Powderfinger – Interview

chatting with ian haug, vocals and guitars, about bringing their music to the states.

What have you been up to?

Just sitting on the bus listening to cds.

What are you listening to?

Brian Setzer’s new cd. It’s a bit too country for me, but I love his guitar work. I have the new Luna live cd.

Are you afraid to get lost in the shuffle?

Yes, but I hope that Americans will find a place for us. They sort of like us Australians, don’t they?

I guess. (we laugh) Is there a reason why you waited so long to try and break in America?

Well, we’ve tried. We came and did some showcases and were going to get our last record released there, but our label in America got taken over by Universal and we got lost in it. Time got away and we wanted to do another record so that is what we did. It was a bummer.

How much have you guys changed as a group from when you first got together to today?

We know how each of us plays more. I don’t know, when we were writing before, we’d spend a lot more time in the rehearsal room. Now we write more alone or paired off.

Is there any one person who writes or is it a combined effort?

Bernard writes the lyrics, but we all are involved in writing music. Bernard does write more songs because he does write the lyrics.

Do you ever talk about what the songs are about?

Definitely. It’s really important for us to know what is going on in the song.

How did you grow into your skills and who did you style yourself after?

It really had a lot to do to who I listened to growing up. We weren’t musicians that wanted to sit around and just play all day. We didn’t want to make Steve Vai music, we wanted to do stuff as a group.

What groups influenced you growing up?

My brother first listened to Cream, Bowie, Zeppelin, the Beatles, and the Rolling Stones. I thought that was the best music. It gave me the foundation. I started to discover my own music, like AC/DC, when I was around ten.

How huge was AC/DC there? I never thought about how big they were in Australia. Don’t you think of them as sort of homegrown? They almost feel American.

I don’t think of them as an Australian band.

They are more of a world band, huh?

Yeah. I think the Young’s are from Scotland, right?

Yeah.

Everyone here is proud that they are from Australia.

Musically, we don’t get a lot from Australia. How much are we missing?

A lot. There are loads of stuff. It’s so far for a band to come over here. And if a band does come over here, they rarely get recognition. That is why I think bands head for Europe, but when we got on the Coldplay tour we came over. There is no point coming here if you aren’t getting played on the radio, which luckily we were.

How and when did you find out about the Coldplay gig?

In Australia they were playing the Big Day Out, and they had a band to support them in the States but they couldn’t do it, and Coldplay asked us to join them about six days before we had to leave to America, if we’d open for them. We thought it wasn’t going to happen because they asked us at a bar late one night and of course we were like, ‘Sure, we’ll do it.’ And someone had to literally run to the airport twenty minutes before we flew out to give us our visas. We didn’t even know if we were going to make it.

That single-handedly changed the release date and everything?

Yeah, it brought it all forward. And the best was that we got to play to big crowds every night.

Were the clubs smaller here?

Yeah. We play to bigger crowds back home and people know the songs better. There are some people that do know the songs, but they are mostly Australians. The crowds have been really good, except a few places where there was nobody left in the town because of holidays.

I think with Coldplay, although they sounded similar, to me anyway, to Travis and Radiohead, a lot of people found them new and refreshing. Do you or have you ever heard a band that just blew you away and completely changed your musical perspective?

Yeah.

I still think it must be flattering for a band to be copied in a way, but then again it isn’t good for a band to be known as copying others music. Do you ever find yourselves doing that on accident and needing to pull it back?

Yeah, I mean, we are always conscious of not doing that. We’ve never sounded like one band, we’ve always sounded like lots of bands. We don’t let one influence overtake our sound. People compare us to U2 and Radiohead. It is flattering for us.

I thought about U2 when I heard you guys.

As long as you don’t think we are ripping them off.

Right. Do you also think you get the unfair comparisons because some people’s voices sound similar?

Definitely. Look at all the bands that got compared to Pearl Jam because they had a baritone voice. It’s not like Eddie Vedder was the first one. It’s not like Eddie Vedder was the first guy to sing like that.

Right. And if you go into a high pitch you get compared to Radiohead.

Exactly.

Are there other bands out there that you’ve seen that we are all missing?

There are a few bands in Australia I think the world is missing. One is called Big Heavy Stuff. They didn’t get noticed. You see bands all the time that never make it that we always think could be huge. There was this band in Canada called Veal. They were awesome. It’s a shame because they almost got there but never quite made it.

Is the industry here much different than in Australia?

It’s similar, but over here it’s more organized. There are so many job titles. There is a guy for video who just organizes all the videos. One guy for radio. In Australia it’s all one guy.

Is there more freedom back home because of that?

Yeah. We’ve never been pressured by the record company. Because we’ve had such a gradual thing, we’ve never really been pressured much.

When you dreamed about being in a rock band, what is different and what is similar?

I dreamed of making a living being in a band, but not being a star. What is different is that things aren’t handed to you on a plate, but I wouldn’t want that anyway. When you are a kid, you think it must be so easy. It’s not like that, but I wouldn’t want to do anything else.

+ charlie craine