Youth Group

0:00Sign here with the guys from the youth group, Toby and Cameron. I want to start the show off with my favorite song off the record. Song turned me on so you guys lily in lies off the new record. God, we haven't heard it for a while. We don't play it now, set this because... Well, we sometimes do, but it's kind of a tricky one because it's got a acoustic guitar. You don't tour with that acoustic guitar? Sorry? You don't tour with that acoustic guitar? But we do, but also Danny, Danny the drummer plays with brushes and it's always a bit hard to negotiate how to play it live. Sometimes it's one's... Yeah, it worked really well on the record and it's always been hard to translate it. But, yeah, I mean, the song is about someone leaving and jumping on a bus, I guess. Fair enough. You got nothing, I'm always on it.

1:32I'm always on the street. The clouds are so low.

2:57The sky doesn't cover. It's a swag. We've been from youth group three years between right now. Oh, right. Sorry. Yeah, yeah. I'm surprised that anyone's eating on...

3:44He's heard of the first record. So, yeah. People normally think that's the Gallatin Jaws out there. So it was like... Well, there's a couple of youth pieces coming in. We're ready for our... Not that we don't dumb it down, but overseas listeners. We do, actually. Our interview is in Australia. We're very smart and witty and we're pretty much to our high culture interview, I guess. But here we stand around in bathrooms and talk about chicks and farting. We just let it fly. We didn't let it out. But I answered your question. There was a long wait between records because... Well, lots of reasons, I suppose. Our record label kind of folded and then restarted.

4:30So we didn't really have any label for a bit, but then they kind of... They restarted, so we were able to afford to record. And just took a while. We were all working full time, so we had to fit it around that. You know... You put your jobs out? You just didn't pull back. Pretty much, let's say, sort of semi-permanent. Semi-permanent? Yeah, contract-based. Yeah. It'll come out with a few washes, but you know, it's kind of there. It'll adjust, it'll change the colour if you have a sum time, but at the same time, you know, it'll fade pretty quickly. What were you guys doing before? What were your jobs? Like a bunch of stuff. I've worked as a designer, mainly. Over the past few years, I've been a graphic designer doing different stuff. I've worked in a few lately kind of working in cultural institutions, like libraries.

5:15And museums and stuff like that, doing design for that kind of stuff. Cool. Now you're new to it. Yeah. Another cultural institution. It's got a lot of weight behind it. You kind of switched up members a little bit too. Yes, we did. If not, we all fought and hated each other, and then we got new people in. People say that we have to talk about it, too. You can't hide it. Fair enough. And now you're writing in the band as well. Yeah, I guess there's always been that element of youth group. I don't know. Danny had a song or two on the first record. Yeah, I think it's just kind of... We've got so many songs for this next record. It's kind of a fun thing. Everyone's just thrown in a few things. And the idea was we'd just record as much as we could.

6:01We'd try to record as much as we could, and then just kind of peel it back. Well, I kind of thought of it like I was looking forward to curating an album out of a whole bunch of material, but I guess it's more so that we're kind of going to have to start focusing and start thinking about what songs are actually going to make it up to the record and start holding it down from there, as opposed to fully recording 732 tracks. We've got to pick 14. We don't know that many. It is what youth group is more of a group now, though, with the new lineup and also the fact that we are semi-permanent. It's more of a band, I think. The last time it was, the songs probably didn't change that much from mine or Danny's heads from how they ended up in the record.

6:49But now the arrangement process is much more detailed and much more interesting. Cool. The amount of stuff that we've been doing as well, like this in the past year and a half, or since everything's taken off with epitaph records over here in the States, and being able to do so much more stuff, it's kind of quite important that we do come together as a band, and I think it would be a pretty strange experience if it was just kind of just playing guitar in a band, or doing all this stuff. It feels like we've all got something really invested in the band, so it's all kind of important to us. Yeah, and it's going really well. I mean, you're on tour with Mapon. Did you do that to Cap tour too? Yeah. It was great to us. We had an excellent time. It was the love deathgaven. They were the perfect hosts. It was excellent.

7:35Not that the tour was like unremarkable or anything, but one of the things that I always think about that tour was the trip to get there, because we drove across from like New York State to all the way across to Vancouver to play the first show. So it was like this four day drive across the stage, and that's something I've always wanted to do. It was that kind of like, let's get in the car and go. So that was a fantastic experience. Just that kind of amount of driving to seeing the scenery. I mean, it was kind of pretty taxing at the same time, but we saw some great stuff. I mean, between all the shows too, like it was just kind of amazing scenery. It was beautiful. What's playing on each song? What do you guys want to hear off the record? Oh, well. Cameron, your choice. Could I put in a request for Babybody, please?

8:20But she hates that public, shines for blue so slow, still two whole news.

9:25But she hates... The band's getting music out there to people. Do you think that's the way music's going now?

12:00I guess radio's kind of not as popular as it used to be, obviously, and TV shows and movie soundtrack seems to be where people are getting their music from. Do you think it's kind of changing? Yes. Well, I don't know. I don't know if it's because I'm older now, but I mean, I used to hear a lot of songs on the radio that I went out about what the record. And I don't know if the kids do that as much. I suppose it's like, I mean, one of the things about the OC and TV shows is when you watch it and you hear music on it, it sort of feels like it's somehow a bit of a center of culture and the way the radio station they've used to be and appear to be a center. I think when people watch the show all this at this stage and they feel like they're participating in something, it's like there's something that's going on. And I guess that TV shows have that sort of thing.

12:49What's it like in Australia with Triple J and all that stuff? Is it still big there? Triple J has a great station, yeah. They've always played us quite a lot. I guess, yeah. I mean, yeah. I guess you look at the popular thing there. The kids, everyone's going to listen to it. That's the place to break in. It's kind of, whoa, easy does it? It's slippery in this bathroom. It's a little bit. I don't know if it might be as popular as it was, maybe when we were teenagers. Yeah. But certainly, I mean, in Australia, a lot of commercial radio stations kind of tend to play songs that do really well on Triple J and they sort of, they kind of, that's what, once it's all been tested and tried and I put them on. Yeah.

13:34I've had a couple of Australian band, the Show Powder Finger, Ben Dilly, some silver chairs, been on the show as well. And they always give me a couple of cool Australian bands to listen to. And I was wondering if you guys could do that as well because, I mean, obviously, you guys are starting to break it, but you've been big in Australia for quite some time now. So... The bands that we've always listened to are bands like Gaslight Radio and The Underground Lovers. I mean, these are kind of bands that have been around for a couple of years and haven't necessarily, I mean, Underground Lovers were on 4ID Records for a while. They, I think they had one album out on 4ID, which was kind of doing something. But the bands that haven't necessarily got a record, a lot of recognition overseas. Also a band called Sand Pit, but they broke up a few years ago. Well, cool. Thank you. I want to check them out. So that's nice. Yeah. That's right. Going back to the OC, Chris Wallop produced for every young recovery you guys do on it.

14:22Yeah, yeah, he mixed it. Yeah. And, oh, it makes it not pretty. Sorry. Well, not well. I guess it's kind of the same thing. Yeah. I guess we treated it as something separate, as something we would normally do, more of a project to kind of work on. An interesting concept to do. And I guess now it's kind of something a bit more than that because it's getting played in radio and it's becoming more associated with us. Yeah, it's interesting. Yeah, in a sense it was kind of perfect timing as well because it's just this project that came along at a time where we knew that we'd be sort of going with the stuff that we were doing. And then we were sort of going with the skeleton jar album because there was that delay in skeleton jar coming out in the States.

15:10We knew it probably would be a little while before we could record some new stuff and things like that. So it was kind of an opportunity to just play around with that, you know, like, we were saying before we had this new band format and we were kind of, I guess, it was a good project for us, the four of us to do together and work out how we sounded together. Was it the first song you had actually recorded together? It was probably the second, actually. We did someone else's dream which is actually on the album together. The four of us were all together on that track. I mean, maybe that was the first time that we did it really, but I guess we were really finding our feet forever young. So it's kind of a great song for us in the sense that it was kind of experimental, but also kind of came out really well, you know, we stepped back from it and thought we were really happy with the way it came out. Cool, well let's play that forever young. Let's dance and start, let's dance for a moment in way where all you're watching is sky.

16:18Hoping for the best but expecting the worst. Are you going to drop a bomb or not? All the sad man. Who knows?

20:26At the moment we're halfway through the record and we're using Wayne Conley, who did our record before. So he's pretty much, Wayne's pretty much going to do it. I know. It works well for you guys. Yeah, definitely. Cool. You're opening for Coldplay in June, which would be pretty cool out in Australia. Indeed. Indeed. You're excited? Is that like a big thing? Are you guys a big Coldplay fan? Yeah, I like them. Yeah, they're kind of sort of making stadium rock cool. Again, I'll start thinking, yeah, no, I do like them. And it'll be, yeah, pretty fantastic. Definitely excited about it. But it's one of those things that really don't know what it's going to be like until you kind of step out there in front of 13, 14,000 people. I mean, it's kind of not an experience I have had. So I'm just kind of thinking, I'm pretty sure I will be excited.

21:14I'm excited now, but I really don't know what it will be like. What are you getting a nice experience in Kachala? Kind of a warmup for it. Yeah. Yeah, that would be pretty big, wouldn't it? I imagine our tent might be slightly smaller than 14,000. Or is it tents or is it open air? I've never been. I've never been. So it's a good one. I can't wait to see you at this. Are you going? Yeah, cool. Yeah, it's a good show. Yeah. It's a play on their song. I don't want to play. Rosie in the seat. Hey, Rosie in the seat. You like a song? Is that on your copy? It is on my copy. You must have gotten an Australian version. Oh, I downloaded it. I'm not going to lie. I downloaded it. I have the CD and I have a couple of downloads on the computer as well. Rosie in the seat is not on the American version. Oh, I'm not going to write that. It's really highbrow. Oh. We thought it was a bit highbrow for me. No.

21:59We just, I don't know. I always thought it was a bit odd on the record. Like it stuck out like a bit of a sore thumb. And so when you say that, it's not so much the music is it that you mean by sore thumb. It's just kind of like you mean you're talking about the narrative and the nature of that. No, it's more the music really like just the dinky, the slightly dinky rhythm of it. I think I quite like the lyrics. I think work on the record is just, it's got that kind of... Dantic. Yeah. Well, let me be, we all play it if you don't like it that much. What do you guys want to hear then? No, no, I've played it. I like it. I like it as a V-side I think because it did seem funny to record, but I'm still proud of his.

22:51Proud of our children. As from you through, you just mentioned, well I just mentioned that I downloaded that song.

25:56How do you guys feel about that? I don't think that's what I was thinking. How do you guys feel about that? Like your legal download on your music? Do you think it's helped you or harmed you more? It definitely has helped us know. Yeah. I probably have record label for it as one of here, but like if you're not Metallica or YouTube or Coldplay, I don't think you really make much money off record sales anyway. I think all people really want it so it's tough to be heard. That's what every musician is always saying. I just want my music to get heard by people and I think that's kind of pretty true. The whole download thing is pretty exciting to know that people want to get your stuff or want to kind of hear your stuff. I mean, you know, more people download it means more people know about you, more people come to the shows, and maybe get excited and maybe buy a record somewhere down the track. When it counts, when we are as big as Coldplay and YouTube and stuff like that.

26:44One day. I'm giving it a year or two. Here's a getting up there. We do everything. We do this thing on the show about five questions every week. Five questions, one word answers. I follow our CDs. CDs. iPod. Oh. Lendinger McCarranay. Because I haven't got one. Mine gets stolen though. So that's why I said I finished. That's not a one word though. Lendinger McCarranay. McCartney. Lennon. Alcohol and marijuana. Bulbs. Bit of both, thanks. I love when people say that. Something you've written your most proud of. Probably one of the new ones that I know it's heard I guess maybe. Uh, stop today tomorrow. What's the new one? Cool. Cameron.

27:30Uh, maybe I don't know. Yeah, it's something off one of something I've recorded. I don't know. All right. I think I'm just saying. I want to know. Um, maybe what's that? What was that one on the developer's records with the acoustic guitar? So I buy painted houses. There you go. Cool title. Yeah, thank you. It's all in the title. It's all it's got really. It's a good one. And one word youth group. That's two. Well, first thing it pops in your head. Thank you, your van. Thank you. Family. Oh. Oh. Well, that guy. Oh. Well, that guy think is the word van. That's it. Because we have spent the last 20, 30, 37 hours in sitting in the van.

28:20So we were on the way to San Francisco yesterday for a show. They closed the freeway because of a snowstorm. Oh, no. And we had to double all the way back 100 miles and come down the coast. And we missed the show when we were in the van for a whole 24 hours. And then we were whole. So, at the moment, that's what youth group to me is being in the van. Yeah. But I can't wait to play a show. It's quite a good way to get out of my head. None of us are leaving this building just because we're not used to the open spaces. No one wants to go outside. Everyone can find this little bathroom. Yeah. Yeah. There's a reason behind that. Yeah. You can't hear that one. I just wanted to. Well, I mean, everyone appreciates that. Let's close it out with one song.

29:05What do you guys want to hear? Let's hear. Let's see a stay-saw. Cool. Yeah. Thank you so much for having us. Okay. Thanks a lot. See ya.