The man behind it all, Jarrod Brown, says, “It’s going pretty sweet. I am really proud of Eagle And The Worm; having an album and being able to back it up with a full-scale national tour, with the whole eight-piece band. Pressing the album onto 12″ – which was the ambition right from the start – I’m really proud. It’s hard work but I’m pumped. It’s pretty sweet not only playing a show in say Brisbane but you also get to hang out with eight of your friends for a couple of days, playing some tunes and selling some records.”
Bringing back the good times is something close to Brown’s songwriting heart. Having been playing ’round the scene in plenty of other notable bands – The Custom Kings, The Hondas – he felt it was time to simply write for himself. “I guess I just wanted to write my own record,” he says. “I had a sound that I was really feeling. I was sick of writing for so many other bands, I had been playing bass and writing for any number of other bands, putting so much work into spreading myself over so many different sounds, and it got to the point where I thought I wanna do my own record. I was always writing, I had so many different demos. I guess the ambition was to just write a great record. That was the inspiration, to just write an album. I was hearing a sound in my head and went for it. I put a lot of time into researching and demoing it, and I guess by putting so much time into it enabled me to go into the studio with no rehearsals and count it out.”
With the album encompassing classic 1960-’70s-style, reviewers are seemingly making sport of deciding what song sounds like what classic band, but the vibe runs deeper than simply homage to older acts. Summer Song is a wig-out space jam; Futureman a loose boogie party and All I Know a rock and roll hoedown.
“I don’t think anyone writes by genre description or anything like that,” Jarrod says of the sound. “Like. ‘I want this to be dub-step rock fuckin’ country,’ or something. I was just writing a particular sound to come out of the speakers and a particular kind of density in the arrangements, a particular looseness with the rhythm section. I wanted to be able to hear a band playing, which is why I didn’t want to rehearse much, I just want to have people really fired up in the studio and having a sweet time.”
The balls of the albums were laid down in only four days, with most of the band learning the songs on the spot. “It was about having a good time and I just wanted to keep that on the record,” Brown explains. “Take that looseness from the studio and build some really nice, intricate, lush arrangements. Recording in that way is the backbone of the record. Having the balance of having fun and jamming, but also presenting a song that has melodies people can hear and connect with. I guess the record has that balance too, between tripping out, going wherever you want and maintaining the idea of a song. The role I wanted to play was to be a creative director, setting those limitations with people, despite the fact that people didn’t know the songs back-to-front I was really able to hone in on different things. I was able to say “I really want your personality to shine through the song really hard, just go for it.” It was more about getting chemistry, saying the right things and getting the right atmosphere, selecting the things not to say, the directions not to give so people can do their own thing.”
In preparation for the national tour, Brown took time off to travel but whereever he goes music follows. “I just went on holiday which was pretty fuckin’ sweet,” he says.”America for three weeks and it’s the middle of summer. Saw Guided By Voices in New York, Hall And Oats. Hall And Oats were hilarious; we met Darrel Hall in a guitar shop in LA, it was fucking awesome. He’s looking really good, he’s pretty fit, he is still hanging onto it pretty hard, Oats is just like, ‘I’ve sold 50 million records, so whatever. I’m fucking Oats.’ Hall is still looking for more. Still got the same hair; wearing transition shades. Pretty awesome.”
Back home it’s all about getting the band in shape, ready to truly represent the record live. “I feel that up until this point the live band has just been trying to play songs and presenting the record; we are getting pretty good at that but it’s an eight-piece band, it gets better all the time. We have now set up something for ourselves where we can experiment and explore a bit more live, maybe on this tour and more so next year. But yeah man, eight dudes, you can’t just tap into that connection straight away off the bat. We have worked pretty hard and rehearsed a hell of a lot. We are pretty pumped about the show. Everyone get the fuck down.”
