You recently released your debut EP A Lover and a Fool. What was the recording process like?
The process was a long one because we were gigging pretty heavily last year and were trying to find time in between shows to get recording done. We recorded the skeletons of all the songs at Brain studios in July and the vocals and overdubs didn’t start happening until about November. It was hard trying to balance the gigging and recording and at times super tiring but we are all pretty stoked with the end result so the chaos was all worth it.
You guys have been touring rigorously over the last few years. How has your sound developed over this time? Has touring affected your sound?
I think the last couple of years has been instrumental to us really locking in to each other’s playing styles and has made us a much tighter band. I feel like we all have a pretty great connection with each other now. It has also been a bit of a kick to get us writing lots of music. Being thrown into a bunch of triple set gigs got us working pretty hard on getting a lot of material together.
You’ve toured all over the country, playing shows in large cities and rural towns. What constitutes a great show?
A great show for us is a show where people are genuinely listening to and enjoying our music. That might sound like an obvious statement but there are a lot of pubs out there where music takes second place to the TV in the corner. We’d much prefer to play to a crowd of 15 listeners than 100 people talking to each other about the footy. It’s really refreshing to play venues where people come for the music and the staff are passionate about getting good bands in. I think there are a lot more of those kind of venues popping up in places you wouldn’t expect.
What music are you inspired by at the moment?
I’ve been thinking a lot about my songwriting lately and I guess that’s pushed me to really think about melody and form. I’ve been digging through some old albums and rediscovered Bossanova by the Pixies. Such a raw, energetic album full of great melodies! Also, for the past six months I have been obsessed with Silverchair’s Diorama. It’s full of unexpected melodies and progressions, killer orchestral arrangements, and such clever use of light and shade. Epic!
You guys recently played at Bluesfest. That must have been a huge milestone for you. What’s next for Eddie Boyd & the Phatapillars?
Playing Bluesfest was incredible. Such great attentive audiences and the biggest crowds we’ve ever played to. Those shows were actually the first dates of our EP launch tour so that was a really great platform to push off from. I guess the plan for this year is to push the EP as much as we can and build up as much momentum as possible around it. We’re just coming to the end of our launch tour and we plan to tour it again, probably more extensively, closer to the end of the year. In the meantime, the focus will be on writing and planning the next release. The EP has been great for testing the waters and I think for our next output, whether that be an album or another EP, we’ll be working on refining our sound and really nutting out our identity as a band.
I hear you’re about to release your debut video clip for your single “Bad Timing”. When can we expect to see it?
Hopefully, we’ll have the clip out in the next couple of weeks. We’ve been working on trying to get Rage to premiere it, so fingers crossed! In the meantime, we can tell you that it involves transvestites, kissing and robbery.
