“It’s called Roaring Girle,” she announces, “and it’s a story that’s inspired by this underground figure Mary Frith. She was around in the 1600s in England, and I just sort of stumbled across the story, and thought she was just a very intriguing character. She lived on the streets and she would dress as a man. She was part of the first movement of women who would dress as men and perform on stage.
“There were playwrights called Milton and Dekker, they’d heard of her and her eccentricities and wrote a play about her. And she actually opened for her own play, she was just really intriguing and I thought it would be an interesting parallel, with the whole riot-girl/roaring grrl thing.”
Whalebone agrees that it is somewhat of a different topic for the lyrics of a rock song to touch upon. “Yeah, I thought so” She concurs. “It was one of those things, where I was thinking ‘wow, how intriguing is it that all these hundreds of years ago, this one particular women stood out as defying gender boundaries, and getting up there and actually performing on a stage’. If you were found to be doing that, you would face death.”
There is also a second single on the way shortly, and she feels this should be the beginning of another full blown release at some stage in the not too distant future.
“When we went in and recorded, we recorded two tracks,” she explains, “I thought I liked them both so much and I felt they both had their own integrity. So I think we’re going to go back in and record some more, and release an EP early in the new year. That’s the plan.”
The release of the single signifies a multiple date Victorian tour, featuring dates in Melbourne’s inner and outer suburbs and some shows in regional centres, and Whalebone is looking forward to the jaunt.
“We’re going on tour after the release of this single”. She explains. “We’re doing a regional tour, which is the Roaring Girle tour. It’s going to be good fun, we’ve got several dates booked. We’re playing at Yah Yah’s with The Long Holiday, which is another fantastic Melbourne band, and also Three Quarter Beast, who will be releasing their own EP that night too.”
The band should also be travelling beyond the Victorian border within the next six months or so. “We’re in the process of talking to a few bookers and things; we’ll see what we can get going. We want to get interstate, definitely. We’d love to do the east coast, and head across to Adelaide, that’s definitely on the cards.”
Longer term, Whalebone says she has more than enough songs to do a full album, it’s only finances that are holding her back from doing an LP.
“I’m always writing, that’s something that I’m always doing. It’s one of those things where you have all of these songs that I just record myself at home, just all storing up. I’d really love to do an album, but that’s one of those luxuries that hopefully I can afford in the future.”
Whalebone’s parting words were to inform everyone that the first 50 people through the door at their Yah Yah’s launch on September 13 will get a free Jaeger shot, so if that’s not an incentive to go, we don’t know what is.
BY ROD WHITFIELD
