“There’s all these different surfaces and stuff,” someone says jovially when I ask how it went. “Sometimes when we want to treat ourselves, Zoë, we put a bit of sticky tape around the pole. You’ve got to be [careful] though, there’s an $800 fine.” After some initial confusion it becomes apparent I’ve got drummer Fernando Castaneda, guitarist Joel Brokate and bassist St John Simpson on the line, and they politely introduce each of their comments with their respective names so I can keep track (although it gets difficult when the jokes and guffaws are flying).
Completing the group is bluesy lead vocalist Loz Dinelli, and her soulful pipes drive the boys in a sound which plaits together incredibly well considering each of the members comes from a distinctly different musical background. “It started pretty organically,” explains Castaneda. “Me and Joel [were] jamming on tracks that he’d written years before that, then out of the jams we started writing some new stuff. It was sort of a really normal progression, the band just started happening. We were like, ‘Yeah, these songs are getting better and better’.”
“It started off really rock-indie,” adds Brokate. “Then we made a decision as a band that we didn’t want to be genre-specific. So we thought, ‘We’ll just write anything really! As long as it sounds good’. We were thinking it might split our audience up a bit, but bands like the [Red Hot] Chilli Peppers can get away with it, there’s other bands out there too than can do it, so we thought why not?” Castaneda concludes: “The best bands out there have always done that, they combine whatever they knew before to create something new [as a whole].”
Considering the band’s name is related to one of the best Hanks-related things to shout, the question of its origin comes up but there’s a blithe argument as to where it began. Apparently the guys came across a service where you could get anything you liked printed on a T-shirt for $5. “We wanted, ‘You’ve got new legs, Lieutenant Dan’,” Brokate explains. After messing around with the phrase the current name was chosen. “It was a bit more music-related,” Castaneda says with a laugh.
An extremely driven and prolific ensemble, the group have a dedicated rehearsal every Sunday, “the day of our Lord,” says Brokate helpfully. “I mean they’re not always the most sober rehearsals, but we make it through,” Castaneda says.
Brokate continues: “A lot of the time we might write a song, learn it on the Sunday, and then really cement [it] at the gig. That’s how we get a bit more confident.” But it’s also the larger picture of moving through the industry chessboard that is occupying the band’s attention at this point. “At the moment, getting good connections with other bands [is important],” says Brokate. “We’ve got a pretty big list of bands that we’ve played with already; we’ve got 40 or 50 bands we can just call up, and we’re building our name that way. It’s pretty hard for bands to do it all themselves these days, so we’re in a couple collectives. Everyone’s pulling together: we’ve got the videographer, a few photographers. The idea is to get everyone emerging at the same point and make a bit of a community of it.”
“It’s good to have ground-up relationships with people,” agrees Castaneda.
The band have already released one video, the fun Indie Clap which was created pro bono by a British friend of the group. “You can’t miss me,” says Castaneda. “I’m the guy in the big yellow jumper, looking like an absolute spaz.”
“He’s the one that can’t jump properly,” says Brokate or Simpson – either way everyone’s laughing. “He’s got short legs.” The four are due to record and release another video soon, which they plan to shoot in one of the horse-and-carriage set-ups that trot around the Melbourne CBD. They’re also going to send us some jam which they made. No, really. “It’s mixed fruit, stonefruit,” says Brokate. “We’ve got a little sweatshop going. We give our sweatshop like five per cent of what we earn, but we don’t earn anything, so. But we give ‘em regular cigarette breaks, and they’ve got a union.”
BY ZOË RADAS
