The Dearhunters Spill the Wine.....
"It was Greg's birthday party and this girl who managed the Sandringham Hotel in
Sydney had a month of Mondays free so she asked us if we wanted to get a band together to
do it. By the fourth Monday the place was packed, we were really enjoying it and Cameron
came up and said he had all this new gear and wanted us to be his 'experimental
band'."
Tim Oxley succinctly sums up the beginnings of The Dearhunters, the band that brings him
(ex- Humdingers, The Verys) together with fellow singer and writer Jodi Phillis (Clouds)
with Perth guitarist Greg Hitchcock (Bamboos, Kryptonics, New Christs, You Am I, Verys)
and former Clouds drummer Raphael Whittingham, who has subsequently been replaced by Dave
Aston.
All four original members played on Phillis' 1996 solo album, Lounge-O-Sound, (Oxley
played drums in the live line-up) and discovered a common liking for melodic, laidback
pop. So, when recording engineer Cameron McCauley offered them the chance to be his guinea
pigs they jumped at it.
Early last year they all gathered in rural Bundeena, south of Sydney. "Jodi and Raph
were living there," says Oxley "and I was in a granny flat up the back. We did a
couple of weekends there, set up in the lounge room with all Cameron's new computer gear.
It was very relaxed, we'd have a break and go for a swim, a wander or go fishing and then
come back and do some more. There was no record company people looking over our shoulders
or hurrying us up and let's face it, you can't really be relaxed when it's costing you
$200 an hour."
The album, "Red Wine & Blue", has just been released on the independent
Candle label. "They've been fantastic, we didn't have any lawyers, there's not even
any contracts. We finished polishing off the album in February this year, but we did the
bulk of the recording down there in April of '98. The environment certainly had a lot to
do with the sound we came up with."
That sound is a long, long way from the aggressive rock of Oxley's last outfit The Verys,
with the new material revealing a much better singer and writer then we had previously
been privy to. "Yeah, I feel better with it. I was sort of trying to go a bit heavy
with The Verys, a bit angry, a bit drunk. You know, fuck this, fuck that, fuck you, fuck
everything. It was a bit of a shit fight in the end, we'd lost our eighth bass player and
my ears were bleeding from the noise."
Even during that, Oxley was writing songs that would sit on the shelf until The
Dearhunters presented him with the right combination to record them, songs like the (sadly
true) "Mr Katherine". "I was living in Marrickville with my girlfriend and
her friend from school was moving out of home for the first time. She moved into our place
but her father was very protective and I got woken up every morning at 9 o'clock when he'd
ring up to check on her. IT went on for months. He'd even come round and try to be real
blokey with me, you know, shake hands really hard and say really stupid things. Apparently
he's doing it again to his younger daughter."
Another stand out song on the LP is "Ivy", written by Phillis for her (then) six
week old daughter. Now, a year or so down the track, Ivy suddenly makes her presence felt
during our interview , demanding that "minder" Oxley put on the Hooley Dooleys
video, now.
Oxley, of course, has an impressive bunch of siblings of his own. Brothers Jeremy and
Peter and sister Melanie, together and alone, have all enjoyed critical and artistic
success in revered bands like The Sunnyboys and The Sparklers. There's a fifth one as
well, an internationally respected lighting engineer. "He does lights for Nick
Cave," says Oxley. "He writes songs too but is a bit shy on it, you won't get
him on stage or anything."
So is the record a fair indication of what we'll hear live this week ? "Yeah,
although the live set is probably a bit more up tempo. We're also playing about five new
songs - in fact we've got enough material for our second album which we want to record in
November or December. We're all really excited about that."
The Dearhunters are an interesting sounding band, with Hitchcock's slide giving them a
country feel while Phillis and Oxley's voices blend in a way that revives memories of the
classic pop of the Clouds (natch), the Beach Boys and any number of others. If you like
Cowboy Junkies, Karma County or Sparklehorse you're certain to find some joy here.
They've picked their tunes as well, too. "As much as possible we've been trying to
avoid pub kinda gigs," says Oxley, mindful of how pub goers will talk if the music
isn't too loud. "We're really looking forward to playing at MoJo's and the Greenwich,
they really sound like the kind of places we prefer to play."
Article by Steve Gordon
X-Press Magazine, Perth
October, 1999 |
