The document is an interview transcript between The Drones band members and The Gin Club's Ben Salter. Some key discussion points included: - The Drones discussed their new album "Havilah" and working with producer Burke Reid on the subtle production. - They talked about the challenges of being a less commercially viable band in Australia and constantly trying to figure out how to survive financially. - The band members also discussed their influences, including many iconic Australian guitar bands, and how living in the country has impacted their work.

1. Australian Musician Summer 2008
The Drones on stage at LA’s Viper Room earlier this year. Pic by www.pixievisionproductions.com
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Australian Musician Summer 2008
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3. Australian Musician Summer 2008
Pics this page from Viper Room, LA by www.pixievisionproductions.com
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4. Our special guest editors, The Drones have proudly released their new album 'Havilah', to
much critical acclaim. After a one month stint road testing the new material in America,
the band recently returned to Australia for a triumphant national tour. The Gin Club, in all
their ragged glory, did a fine job of warming up crowds as The Drones main support act on
the Australian leg. On the final weekend of the tour, Gin Club's Ben Salter sat down with all
four members of The Drones at Mojo's in Fremantle to chat about all things Havilah!
Ben Salter (Gin Club) So you were saying breakfast, where I think it’s a pretty stupid
Dan, you used to work at a prison? job. But that’s about the only time. Mind
you that happens most mornings.
Dan Luscombe I worked in customer
relations. Basically I worked in the gift G When you do have money you forget
shop, when it closed down. There was your pin number.
still a division that was operable, the D Well that’s right. But it is a weird job,
psychiatric division, but every morning I probably one of the weirdest jobs I
used to walk through H Division. could name. But then again it’s the only
When was this? one I’ve done.
D Around 2000, when the Drones first came Do you find that as you get older you
to Melbourne. dismiss a lot of stuff or just don’t
bother with it cause you feel like
Gareth Liddiard Nice segue.
you’ve kind of heard it all?
So the title of the album, Havilah ... is that
G Yeah, I mean, you hear (The
the name of the property you live in?
Stooges’) Funhouse and it’s like that’s
G The valley. We’re not quite at the level of it, it’s time to move on.
naming stuff yet!
I mean what was the last album you
I googled it and there’s obviously some heard that you went ... ‘Jesus’? That
biblical connotations there. Scott Walker album, The Drift that we
Fiona Kitschin Well yeah, it was a big gold were talking about earlier?
mining area, so it kind of means place of gold G Yeah that, or just stuff that’s not rock
or land of gold. n’ roll.
My favourite song on the new album is I mean that’s all I listen to any more is kind
probably “Luck in Odd Numbers”, I just of stuff that’s not rock n roll. Classical or
think it’s a cracker. Do you have a favourite song black metal!
to play?
M Yeah, all I listen to during the day is classical. I
G Probably that one actually. find it quite soothing.
F Yeah, it’s one of them. G Yeah, Spanish music, lots of that lately
Gin Club
Mike Noga It’s fun to play live. I’m glad you mentioned that cause in “Luck in Odd
For me it sums up all the things about the band that Numbers” there’s such a bolero kind of feel, that bass line..
I kind of enjoy, although I couldn’t really follow the who even wrote that, Ravel?
narrative – half way through it sort of switches. D Yes, it was Ravel.
G Well you’re not really meant to. The first half is good luck and the second half I guess that’s why I love that song, everything about it, the interplay between
is bad luck. It’s actually a Pythagorean theory, luck in odd numbers. I mean the slide guitar and Gareth’s guitar, the bass line, I guess it’s kind of like the
Pythagoras was a pretty smart guy, up until this theory. Drones’ Marquee Moon or something?
Go on, elucidate. What exactly is the theory? G Yeah, well we were kind of going for that a bit.
G Well it’s just that there’s luck in odd numbers, really. I don’t know how you D I think it’s like Gaz saying he listens to lots of flamenco, and we all listen to lots
apply that to anything. Pythagoras made a lot of sense most of his life but then of different types of music, but there’s a common thread running through
he got to that theory and kind of dropped the ball.. it doesn’t make a lot of it all.
sense.
It seems to me you guys are the latest in a long line of Australian guitar
D I think he relates it to cosmic stuff like the number of planets and things like bands, all the way from Birthday Party and Venom P. Stinger
that. I hated Pythagoras at school. All those theorems and stuff.
G Great band
Actually Conor just bought me a book by David Foster Wallace about Pi.
… and stuff through Silbersher’s stuff – Gus (from Gin Club) was playing me
G What is it a cook book? some of that Tendrils stuff the other day and you can definitely hear
Australian Musician Summer 2008
Zing. Actually he just hung himself. something distinctive developing, you just don’t hear it in bands from any
other country.
D While we were in America I think.
G There’s definitely an Australian guitar sound.
G Why did he do that?
And I guess you guys have added to the canon of it a lot.
I don’t know. Maybe he heard too many Drones albums. Anyway back to the
questions - So this whole rock and roll caper. Do you ever feel like you’re D I think by and large my favourite guitar players are Australian, I mean guys
stuck being at 15 years old? I mean you’re all obviously intelligent people. like Rowland S Howard and Kim Salmon and Danny Rumour, Spencer P Jones..
Some bands, you feel like 15 is the perfect age for them to be stuck at. This Who’s that guy from Lubricated Goat?
isn’t to demean rock and roll, I love rock and roll, I think it’s a valid art form
D Stu Spasm?
and awesome but how do you feel about it all as a job, do you ever feel
juvenile? They’ve definitely got that kind of nastiness going on also.
D There are times when I wake up in my current abode which my brother and D Yeah. I mean I’m a big fan of Marc Ribot and Tom Verlaine, but I think
his wife are so good to let me live in, and I don’t have enough money to get generally my favourite guitar players have always been Australians and I don’t
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5. D We were sitting around in the hotel room
know why that is. I guess I can relate to the
this afternoon watching a music cable
sound?
channel with these two goons talking about
M Well, you kind of grew up with it, it’s in-
what the next hot thing to listen to is in
built in your system
Australia and we were just thinking ... we
‘Cause I grew up listening to grunge and are never gonna be on a segment like this.
Pearl Jam and that kind of stuff when I So what do you do? What’s your plan B?
was a kid, but now as I get older and
G Do what you want! You just have to keep
older, I get drawn to this Australian stuff
doing things to keep yourself interested.
that’s so evocative of the landscape,
D You do run out of options pretty quickly in
Midnight Oil and even stuff like
Australia if you are our type of group, which
Icehouse, just cause of that space.
is why I guess we keep heading overseas.
D With Rowland ... I lived in St Kilda ... I
It’s like the last uncharted territory. I guess
mean around the time that it turned bad, or
Gin Club there are still people in Australia who
turned good, depending on how you look
haven’t heard us who might like it.
at it. But Rowland S. Howard’s guitar
For me, being in a band, I guess half of it is getting to make the music you
playing kind of evokes the landscape of Fitzroy Street, or you know, and Danny
want to make, but the other half is that lifestyle, you get to travel and do stuff
Rumour has that wide open Australian space sound.
that people with proper jobs do except you go and get drunk and have
Gaz and Fi, has it made a big difference moving out to the country?
adventures and stuff.
G Yeah, yeah, well touring is just being surrounded by people, and no privacy so
F Yeah, well people save up for years to go on a big holiday and we get to do it
it’s good to get out of civilisation.
every year or so.
It’s good to get out on the land.
That’s the big three reasons that I’m in a band I guess - making music,
D Fiona gets to hone her cooking chops. meeting other people in bands and traveling. I just don’t know that I could do
What’s your favourite dish at the moment, Fi? anything else. Have you ever had a back up or ever thought that there was
something that you could have done apart from music?
F I don’t have a favourite ... at the moment I’m going through a big dumpling
phase. We went to China for a few days after the last European tour, spent 8 G No, just music.
days in Shanghai, so that was awesome. I mean I meet some people who do this stuff, who are in bands, and I just
You recently did a US tour with indie legends Built to Spill and the Meat think “You could have done anything.”
Puppets – how was that? G Yeah, but they’re never as good, and I mean people with a safety net are never
D It was just great. The guys from Built to Spill, and there were six of them on as good either. Don’t study law just in case. Just do the music and it’ll be better
the tour, were just lovely to a man, very generous and giving. without a safety net.
M I don’t know if you can smoke that much pot and not be lovely. I don’t think I was gonna ask, do you ever listen to your own stuff?
it’s possible. G Um, yeah, once in a while. Once a year maybe. But once you’ve done it
D The Meat Puppets guys are kind of pretty wild, one of them was on probation you’ve heard it so much.
to go on the tour after serving three years in prison – I mean you kind of feel a When you get blind occasionally you whack it on?
little bit tame compared to those guys. But they were nice enough. I mean
G Yeah, it’s fun to hear it. I mean the thing is you make the music you want to
they’re kind of like the missing link between the Grateful Dead and
hear, but then you hear it so much when you’re making it you don’t want to hear
contemporary bands...they’re in their own world. Amazing band though.
it anymore. But yeah, when you’re drunk once in a while it’s fun.
So where are you guys at now? Is it hard to make a living doing what you do?
I should ask you about Burke Reid (album producer), cause he’s done a really
D I think for most people the music we make is pretty hard to swallow. It’s a awesome and subtle production on Havilah. What was he like to work with?
funny thing ‘cause we’ve made a record that we’re all incredibly proud of. I mean
D He was amazing. Really transparent.
you do your job as a musician, and you hope that it strikes a chord with all the
F You’d never see him.
people that are into music out there. But it’s a funny band, because it’s also quite
a challenge to a lot of people. Generally the reaction we have had to this record D I’d just bump into the guy
is that, well it took me a few listens to finally get it.. and then..
M He was always encouraging us to try new things, but in a very gentle way.
G Well, that’s happened with all the records
D He was like Socrates, he was always asking you questions.
D Yeah, I suppose.
G He wasn’t a producer so much, just like an extra dude in the band.
Well I mean, some of my favourite albums are the ones I didn’t get into
D He put mikes everywhere. I mean he loved the sound of the house. He just
straight away.
opened the room right up.
D It’s a tricky position to be in in Australia because a lot of the successful bands,
G When we did this thing with Burke the main thing from his end what we
and when I say successful I mean financially successful, in this country aren’t of
talked about was like Andy Johns’ production on Marquee Moon by Television,
that nature. Mostly it’s just the instant appeal thing, that gets bands in this
somewhere between that and his work on the Led Zeppelin albums, and that
country fame.
was just the bass and drums, and we just sort of went from there. That was the
It’s hard, ‘cause I guess you guys are the kind of band where you just do what leaping off point.
you do and hope that someone out there likes it, not the other way where you
D I think he put just the right amount of technology between the band and the
think of what people like and then try to do it.
end product, just enough to open it up when it needed it. Plus he’s a gear nerd,
D I mean, who knows what people like? which is what you want in a producer. But we’re very happy with the results.
G Well, that’s just touring and marketing, you know. Getting the music out there
Australian Musician Summer 2007
Well, thanks guys. Sorry about my crap non-questions and constant
to people who might want to hear it. interjection. I should take this opportunity while I’m on the record to say
D We’re always trying to figure out what a band like us can do to continue as far I reckon Havilah is one of the best albums by an Australian band, or any
as ‘up’. band for that matter, in recent memory, and you should all be really proud.
Is that an imperative, to keep doing what you can to survive? G Thanks mate.
D Well it’s an imperative for every person on the planet
‘Havilah’ by The Drones is out now.
F Well I don’t think it’s an imperative musically to keep doing stuff, that kind of
www.myspace.com/thedronesthedrones
takes care of itself...
‘Junk’ by The Gin Club is also available now. www.theginclub.com.au
Just a matter of what can you do to keep yourself afloat.
D Yeah, just to keep the business afloat.
It must just do your head in, trying to figure out how to sell yourself
to people.
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