published: 27 /
12 /
2003
In the second part of our three part interview with Tali White and Mark Monnone from the long-serving Australian indiepop group the Lucksmiths, they chat to tommy Gunnarsson about touring, and their plans for the next year.
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PB: Do you all hang out outside of The Lucksmiths?
TW: Yeah, we do, but honestly not all the time, not constantly.
MM: This last year we have been on tour a whole lot, so we will probably have some spare time when we get home to Australia. But this summer we don’t have anything planned… no shows or anything like that. So, yeah, there will probably be a few backyard barbeques.
TW: It’s once again about that extended family we talked about earlier, and that we are all a part of. It’s just a big community and we are three members of it. When you get home you get to slow down, spend some quality time…Because you spend every single hour of every single day together for five months of the year.
MM: I was trying to figure out how many years we have… like, physically seen each other every day over the last ten years.
TW: I reckon three.
MM: Yeah. Like three whole years.
TW: With no break.
MM: One thousand days. So, you can see why we don’t itch to call each other up as soon as we get home.
PB: You know each other quite well…
TW: Yeah. It’s like family, you know. You like seeing them at Christmas, but during the year… no.
PB: Do you have daytime jobs?
MM: We have been trying to make a living out of it for the last year. That’s why we’ve been touring so much. Because we don’t sell a lot of albums, so it’s the only way for us to keep paying ourselves, I guess.
PB: What do you think you had done if you hadn’t been in the Lucksmiths?
MM: I would probably be in a Kiss covers band. Tali would be a teacher.
PB: Ah?
TW: I don’t know if I would like to be one, but yeah.
PB: What subjects?
TW: Drama, dance.
PB: You dance?
TW: Yeah, I get my freak on.
MM: Sometimes when you come and pick him up to go on tour, he’s wearing a pair of black spandex and a blond, curly wig.
PB: And a tutu…
MM: Yeah!
PB: You should have a tutu on stage.
TW: I should. I just forgot to pack it.
PB: What are your plans after this tour?
TW: I’d like to have a pretty quiet year. Play some shows in Australia, maybe record another album.
MM: We don’t have any new songs, so we won’t be recording in the near future. We just put out a new EP ('A Little Distraction', writer’s note), so…
TW: What more do you want from us?!? Oh God, the pressure…
MM: We will probably take it easy for a while and just let things happen naturally.
PB: It’s quite funny… sometimes you don’t release anything for two years or so, and then suddenly comes an album, and an EP…
MM: Yeah, but even though we may not release albums, we still do singles, songs for compilations and things like that.
TW: We have had 15 different releases in 10 years…
PB: That’s quite a lot.
MM: It’s 428 if you include all the bootlegs…
PB: I will be bootlegging the show tonight.
TW: Ah, release it!
PB: If you could choose one pop song that would describe your life, which one would it be?
TW: Oh, I wish Marty was here now. He is always good as these things.
MM: Although, he would need 10 years to think about it.
TW: Yeah. But he would give you the perfect answer.
MM: Ehmm… It might be 'I’m Stranded' by the Saints.
PB: Why?
MM: I don’t know. I don’t even know what the words are. I just feel stranded. Well, I will have to think about that. That is not a very good answer.
TW: Eeehmmm… For some reason, 'Chelsea Morning' by Joni Mitchell. It’s not really anything lyrically. I just like… ehm… the breakfast… Breakfast pretty much describes my life. And sunny mornings with breakfast is what I aim for in my life.
PB: That’s a great thing.
MM: I can’t think of anything. I don’t know any songs
PB: Pick a Lucksmiths song. You know them… What’s your favourite Lucksmiths song, by the way?
TW: I don’t know. It’s a difficult one, because it’s always changing. I really, honestly, love almost all of our songs. At least 90% of our songs.
PB: Even the early ones?
TW: Even the early ones, yeah. Eh, well, those 10% are probably the first couple of records. No, even on the first records there are some songs that I really really like.
MM: One of my favourite recordings might be 'Downside to the upstairs' . We recorded it so quickly on a small four-track or something like that, and I somehow managed to do a half-decent guitar solo at the end of it.
TW: I like 'The Perfect Crime'. There are a few songs from around that time when we started writing different kinds of songs for some reason. Songs where we were trying a little less hard, and there were not trying to be utterly clever or anything like that. And I really like the lyrics for that song too.
The third and final part of this interview will follow next month.
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