With a sweeping hood of unkempt red hair, a wicked sense of humour, and a lifetime spent on the road and behind the mixing desk for some of the world’s heaviest bands, Redro Redriguez isn’t the first person you’d think of if someone asked you to describe a perfectionist.
However, when asked why it has taken a little over two years for his band Redro Redriguez & His Inner Demons to follow-up the stoner rock-infused Easy Magic EP, Redriguez shoots straight.
“Denim Daddy was recorded at the end of November over three days at a place called Debasement in Ferntree Gully, where Bugdust recorded their album and Uptown Ace did their albums,” he says.
“At the end of 2016 it was decided that I would do an album with Danny [Leo, drums] and Neil [Wilkinson, guitar] and then we steadily worked on the songs because they were doing Fluff as well, so I had to work in with that which added time.”
As Redriguez contests, finding a sense of perfection takes time. “It took the best part of a year to work the band into a shape that we were all happy with.”
After almost 30 years recording music, Redriguez – along with his band that are all similarly experienced – know that the illustrious ‘studio magic’ is a fantasy, instead it is all about preparation.
“We recorded it in three days because we had all the songs ready to go. I think that bands that think that it will come together in the studio are very naïve because it is actually a bad creative situation.”
On the topic of avoidable dysfunction, the second last song on Denim Daddy, titled ‘Third Quarter’, comes to Redriguez’s mind. “I read this NASA study about how in isolated situations, like being stuck up in an International Space Station, it is the third quarter where the insanity sets in because you are past the halfway mark but still a long way off a normal living situation,” he says.
The empathy or relevance for Redriguez that inspired him to write a song about it is that of a band being on tour. While having not toured widely with his band, it was Redriguez’s broad experience as a roadie where he got the most insight into this cabin-fever like phenomena.
“I was a roadie for this band called Killing Time and in 1992 they got to support Jane’s Addiction. They ummed and ahhed about taking me right up until the night before the tour started and then they asked me to come. I went right around Australia in pretty much the same set of clothes,” Redriguez says.
“I was 18 so I just went for it, at the time Jane’s Addiction were at their peak having just released Ritual de Lo Habitual. By the third quarter of it exhaustion kicked in and I got a bit emotional – lack of sleep combined with 14-hour days meant that the loading in every day basically sent me insane.”
