Interview: Gareth Liddiard of The Drones

IF Gareth Liddiard—singer and songwriter behind one of Australia’s most celebrated bands, The Drones—writes an album, you can pretty much guarantee it has a top spot in the music canon.

With an Australian Music Prize under his belt, and his song Shark-Fin Blues recently being named best Australian song ever written, it’s clear that Gareth Liddiard has a knack for creating modern Aussie classics.

On October 1, Liddiard will be releasing his debut solo album, Strange Tourist, a melancholy and introspective acoustic experience that is implacably heartbreaking and inestimably lovely.

During the week, Australian Penthouse sat down with Gareth to talk about the forthcoming album, his band and his views on Facebook over a beer.

You’ve been at this for a few hours now so let’s get right in to it: What prompted a solo album?

Something to do. I haven’t done it—I’ve never done anything like that. Well, as a record.

How different are your solo shows to the occasions you’ve previewed work by The Drones acoustically?

It’s not really different at all. I write most of The Drones’ stuff anyway, and usually those songs are like this before I take them to the band. So Strange Tourist is pretty much just doing the same thing and then polishing it a bit more than I normally would because it’s all acoustic. With songs I’ve written for the Drones, I move to electric and then things get ugly, lazy and loud.

Have you been sitting on this material for long, or did you write it specifically for your solo project?

I wrote it specifically for this. I had guitar bits and bobs—you know, just shit—left over from here and there. I only did the words in the last eight weeks before recording.

Usually you name your albums after the place they were recorded, but this one is called Strange Tourist. Why?

I don’t know. It needed a name, and naming the album is the hardest part, really. Because you just go, “Fuck. I don’t know.”

And then someone working on the artwork said, “Call it Strange Tourist.”

I said, “Okay.”

That’s pretty much how we did it.

Didn’t the mansion you recorded in have a name?

It did, it did. But it was daggy. It was called Blackburn Homestead.

Did it have much influence on the sound you produced?

Totally. Places like that always do. I haven’t recorded in a studio for yonks, so I imagine if I went back to one and did something there, then it would make it easier to see exactly what the weird places that we’ve recorded in have brought to the recordings we’ve done.

But yeah, it was a fucking huge room that I was in. And there was this big stairwell; a massive, four story grand staircase like Gone With The Wind, and it went up like the spine of the house.

From the top, you could look down in to where I was sitting—look down in to this big room with microphones everywhere.

So yeah, for a start all the reverb and those sort of sounds on Strange Tourist are the house.

And I was always telling people to shut up, because the house was constantly full of our friends running around getting drunk, while Burke Reid and I, well… Got drunk too, but did all the work.

But with all those mics everywhere, you’d get halfway through a take and you’d hear someone walking past a microphone at the top of the house, and you’d just think, “Fuck.”

And yet there’s no hint of other people on this record, unlike on the opening track of Gala Mill.

No, we had to edit it out, otherwise that would have been the whole fucking album.

How did your band feel about you going solo?

They were good. I do the solo stuff, the gigs, and they’re all cool with it. They all do heaps of stuff as well. Everyone keeps busy.

What’s the status of The Drones at the moment anyway?

Just on a break from touring.

When did you wrap that up?

About four months ago that we stopped touring, I reckon. But this year we’ve already been overseas four times. So we were a little burned out. We’d overdone it and just needed to not tour. But we’ll get back to it. We’ve got things we’ve got to finish. We’re halfway through a DVD.

So the DVD is actually happening?

Yeah, it’s all down. We’ve got it all recorded. We’ve just got to sort through it. Cut it and mix it.

What’s on it?

A few gigs that we did, though they were kind of to raise money to make the thing. The bulk of it is just us in this massive warehouse recording live. We did a bunch of songs we wouldn’t usually do live, with instruments we wouldn’t usually use—just because it’s too expensive to take huge organs on tour.

We sort of said, “What does everyone want to use? If we were rich, if we were Nick Cave, what would you use?”

And then we did that.

That sounds fantastic. And how would you describe Strange Tourist to a fan of The Drones?

It’s just me. It’s the same thing really. There’s stuff on Gala Mill and Havilah that’s pretty close to it. It’s just the acoustic, me version.

So you’re not re-inventing The Drones’ wheel?

Not at all. It’s just a solo record I hadn’t done, and there’s no point getting other musicians to do it, because I may as well get The Drones.

Because there’s ‘solo’ where you write a bunch of songs and get a bunch of musicians to play them, and then there’s ‘solo’ by yourself.

I mean, you could say what’s-his-name from Wilco is solo. You know what I mean?

Singular solo. Gareth Liddiard plays Gareth Liddiard.

Yeah.

You played a solo show last night. Was the response good?

Yeah, yeah, but I only played three new ones. I only played for 40 minutes. I was opening for DBC Pierre.

I saw that—it seemed like an interesting coupling. How did it happen?

The Sydney Writers’ Festival just asked me to do it. I wasn’t aware of him, other than the fact my mate Ben Salter (The Gin Club) is a big fan. I’m just a bit slow with all that stuff.

Me too. Although, I thought you lived in Berlin for awhile—shouldn’t you be all over the ‘culture’ stuff?

Yeah, I lived in Berlin… But it wasn’t because of Iggy and Bowie and Nick Cave.

So I’ve heard—you seem quite intent on making that point.

Yeah! We were there because our record company banished us there. Because we were touring and touring and touring, and we rolled up in London one day, they looked at us and were just like, “Er, you guys look fucked, you need a break.”

They’re really nice—Barry and Debbie from ATP. They just cancelled a bunch of our gigs and then got us a place for two or three months.

Didn’t you end up in hospital?

Yeah, I had some sort of physical meltdown. It was some physical manifestation of too much working and partying. It was weird, the hospital was the only place in Berlin where no one spoke fucking English. So they put me on these machines, did all these tests. And I’d been to an Absinthe bar, and I’d had two drinks, which is enough to get you fucked, but then your breath stinks like petrol.

So I went in there and I must have stank like a fucking wino, and I was covered in vomit and shit, my body just took over. They must have thought I was a homeless guy.

A lost homeless guy.

Yeah. It was hilarious, they’re giving me the results of the test, and they’re playing charades… They did a liver count thing to see if I was a chronic alcoholic…

Would you say you’re a chronic alcoholic?

Ha. No. No! My liver is fine. I knew what the answer would be but the way they were doing it, they’re like miming the shape of a liver and making counting motions with their hands—like ‘liver count’—and then they’re sticking their thumbs up saying, “Good, good!”

So what brought you back from Berlin?

It was just a hiatus from a gruelling bunch of touring, and it was plonk in the middle of a six month tour, so we just hit the road again—finished the tour—and came back to Australia and toured some more.

And you’re living in Victoria now?

We live in the mountains, near where all the ski fields are.

I heard that during the 2008 Victorian bushfires you were actually standing outside with a hose trying to ward off the fire.

Well, no… Our hose… We don’t have water pressure. And the Country Fire Authority drained all our water supply. We get water out of a spring and they’d come past with a bunch of trucks and just sucked us dry. But yeah, we put the Beechworth fire out with our backyard, basically. About six firetrucks, and those choppers, they came in too. They were cool.

So everything was okay?

Yeah, everything was alright. We were playing at Laneway in Sydney when we found out our house was at risk, and that was the black Saturday, so we weren’t there for that. The fire went to our house, and jumped our house.

Our neighbour, who’s an awesome guy, got a list off us on the phone. He was like, “What do you want, because you’re going to lose your house.”

Then he broke in and nicked all the stuff we needed. And after that conversation we had to play a gig, it was horrible. It was the worst gig ever. Couldn’t concentrate at all. You want to put on a good show, regardless… But it almost felt like we should have just gone home then. But we couldn’t get back anyway because all the airports were closed.

Distress…

It was the most enormous stress. But we went back the next day. It was exciting—frightening. A couple of people got killed, thousands of animals got barbecued. Everyone was really upset, stressed. Because farmers like animals, they genuinely like cows. They do. So it was really traumatic for everyone. There were a lot of hard men crying.

But our neighbour is so amazing. We had no idea what was going on. We were city people, we’d only been there for a year. He was like, “Just follow me. You’ll be okay.”

What kind of set-up do you have down there?

It’s a fairly big house. We don’t have any animals, but we look after a couple of horses occasionally, when they get moved down to us. We’ve got plenty of wombats and shit like that. We’ve got a dog. And it’s massive—we’ve pretty much got the arse end of the valley all to ourselves. Basically clothes are optional. You could not get dressed for a week, because no one is going to see.

So what’s a normal day in the valley?

Well, summer is all about avoiding snakes and bushfires. And the rest of the time something is always breaking. Things like the generator always blow up, or the lawn mower fucks out. You know. Something goes wrong. So it’s just walking around fixing shit. That pretty much sums up country life.

But on the flip side you’ve toured with bands like the Meat Puppets. I can’t imagine there would be many parallels between your ’08 tour with those guys and your quiet country life. Do you have any printable stories to tell about that time?

There’s a few insights in to people like Kurt Cobain and Henry Rollins that are quite surprising. But I don’t want Henry asking me about that.

They’re out of control though, there are so many stories it is hard to think of just one. They toured a lot with Black Flag, more than most people. Meat Puppets and the Minutemen were the two main support bands for Black Flag, so it’s endless stories. There’s relentless violence and shenanigans. They’re not a straight edge band, by a long shot. There’s a lot of acid—put it that way. And everyone took it, contrary to popular belief…

What did you learn about Kurt Cobain?

Well, I know a guy called Ped who works in a venue in the north of Holland. And Hole were playing at the venue and Kurt rang up and said, “Where’s Courtney?”

Ped told him she was sound checking and Kurt was like, “Can you propose to her for me?”

Ped was like, “Nuh, but I do have a cordless phone.”

Romance.

Yeah, exactly. What I learned about him can be summed up with: He was a c*nt, basically. A little junkie c*nt.

But they’ve got amazing stories about getting rich, the Meat Puppets.

I don’t know much about their history.

Well, they were really fucking good. They were one of Kurt’s favourite bands. A bit older than him. They were invited to play with Nirvana on Unplugged In New York. They did a few of their songs on that with Nirvana.

And Curt Kirkwood—from Meat Puppets—said he went to the bank one day, like a year after the Unplugged… thing was released, and he checked his account balance and there was $180,000 in there.

He asked the teller where it had come from, and she said Universal Music or Warner Brothers or something like that. Six months later he did it again and there was $1.8 million in there, and he just went, “Shit!”

He rang everyone from the band, and they hooked up for a drink or something to celebrate, and Curt and his brother Cris were just like, “Yes! We’ve made it! We’re rich rockstars, this is awesome, let’s make another album, let’s go on tour!”

And the drummer was like, “Nuh. I’m out. I’ve had enough of this shit—I’m rich, I don’t need to do this anymore.”

And then their lives sort of went pear-shaped in the most horrendous way.

Oh.

But you have to ask them. Sooner or later they’ll come. They’re awesome guys. They’re the coolest, most fun, interesting, hilarious, out there, crazy dudes we’ve ever hung out with.

So you’re naming them as your number one—

Dudes, yeah! Most hilarious, out of control, fun dudes ever.

I still don’t have the scoop on you. Is there anything shocking you’d like to volunteer about yourself?

I don’t know—I’m a regular knobhead.

I’m not on Facebook, I don’t like it. I think Facebook is for narcissists with low self-esteem.

Here’s one: I drive a ride-on lawn mower. It’s not much faster than jogging. So yeah, imagine that. I’d be in a pair of, you know—

Stubbies?

Maybe not stubbies. Maybe a pair of trackies.

So you don’t wear black jeans all the time?

Not all the time.

I wear ugg boots as well.

Ugg boots. That’s just the nugget I needed. I guess we can wrap this interview then: What’s coming up next for you?

Touring the solo album. And then I’m helping Ben Salter do his solo record. We’ve got the whole of summer to finish it, I think. So he’s coming up to Havilah in October. It will be fun. We’ll do that, and then finish this DVD for The Drones. Afterward, I guess I’ll do another tour for this solo thing, because you always do two on an album. And then just start writing more songs.

But who knows. Things always just—you know, if I did have an idea of what was coming, it would just be changed anyway. Plans always change.