Triple J Unearthed winners, The Griswolds have had a sensational six months since they launched their act earlier this year. Their seemingly endless energetic collection of party, sing-a-longs sent the boys straight to radio and blogs worldwide. Their first single ‘Mississippi’ received American college radio play, while second single ‘Heart of a Lion’ has been added to radio in over 20 countries, including high rotation on Australia’s Triple J.
The Griswolds just smashed out a killer set at the Parklife festival in Sydney, alongside acts such as Passion Pit, Tame Impala, Robyn and The Presets. What better time to drop their debut EP entitled Heart Of A Lion. The boys will be hitting the road throughout October and November with Brisbane Unearthed Parklife winners, The Belligerents, to promote the brand new EP, so make sure you get down to a show, you won’t wanna miss these bands!!
Your debut EP Heart of a Lion was released last week, are you happy with how it has turned out?
We are absolutely stoked with the way the EP turned out, we had such a good team of people that all worked their arses off to make this EP what it is now! We wouldn’t change a thing about it, we love it right down to the ‘spliced’ Lion girl on the front cover!
What was it like taking responsibility for the production of the EP?
Loved it, we wouldn’t have it any other way at this point! It was a bit stressful at times when the sounds didn’t really come off how we had hoped, but we got there in the end, and now we have a product that were stupidly proud of.
What can people expect from The Griswolds live show?
I personally think we still have a ways to go with our live show, just because we’re such a fresh band. Parklife last week marked a pretty big step up for our band’s live show though. If you come to any of the gigs, you can definitely expect to have a few sing-a-longs, shake ya ass and if nothing else – watch us having the time of our lives on stage while we play. We love to bring our music to life in a performance environment, there’s just nothing quite like that kind of interaction with your audience.
Have there been any special preparations for your Parklife shows?
Definitely! We knew we had to step it up for Parklife, the last two weeks felt like it was nothing but rehearse, rehearse, rehearse! When you’re sharing the stage with bands like Tame Impala and Passion Pit, you gotta be on your ‘A’ game, and even then, they still make you look bad, bands like that have taken it to the next level, hopefully we get there one day.
Who has been the most exciting band to see live at Parklife?
As mentioned above, Tame Impala and Passion Pit were the standouts. But we also enjoyed Alison Wonderland, Chairlift and St Lucia – all great acts.
Do you have any particular ritual before you go on stage, or even a lucky charm you take with you?
There’s a lot of ‘man groping’ going on back stage before a show, also a lot of tequila shots, no rituals though… yet. Dan sports this pair of floral jeans that are making their mark at the moment, potential future lucky charm.
You’re setting off on your first headline tour to support the release of Heart Of A Lion, who has the most annoying habit on tour?
Dan wins that one. He’s a lunatic at anywhere between 5am and 8am every morning on the road, singing at the top of his lungs, happy as a pig in shit and the sun isn’t even up yet. Meanwhile the rest of us are all zombie-fied.
When you’re Rolling Stones Big, what are you going to request on your rider: don’t be shy. We want specifics!
Kanye West doing a full scale live performance just for the five of us back stage will suffice. Actually we’re planning on bringing our dogs on the road and back stage with us, it’s going to be non-negotiable. No dogs = no show!
Because it’s more fun to do things together, which living Australian artist would you most like to collaborate with? Tell us why?
Would love to work with Kylie Minogue, I’m sure the music we would work on would be rubbish, but I’d take the opportunity to tell her how much I loved the ‘Spinning Around’ film clip when I was a boy. I would actually love to collaborate with Tim Hart from Boy and Bear, we’ve been best mates since we were 12 and its always been a dream of mine to work on a release together.
What is your band’s music the best soundtrack for?
Its drunk beach party music so I guess “Weekend At Bernie’s” would be perfect! (We were actually thinking of calling ourselves that before ‘The Griswolds’ came about)
What are the summers plans for The Griswolds? When can you see live next?
Our next Melbourne show is this Friday the 5th of October at the Workers Club! Other than that, we’ll be hitting up a few Summer festivals this year (most of which we can’t mention just yet), but we are stupidly excited!! We have multiple tours coming up before the end of the year as well! We’ll be hitting the road with ‘The Belligerents’ in Oct/Nov for our first headline tour, which we are also pretty chuffed about! You can see our Facebook page for more dates www.facebook.com/thegriswolds
