This
band went from local heroes to now being an international buzz band, how do you
explain the whirlwind?
The past year and a bit has
definitely been a whirlwind.. I wouldn't say we are local heroes but our shows
at home have been lots of fun lately. We got to go to America for a month while
SXSW was on and we played a few shows over there that seemed to go really well.
I guess now we're just looking forward to getting back over there for a proper
tour.. I think that's happening in July.
Your
song “Treehouse,” has been credited for a lot of your success. How did the song
come about?
Yeah, it started as an
instrumental that Ryan had written and we took the vocal parts from a song I'd
written a couple of years ago and it worked.. and then with Vin's guitar and
harmonies in there it turned into a song. It was the first song we ever wrote
and it was recorded in Vin's bedroom. At the time, we never really knew if we'd
show anybody but a few weeks later, it was getting played on alternative radio
at home.
Hailing
from Ballarat, Australia, did you ever think you would be discovered?
Nope. A lot of this stuff
that's happening was never in the plan.. We just wanted to write some music we
liked and hopefully be able to play it in front of some people for fun.
The
bands sound is so unique and very intense, who are some of your influences?
Well we grew up listening to
pop and rock music mainly.. then we started, we wanted to take some percussive
ideas from hip hop and try write pop music on top of it. And those two things
are still the main influence on our music. I've been getting nostalgic and
listening to lots of 90's Disney soundtracks lately.. And even the current
American pop chart bullshit is inspiring me a lot at the moment, which is
probably a bad thing.
How
did the band form?
Four of us went to school
together in Ballarat and have been mates for ten years. Vin and I met Ryan
through playing in our old bands with his old band and decided to start this
new thing. Luke and Rob were good mates of ours and even though they'd never
been in bands before, we asked them to come and jam. We started writing and it
just worked.
Are
there gold fields in Ballarat, is that how you got the name?
There are... We weren't trying
to be patriotic or anything when we came up with it though. Vin and Luke were
just driving back from practice in Melbourne one night and they saw a sign that
said "Gold Fields". At that stage, we were calling ourselves 'The
Woods' but we'd never played a show and nobody had ever heard of us. We
couldn't be called 'The Woods' because that name was taken. And Gold Fields
felt right.
Your
live shows, easily some of our favorites, are just as intense and crazy as the
sound you make. Do you ever get off stage and feel like how are you going to do
this night after night?
Yep. I think that most nights.
A lot of the time my singing has been pretty rough and I've wondered if we'd
ever get booked for another show. Getting all our gear around is probably the
hardest part. We carry a lot more gear than most bands, with two drum kits, two
keys, samplers and guitars and lots of hardware. Playing the show is the fun
part.
Playing
New York City, SXSW and Los Angeles for the first time earlier this year, must
have been a great experience. Tell us about it.
Yeah it was amazing. We'd been
to LA before, where we started recording our album, but we didn't really play
any proper shows. We played one in a tiny bar and one at a street festival
during the day. So it was awesome to go over again and play a few decent shows.
We were pretty surprised that anybody actually came to watch us and the
response from people over there was pretty mind blowing. That trip has probably
been the highlight for me so far... I'm really looking forward to playing more
shows over there.
How
do the crowds in LA, Austin and NYC differ from what you are used to back down
under?
I think they are more interested
because we're from Australia. At home, the crowds are great, but it's like
we're playing in front of our mates, which is a good thing in lots of ways. But
in America it's different because things a slightly more foreign and there's a
little sense of excitement in the unknown.
What was it like working on your debut?
When we signed our deal to make a record, there was a stack of money put
towards a producer and some classy studios in America.. So we went straight
from our bedroom studio into all of that. We recorded the bulk of 11 or so
songs in LA and then came home and did a few more songs with our mate/Aussie
producer extraordinaire, Scott Horscroft.
But a lot of the sounds we got
in the nice big studios just weren't right for us, so funnily enough we are
currently back at my house right now, programming and recording new sounds to
bring the right vibe to the record. We learned so much from the whole
experience and from working with Mickey Petralia, who was awesome and extremely
wise. But the reality is we will probably end up re-recording most of it
ourselves.
Did you ever
think that any of this would ever happen to you?
Nope, haha... I never really
thought anybody would care about anything I wrote.
You guys do a
phenomenal cover of Underworld’s “Born Slippy,” how did you decide within in
the band to cover a song like that?
We were about to start the
Parklife tour, which is a dance music festival tour in Australia and we wanted
to do a cover because it was very early on and we knew no-one would know our
music. It came on the radio one day and it just clicked.. I knew the guys would
be up for it and that we'd be able to make it interesting enough with all our live
instruments. That did go down really well, especially in the states. It's a lot
of fun to play.