Gareth Liddiard approaches interviews in the same way he approaches music – raw, loose and with as much subtlety as a Chinese street party. Not many artists refer to their band as “horrible sounding” and question the reasons why they are so popular. But that’s Liddiard. In the end it’s his honesty – as well as the brutal skill of his band members – that makes The Drones as widely appreciated as they are today.
In keeping with their uncompromising tact, The Drones have released a DVD of live and rarely heard material dating back to their early works. A Thousand Mistakes features an intimate warehouse session filmed in Fairfield during the summer of 2010. It also includes a bonus disc that captures that band’s sweatiest work in venues like the Tote, East Brunswick Club and the Metro Theatre.
Gareth sat down with Tone Deaf to discuss his band, the DVD and the Drones’ upcoming tour.
The Drones have developed a reputation as one of the best live acts in Australia. For you and the band, what is it that works so well about a live setting?
I don’t really know. A lot of things I suppose. Just generally we’ve played a lot of shows. We’re the sort of band that does a lot of things, whether it’s fucking wedding music, jazz or some crazy cover. To me there’s two types of bands; one that goes into rehearsals and do their songs and that’s all they can play and then there’s us that just likes to have a go at anything.
I’m intrigued about the warehouse sessions in Fairfield that will feature on the DVD. Was it an ad-lib thing or something you guys had in the works? Also, were you happy with the finished result?
Yeah the results were really good. I think everyone was really happy with it. It wasn’t totally ad-lib as I had a fucking ton of live stuff and also keep a box of masters over the years with tapes from here and there.
The band really enjoys the live thing, even if we were to see an artist like Zeppelin we’d much prefer to watch them live. Also, there are a number of reasons why we can’t play a lot of these songs live. For example, you can’t take something like a church organ onto a Qantas flight. They’d kill us.
Why A Thousand Mistakes? What’s the meaning behind the title?
Once you’ve done something like an album or a DVD that’s four and a half hours long, it’s weird to try and sum it up with one short succinct title. We went through all the words of the songs that show up on the DVD and came up with a bunch of lines that might suit. It the end that was the best one. We also seem to fuck up along the way so we went with something that is a bit deprecating.
I’d like to ask you a couple of questions about your songwriting process. Do you find it easier to sometimes get within the headspace of a character rather than writing directly from your own point of view? Say, for example, with a song like ‘Sixteen Straws’ (which also features on the DVD)?
Yeah it can be easier. Sometimes you run out of things to say about yourself. For ‘Sixteen Straws’ (a song about a group of suicidal convict murderers), it wasn’t as if I had killed anyone. I mean, if I had killed someone I wouldn’t be standing up to a bunch of people telling them. Ultimately though it’s all you; you’re always kinda in it. Sometimes you can do everything right from the point of view of someone else to avoid yourself and then you end up coming back around and it’s all about yourself anyway. That’s the beauty of it I suppose.
How do you approach writing with the Drones as opposed to writing a solo album such as Strange Tourist?
There’s not much of a difference really. I don’t write with the band. I can’t collaborate. I have never written a song with someone else so it’s the same thing really. Solo, by dictionary definition, can be just a voice and acoustic guitar so there was no need for any other members. But that’s not to take anything away from them!
What can we expect from the upcoming tour?
There’ll be a lot of warehouse stuff from the DVD so we’ll have a crack at playing a bunch of shit that we don’t normally play. We’ll also have Steve Hesketh in as well. He played on Wait Long By The River… and The Miller’s Daughter but hasn’t played live with us for ages. So we’ll take him along as well and we’ll be a five piece.
You’ve got Adalita, who’s sold out shows all over the place, on tour as well. Must be great to have such a fantastic artist performing before you take the stage…
It’s gonna be fucking great. Her album is amazing. Plus we’re all really good mates so it’ll be fun.
Any plans to head back and tour overseas?
Yeah we’ll go back, maybe next year. We were talking about Japan or doing something like that. It’s always hard to plan or when you’re going overseas next. We’ve had times when we had nothing going on then ten days later you’re in fucking London. It’s hard to tell at this stage.
– Paul Bonadio
A Thousand Mistakes is released 7th October, 2011 through Shock Records. Check out the trailer and Jade Ogden’s review of the film here.
