“There’s six people in that band so at first it was a bit difficult to get to know everyone properly,” he recalls. “The second week that we were on tour, though, it was very different by then. Everybody started to get to know each other by the end of it and it turned out to be sort of a big family experience. We learned quite a lot from them and they are such a professional band, it was very inspiring. Actually, just watching them was amazing, the fact that we got to support them was a bonus. This year has been crazy in general for us! We only kicked off this band at the start of the year and it’s been unbelievable since! Our first show was with Peter Combe which was also pretty amazing! It was at The Globe in Brisbane and it was just fantastic. Everyone rocked up wearing paper pirate hats and just going mental to all the songs. You can get pretty nostalgic at a show like that!”
Speaking of nostalgia, Mewburn claims that the mellower, personal-tragedy-inspired single Oh River might have been the song that most people have come to associate with the band, but it’s definitely not what The Strums are all about. On new EP Are You Picking Up What I’m Putting Down?, the band are out to prove that their heart and soul is in straight-ahead, balls-out rock’n’roll, as opposed to their first introduction earlier this year.
“Oh River was a song about the floods we had in Queensland,” says Mewburn. “But you’re not going to find that track on the EP because it just doesn’t represent what the band is. Sonically, we just wanted a real rock’n’roll sound, we want people to know us as a rock band so we’ve picked all songs that suit that. Oh River was an acoustic, pretty emotional song which is not really us, it’s just what we came up with at the time. The floods at the time touched us personally – well, Jai [Sparks, vocals] anyway. His house went under in the floods and he’s still very much affected by it because it’s destroyed and he doesn’t know what’s going to happen to it. At that time it was a coincidence that he’d wrapped it up with another band he was in, so when we got together we made up the song that was about a pretty dark time in his life. We just started writing together and Oh River came together acoustically quite quickly. It’s all about his direct feelings and response to what happened, we actually recorded it at the house that god flooded before we took it to the studio and made it a single.”
Recorded at Brisbane’s Zero Interference studio with Bryce Moorhead, Are You Picking Up What I’m Putting Down? nails the essence of rock’n’roll, according to Mewburn and perfectly re-introduces The Strums to the Australian rock community.
“We were so stoked with the way that Bryce captured our sound!” enthuses Mewburn. “He really completely nailed it, and the album really nails what we were trying to get across. It’s always hard to choose the perfect songs that represent what you’re going for, so choosing out of the eight that we already had was pretty difficult. We sort of did consider just releasing an album because we did have eight tracks, but at the same time eight tracks is kind off not enough for an album but too much for an EP. We figured that maybe it’s just too early at this stage to release an album already, the EP was what we were more comfortable with putting out there. The thing is that we’re always writing together, like non-stop, it’s a process that once you start doing it you just can’t stop it, the material just literally pours out of you most of the time. Right now we’re building up material but we’re going to enjoy the success of this EP at the same time. We’re going to release another single in February and then tour that in Marc, so as far as actually releasing an album, we’ll see how long it takes us with the next tour.”
For now, launching Are You Picking Up What I’m Putting Down? and celebrating the foot-stomper of a single Two And Two Is Three sits as the biggest priority for The Strums. With a mini-tour across the southern states, Mewburn says the boys are fast becoming accustomed to a life on the road.
“It’s weird when you realise it hasn’t even been a full year yet that we’ve been doing this,” he laughs. “We’ve already got to support a band like King Cannons, which is such a lucky break when you think about it. Unfortunately it can be hard to soak everything in properly at the time it’s happening, but we’re making the most of it! I think we’ve been pretty lucky that everyone we’ve come across so far has been more than willing to help us out as much as possible. That really rubs off on people and it makes you want to help others out in turn. We don’t see this music thing as a competition between bands, it’s pretty pointless to have rivals. I think the whole industry should work together and apply to attitude that if people are willing to help one another, the industry as a whole actually wins out in the end.”
