“I’m just on Bondi Beach at a Laundromat. This is the first chance I’ve had to wash the filthy tour clothes in a month and a half. I don’t know what they’re talking about with the whole pampering of the rock stars, with the tigers in the parlor of the hotel room. There’s none of that.”
You’ve got to hand it to Stirling for keeping things honest. After all, young bands riding the high of their first few tours have a way of losing touch with reality. But The Joe Kings, raised on a steady diet of soul and blues, seem to prescribe to an old-school approach. Young as they may be, they seem remarkably grounded as people and confident in their aesthetics. Reluctant to get hung up on labels, (Though there have been many attached to this four-piece) Stirling details how the band balanced their love of the blues and their penchant for buoyant rock and roll when writing and recording their latest EP, Love Strikes.
“This sounds like wanky music talk, but it’s the truth. If you try to push too hard towards something that you’re not really ready for, or you think that you want to sound like, it misses the point. If we want to sound like a blues band, then very often the songs come out sounding like hallmark blues songs. When we consider our influences, let things happen naturally and try to have fun while recording it will come out sounding right, not contrived or strained. And if we like the music we’re playing then hopefully others will like it. And we can just leave it at that. Some people call it blues, some people call it soul but we don’t really know what to call it.”
They can call it a success so far. Winners of the 2010 WAMI Award for Favourite Newcomer, their exuberance has been leaving ears ringing across the country. Love Strikes may be an encompassing listen, but Stirling admits that playing live is what the band does best. All four members come together to create a wall of sound that is both frantic and enlightening. In short, there’s a lot happening onstage with The Joe Kings. It’s worth wondering then, how the band manages to translate their live set onto record.
“With difficulty,” Stirling chuckles. “When you’re playing live, there’s so much more to it than just the music. Being nervous beforehand, the intense rush afterwards and just trying to be an interesting band and have fun and trying to rub off on people is all part of it. When you try to record that, you’ve got to remember that no one can see that. Nobody knows what we look like or if we’re smiling or not. So a lot of it can be out of our hands. When you’re recording, you need to get to the point very quickly. That’s the way we try and attack it.”
Throughout or conversation, Stirling remains so upbeat that it became hard to imagine the band as true downtrodden bluesmen. But the idea of the blues continued to come up. While he insists that blues music has had an influence on the band, he’s not about to assume the part of the broken man. Instead, Stirling insists, their music comes from a different place altogether. And it’s a place worth checking out.
“We try not to be pigeonholed into certain genres. But we all really like soul and the blues and that’s what we listen to while we we’re driving across Australia. Regardless of how much we want to explore the other sides of the blues, the sad side, for example, we still hope it’s going to come out sounding like us. We never try to emulate anything; it can be a good thing and a bad thing for people to say “Oh, you sound like this…” or whatever. We’re just trying to look for a feeling or an emotion.”
BY JOSHUA KLOKE
