The band have a Warner's record deal in Central Europe under their belts, and are now busy recording their 4th studio album with producer Gil Norton. The April tour is a precursor to the release of a new single and album.
Where does the band's name come from?
That's actually top secret information and if I tell you I'd probably have to kill you.
How did the band get together?
We've been together for about eleven years. Myself and Joel, who plays guitar in the band, we were in another band together. Me, and Stu, who also plays guitar, we play whatever we want when we get into the studio, we were basically all jamming together, and then there was a competition in Australia called the Campus Band Competition, and at the time, in 1997, the thought of getting a plane ticket out of western Australia was quite an inviting one. Where we live, Perth, is the most isolated capital city in the world, so we entered the competition and ended up winning the whole thing. Part of the prize was to record an EP so we did that, and it got on the radio, and we've pretty much been touring ever since.
What are you up to now?
We're currently in the middle of recording our fourth record with a British producer by the name of Gil Norton, who did all the Pixies records and 'Colour And The Shape' by Foo Fighters, and lots of other great records as well.
Where are you recording that?
We're recording that up in Byron Bay, which is about six hours north of Sydney.
You've achieved triple platinum status in Australia, do many bands achieve that? how famous are you there?
Reasonably famous (laughs). We have achieved triple platinum, I guess some do, on average not everyone does, obviously. We do well in Australia, and we've spent the last year touring around the States, and that's starting to pick up over there which is exciting. Now, we're finally coming over and doing a tour of the UK, which we've been wanting to do for ages, and part of that is the record is coming out in Germany, and the Balkan States. We'll be doing a lot of touring over the next year or so, which should be interesting.
Have you been to the UK before?
Yeah, heaps of times. If you're from Australia everyone's been to the UK.
So you've worked in a bar over here?
(laughs) No, that's the only thing I haven't done, but I go there to visit all my friends who work in bars. Well, they used to, and now they all have semi-professional jobs now. Where we come from, Perth, well Fremantle Western Australia, it's so far away from the east coast, Especially, as it's a four and a half hour plane ride to get to Sydney or Melbourne. So, I think for a lot of people who live there's mentality is "Why don't I just go to London and work there instead?" Everyone just goes there and works, in a bar (laughs).
Have you played over here in the UK before?
Not really, we've been over there and done showcases, and all those kind of things but we haven't actually decided to go out and do a proper tour. Like I've said, we do a lot of work in Australia, and we've spent the last year and a half or so spending our hard earned money going over to the States. Then we got this fantastic opportunity to do a tour in the UK. And it's amazing because all of the shows have sold out, we've been thinking, 'shit, we should have done that sooner!' But I'm sure that because we'll be spending a lot of time in Germany over the next few years, I'm sure we'll be back and forth to the UK a lot.
Your whole tour here has sold out, that means a lot of UK audiences must know what you're about, wither that or a lot of Australian bar workers.
I bloody hope it's not a whole load of Australians, I'm sure it is going to be, but I'm hoping for a fifty fifty split. I know we do have a lot of fans in the UK, how many I don't know, but we do sell a lot of records over import. I'm hoping at this moment in time for a fifty fifty mix, at least.
For those who haven't heard your music, how would you describe it?
I'm getting a complete mental blank. It's a terrible thing to ask musicians to describe their own music because you just end up hearing them say, "Brilliant! Brilliant music, that's all you need to know." I would say the last record we did kind of pop rock music, but darker, I'm trying to think of bands we sound like but I can't. It's brilliant, just brilliant (laughs).
Who were your musical influences?
Well we're always getting into new stuff, but we have a real base in Bowie, The Beatles, Neil Young, and I love Tom Waitts, PJ Harvey, the staples. We end up having the same kind of U2 references in our music. I'm not sure I was into all that many U2 records apart from maybe 'Achtung Baby'. But, you know, that kind of music is kind of brilliant, stadium rock music. That's where we were coming from with our last record, we wanted this big stadium rock thing, because our first record was this kind of naive love album, and it had a small club pop feel. The second was a break up album, so it has a darker, more theatre sounding album. The only place we can go from there, we thought, is stadiums. So, the current album has a lot more open spaces in the music and much more stadium rock kind of stuff on the darker side, I guess.
So what are you doing for the next album, you're doing now?
Well I don't really know what we're doing for the next one. Well, we got really dark with that kind of lost in the night thing, where as this record everyone is having a pretty good time, and we're all in a really happy place now in our lives. The new record's got a lot more hope to it, which is a bit dorky, but that's the truth of it. It's just a lot happier, I know that's kind of a dirty word, but we do listen to Radiohead as well.
What's the best gig you've been to as a punter?
Well I'm in Byron Bay at the moment and they have a massive outdoor international music festival here called 'Splendour In The Grass' and we played it a couple of year's ago, and like I said I'm a big PJ Harvey fan. But always through ridiculous circumstances I always seem to miss her. Like, I'd have tickets to go see her play and then I'd break up with my long term girlfriend and neither of us would be allowed to go, I'd be doing stuff with the band and just miss her by a day. I really love her records and so it was quite a painful thing, and we played at Splendour and I had to miss her show to do press, and I was so angry.
Then, I found out that she was playing the next night at this little pub in the middle of Byron Bay which is a tiny little surfing community. I went to the show and there was 300 people there, and I was standing right at the front like a true fan, and it was just magical, and it was just great that I hadn't seen her before that, because it didn't ruin anything, and then there I was at this really cool intimate experience, and that was a great gig.
But then I'm always seeing new gigs that are kind of upping the bar. I remember seeing at another festival we were doing in Australia, 'The Big Day Out' about a year or so ago with Muse, and we met them, and did lawn bowls with them, and they were really nice chaps, and then we saw them play live, and we were like, "Holy Moly! God!" because it really was like they had raised the bar on just what was an awesome festival set. We got our notepads out and took notes. That was amazing, we saw them play quite a few times on that tour, and they are a great live band.
Have you done quite a few festivals in Australia?
Yeah, we've been playing them for about ten years now down here, so we've done festivals year in and year out since. Because Australia is a summer place, summer festivals are plentiful, and Australian's love rock and roll, and dance music and everything else in between. We love that energy in rock and roll, going to a big festival and rocking out, we apply that to all forms of music.
You're not tempted to do festivals in the UK then?
Well, that's kind of half the reason why we're coming and doing a tour, we want to do Glastonbury, and all those bits and pieces, we're doing a bit of a live showcase to all the festival promoters on this tour. So they'll be coming out, checking us out, and deciding if they want to put us on their line-ups, I guess. Which is great. When we're on the road with a show going on we are a kick ass live band, but we have been in the studio for freakin' ages, we finish this record, and we have about three days rehearsal during the last three days of recording, and then we literally get on a plane and come straight over to you guys. So we might be a little bit rusty by the time we get over there, but we'll get there.
What's been the most memorable gig you've played?
I don't know, I guess that's something that's always changing as well, depending upon where you're at. Each tour you do, you always have a gig which is a really memorable gig. The last tour we did in Australia was a really big tour for us, it was about 5,000 people per show and it was the first time we got to have big visuals and laser light shows, and shit. We did the whole stadium thing. Like I was saying the idea with the last album was that it was going to be this whole stadium rock album, and up to that point we hadn't really done the stadium rock show, and we finally got to do it. It's just good to be putting on your own version of 'Jesus Christ Superstar' (laughs). Some of those shows were fantastic, because I got to live out my childhood dream of being a stadium rock god.
You are a trio and yet from what I've heard of the album there's much more musicians, do you play all the instruments?
Yeah we do, basically we get in the studio and Joel plays all the drums, then we all just play guitars, and pianos. I generally play bass, and do the singing. We just generally play everything ourselves in the studio because that's always been the way we've done it, and it works really well. When we go out on the road we have a few hired guns who come out with us. We have a drummer, and a keyboardist who are part of our live band. We take them out on the road.
I think I have another interview coming through, so I had better get off the line.
Thanks for your time, good luck with the live dates over here.
Thank you very much.
Eskimo Joe are showcasing their brooding new wave tunes this month and get comparisons to classic bands like Coldplay, U2 and Snow Patrol, providing a taster for a very different musical direction to come next year.
The April tour will go on sale from Monday 8th December 2008.
The April tour dates are:
Sun 05 April ABC 2, Glasgow, Scotland
Mon 06 April Rainbow Bar, Birmingham
Tue 07 April Academy 3, Manchester
Wed 08 April Koko, London
article by: Scott Williams
published: 01/12/2008 15:57
FUTURE GIGS
sorry, we currently have no gigs listed for this act.