Today, although we convene at the pub, Nick French, one of the band’s vocalists and guitarists, has his dear baby daughter in tow and Josh Crawley, the band’s lead guitarist, has brought Hank along for the ride, a friendly black and white spotty rescue dog he’s had for two weeks. Over the course of the next hour, French and Crawley consume one pot each, Hank down’s some dog-jerky and French’s little girl has a roll and grapes from a tiny Tupperware container, while occasionally glancing at a Peter Rabbit baby hardback book. French apologises twice, at the start and end of the interview. “I’m sorry that we’ve both brought our family along”, he says. For our part, it was pretty damn idyllic – a quiet, sunny Wednesday arvo in the pub with band, baby, dog and laughs.
That said, there’s a fair bit of reflection about the band’s boozing escapades and French and Crawley’s role in the band. Apparently, six errant lads do well with a bit of structure and someone’s gotta provide it. So, French has pegged himself as band mum and Crawley as band dad. “In some old, Australian sexist way, dads get to be the drivers and I’m always the driver,” Crawley explains of the role assignment. “I have the power to turn around and say, ‘We’re not going to Disneyland’.”
Thinking about some of the band’s booze-related misadventures (one band member once got so plastered in Edinburgh he missed a show, only to be found asleep later on garbage bags), are they acquitting these roles well? “No,” Crawley rues. “Maybe I pushed them too hard, who knows?” “We’ve got some naughty kids,” French adds. “We were actually having a chat in Belgium about the band’s drinking and we were thinking, ‘What have we done? Is this a healthy thing?’ We’re still going at it though, just like every other band, although we both drink a lot less now.” “I gave up smoking two years ago,” says Crawley proudly. “I’ve saved $12,000.” Good for you man.
The band’s genesis was a bit boozy too, which is not unsurprising – some of the lads worked together in a record store that doubled as a bar (Prudence) and spent a lot of time listening to Tom Waites, Nick Cave and getting pissed. “I think every band starts the same way, whether it’s a bunch of mates working in a record store or a bunch of mates listening to the same records at home: it’s always just a bunch of mates wanting to play music together because they’re on the same page. Prudence probably had an advantage though, because it was a record store slash bar and the boss was pretty generous with the staff buying records each week for the bar.”
“Yeah, we nerded out,” French concurs. “We got drunk and went down wormholes of weird music. We were just all hanging out and the band was a kind of a drunken idea.” “It was a really drunken idea,” Crawley qualifies. “We weren’t even musos. There was definitely a serious element there though – we were trying to make a band, doing the hard work.”
Both Crawley and French attribute the music and the drinking, at least in part, to the suburb – God bless North Melbourne. “North Melbourne – that was a drinkin’ little suburb,” Crawley muses. “It was a country town – people could just hang out at those North Melbourne bars for months without even going to the city. Nick called it the meat grinder – it’s this vortex that just sucks in early 20-something men.” “Kids would come from the country,” French explains further. “They’d get a job at one of the pubs and tattoos would start growing on their arms and their stare would get a little bit more glassy and you’d just see the meat grinder grinding them out, then they’d start playing drums in some garage band.”
“At the end of saying all of that about North Melbourne, what a scene,” Crawley reflects. “I could name a heap of good bands out of North Melbourne – Midnight Juggernaughts, the Smith Street Band’s from there and Children Collide. We all basically lived on the same street – on Queensberry Street.” “We all knew each other because we worked and drank at the same places,” French continues. “No one left the suburb. I once went two months without leaving 3051.”
This follows into a quick, nostalgic segue about the joys of obtaining music in the olden days. “I don’t want to sound like an idiot, but it was before iTunes and downloading onto your phone and it was a bit more special,” Crawley recollects. “It was before even YouTube,” responds French. “It was a different experience trying to find music back then. You’d go to record shops and you’d read the sleeves of a record and find out who played on what, rather than just clicking.” Everyone at the table, bar baby, is now nodding furiously in agreement about the musical virtues of ye olde days. “Not to say that I didn’t start downloading or stealing music. Oh, we were stealing music,” laughs Crawley. “We still are,” corrects French.
BY MEG CRAWFORD
