been at least 15,000 people there. We had some technical problems, but we got through them & was able to put on a great rock show for the people of the area.

Access All Areas.net.au: Outside the band, you guys do much... hobbies etc?
EJ – Stu: Well as sad as it sounds... we basically just keep doing music haha but its fine. We love writing & composing music, its what we do, so its great fun. Besides that... i’ve got a young family to keep me busy & some of the other guys also have kids so they are kept busy like that as well... thats about it really.

Access All Areas.net.au: On the live front, you returned at the 2009 RIPE Noosa festival, how was this for the band?
EJ – Stu: Yeah, this was a great experience.... even though it rained haha. It was a great show & we got to play alongside some great Australian bands to a great area that seemed to be starving for a good night of rock ‘n’ roll.

Access All Areas.net.au: Of course, you have an upcoming Australian tour, you guys excited for this?
EJ – Stu: Yeah, this will be great... its our first major tour since the last record, so we’re really looking forward to getting back. Its been a while as i said since the last tour, so hopefully the fans of ours come out in numbers as we’re planning of doing a great rock show as usual.

Access All Areas.net.au: With the tour, you are being joined by Bob Evans, looking forward to this?
EJ – Stu: Yeah, we’ve known Bob Evans... well Kev since our early days from WA playing alongside him with his other band Jebadiah so we’re looking forward to heading out with him to have some great fun. Opening up the shows is a great solo artist named Steve Parker who will be amazing, so its going to be a great night of music.

Access All Areas.net.au: On the tour, will you mainly be showcasing the new material?
EJ – Stu: Yeah, well the good thing about this record, is cause it is a mix of our sounds we can incorporate more of our older songs into the set, which is great for us. Basically the fans should expect to hear a heap of stuff from the new record & black fingernails, red wine... plus a bunch from the first 2 records.

Access All Areas.net.au: Once the tour is finished up, you guys got much coming up?
EJ – Stu: Yeah, we’re heading off to Europe for a tour... playing around Germany, Amsterdam... through Austraia & into the UK & probably doing some summer festivals around there... later in the year we hit New Zealand... so yeah just touring for most of the year.

Access All Areas.net.au: Well Stu, thanks for your time... have great fun on tour, bye.
EJ – Stu: Thanks mate, bye.

Interview By: Ben Coby.

March 2005

Access All Areas.net.au: So are you guys in the middle of a tour?
Eskimo Joe: Actually this is the last leg of a very short but intense tour, six dates and eight days and we’re playing to a lot of Uni students.

Access All Areas.net.au: What’s happening after the tour, are you about to release another song or are you writing for a new album?
Eskimo Joe: We're going to do a really really large tour in July but basically we've got two three month blocks to write the next album and the first starts as soon as we get home.

Access All Areas.net.au: With home being Perth for you guys, where does the name Eskimo Joe come from?
Eskimo Joe: Well its just one of those kind of stupid pop names that you come up with you’re like “that’s catchy” it’s a pretty silly name but I guess the Beatles was a pretty silly name and you just smashing pumpkins? No c’mon but I guess hopefully the music gets to own the name rather than the other way around.

Access All Areas.net.au: At the MTV AVMA’s you had to play in the rain, have you performed outdoors in the rain before?
Eskimo Joe: Yes many times actually we did perform one in subzero degrees temperature in Launceston in front of a bunch of drunken Launceston’s and a rotwhyler who seemed very intent on eating Kav’s hand. This is a walk in the rainy park for us yeah.

Access All Areas.net.au: You weren’t nominated tonight but how long do you think it will take for Eskimo Joe to get a nomination on MTV
Eskimo Joe: I think we’ve just goto sleep with someone famous and it’s all ours [laughs]
Tomorrow we’ll probably be nominated for something!

Access All Areas.net.au: And what about the 800 WAMI’s you won?
Eskimo Joe: I believe that was 806 [laughs] we’re just luck that JET actually weren’t nominated for any of those awards.

November 2004
Eskimo Joe have come so far since their blast on to the music scene in the spring of 1998.

It’s three years on since the release of Eskimo Joe’s acclaimed Girl LP, now the friendly yet furtive trio are back on a new label with their second album, A Song Is A City.

Kav, Paul, Stu and Joel - four lads from the sleepy coastal town of Fremantle in Victoria and about to grace the world wide stage with the national Australian tour and after that, an assault on the US and UK markets. Whilst talking of the band’s future plans, band member Kav says “Basically we’re about to head off for a tour to the capital cities, all venues being fairly big venues as a real band: all the lighting and staging and the full band then off to the states for a couple of weeks and then come back for the ARIA’s. It’s all early days yet but a couple of people from US labels are interested and will come here and checkout some of our Melbourne shows and we’ll go over there and do some showcases. From there I guess whoever we have the best repoire with, we’ll sign to them and all get started.”

Undoubtably the bands claim to fame in Australia came in 2001 when they released their debut album titled ‘The Girl’. Locally, the album entered the top 40 on the ARIA charts and went gold with tracks like "Planet Earth" and "who Sold Her Out" receiving airplay on Triple J and in addition to this, some of the band's tracks featured on the hit TV show ‘The Secret Life Of Us.’

Having moved on from their debut album, Eskimo Joe went back into the studio which resulted in their even more successful album ‘A Song Is A City’ of which their new single ‘Older Than You’ is released from.

‘A Song Is A City’ has been certified platinum and sits at number 9 on the Australasian top 20 charts this week and number 33 on the national top 50 charts after 16 weeks from it’s release and at it’s peak, reached number 2.

“Its been really good”, Kav says of the experience the second time round. “The major difference, with the last album so many people come up to us and would say how much they loved the album and how it should be doing so well and now we’re happy now they come up to us and say congratulations that they love the album and that it is doing so well”.

‘Older Than You’ is the new single which the band release to stores on September 27 and well “it’s a love song… that’s all I can tell you!” Kav explains. Perhaps not so descriptive on the song but then we checkout the bio accompanying the single where we find out that the song was written mid last year when Kav had just split up with his girlfriend of four years and had gone over to Melbourne to meet up with a girl who was one of the catalysts for the break up. “Nothing had happened, but that window was there. We met up and the thing that I really appreciated about her is that she was a couple of years younger than me but her eyes were like the eyes of an old soul. So it’s the story of us meeting up over there, but I held back `cause it didn’t seem right to simply jump from one relationship to the next. I have to trust in existence. It’s a continuing story.”

And whilst speaking to Kav, it became more apparent that music and the band was his life. Even on his days off, song writing is a regular occurrence for him. “I like to write songs as a daily routine and I like to wake up in the morning and cruise down to the coffee shop and have a coffee and think about a tune and I generally have four or five tunes on the go and I start developing them. Some sink and some swim.”

Kav does however still lead a normal life “I’ll spend time with my friends and live a normal life –normality is where songwriting comes from. Little stories in life, interesting stories.

But there soon won’t be too much time for that as the band ventures on the road for their national headlining tour with Scottish band, Dogs Die In Hot Cars as their support act. “This time round we’re putting together a proper show, a full lighting show, it’ll be a bit more of a full show as apposed to a band rocking up to do a gig - it will sound like a bigger ballsier live version of it [the album].” Kav talks of what fans can expect of the tour.

ARTIST BIOGRAPHY

It was at a Cairo coffee shop said to be thousands of years old in which Kav Temperley decided it was time for something new. Here, in the El Fyshawys Café, the Eskimo Joe frontman resolved to cast off his rock-star mask, shut down the smoke machines, turn down the lasers and close the chapter of the four-times-platinum juggernaut of Black Fingernails, Red Wine.

“I was sitting there having a coffee and smoking a sheesha and at that moment I decided I was going to give up the idea of this rock-star persona I’d tried to create and almost sacrificed myself for,” Temperley, chief songwriter and bassist, says. “I was going to come back and just be me and see where I landed.”

So from a bustling Egyptian eatery that never closes to the sleepy port town of Fremantle, Temperley, Stuart MacLeod and Joel Quartermain found a new challenge when they regrouped in their home studio – to simply be themselves. The experience was liberating and the result is a beautiful, accomplished album that masterfully captures the finest hour in the bands' career.

“The album really was about coming back to a much more honest place, as far as where the songs come from and who we are,” says Temperley. “On the last record we got to play those big shows and have laser lights and big screens behind us. That gave us the freedom to just relax and write some songs that came from a really honest place, that was just us.”

Inshalla is a wonderfully unguarded and inspiring set that harnesses the band’s fresh outlook and channels it through new methods of songwriting and arranging. Infectious drum grooves pulse beneath Temperley’s emotive vocals and form an infectious dynamic that sees melodies to soar. Light keyboard flourishes, a single violin, inventive guitar tones tempered with a pleasing amount of space all paint this vivid portrait of a year in the life of Eskimo Joe.
Demoing a dozen tracks and recording 11 at Byron Bay’s Studio 301, the trio were pushed beyond their comfort zone and to a new level by acclaimed British rock producer Gil Norton (Foo Fighters, the Pixies, Echo and the Bunnymen). The esteemed rock producer challenged the band to craft songs that said the most with less.

“Gil’s sensibilities are pop and one of trimming all the fat and leaving what’s essential,” says Quartermain, adding that a decade ago Norton was the producer the Pixies-loving trio ambitiously dreamed of one day working alongside. “It was a nice dream-come-true moment thing after so long.”

For all of Norton’s guidance, the album’s most pervading presence is a sense of hope and lifefulness. From the stand-to-attention upbeat rock stomp of first single “Foreign Land” to the infectious carefree skewed pop of “Don’t Let Me Down”, the band’s lust for life is simply irresistible. With Temperley and MacLeod becoming fathers for the first time last year, Inshalla is the sound of an invigorating, exciting fresh start for a trio intent on embracing the world around them.

For a band whose sound has taken giant leaps forward, from 2001’s Girl to 2004’s A Song Is A City and on to the four-times-platinum mega hit Black Fingernails, Red Wine, Eskimo Joe have stepped up to again prove why they’re one of the most heralded and enduring rock bands around today. And this candid, unselfconscious set shows that the adventure is only just beginning.

“It just feels like a new chapter, a new challenge,” Temperley agrees, adding that their young families have only strengthened their commitment to the band. “New people in the posse make it feel like the journey we’ve been on for 10 years has opened up into a new realm.”
MacLeod agrees: “It definitely makes you take stock of what’s important in your life. I firmly believe family is the most important thing in the world, but you have to keep your soul happy as well. And music is always going to be there for all of us.”

www.eskimojoe.net

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