Photo credit: Ian Laidlaw
Tell us about your tour vehicle.
Home here in Australia, we have a white 2002 Toyota Camry station wagon that’s done over 325,000 kilometres (around 202,000 miles). We consider her the third member of the band. When touring in The States, we generally hire cars. Our last rental was a Toyota Corolla that we named ‘Kelly’ (Willis). She was the most amazing car, that helped us survive dodging flood waters between Houston and Baton Rouge. We’ve since learned our lesson about driving through tropical cyclones…
How do you eat cheaply and/or healthy while on tour?
This year we finally bought a portable car fridge, which our dear friends and frequent tour buddies, Great Aunt (duo) named ‘Coolio Iglesius’. He has already saved us so much money, being able to BYO grocery store food instead of stopping at ‘servos’ (Australian for ‘gas stations’) along our tour route. Free breakfasts at hotels are also great! Fill up there so you don’t need lunch, haha.
How many strings do you break in a typical year? How much does it cost to replace them?
We don’t want to jinx ourselves, but Andy hasn’t broken a string since 2003! Andy uses long-life ‘Elixir’ strings so he doesn’t need to change them as often. (Endorsement, anyone?)
Where do you rehearse?
These days, we have a multi-purpose music rehearsal space at our house with our own PA. Many years ago, when we were starting out, we’d practice at rehearsal studios with paper thin walls, getting drowned out by Death Metal acts… So it was an early decision to go DIY!
What was the title and a sample lyric from the first song that you wrote?
Down Below:
Down below, I’m going down below,
Saint Peter ain’t gonna save me now…
I guess you could say we’ve always been drawn to the darker side of Americana…
Describe your first gig.
We both grew up on the Mornington Peninsula, south of Melbourne in Victoria (Australia) so it’s no surprise that’s where our first gig was, in the front bar of a ‘pub’. We managed to convince a musician friend of ours to give us an opening spot at his residency gig. We were petrified! From memory, we only played a couple of originals and the rest were Johnny and June covers. But thankfully we were surrounded by friends, helping us out and cheering us on.
What was your last day job? What was your favorite day job?
We both work at schools for our ‘day jobs’ and have done so for many years! It’s fairly flexible and they’re generally supportive. But we’ve seen that Hannah Aldridge decorates cakes and Molly Martin walks dogs for their day jobs. We want in on THAT!
How has your music-related income changed over the past 5-10 years? What do you expect it to look like 5-10 years from now?
We live in Melbourne, the most locked down city in the world. We’ve lost 100s of gigs, including several interstate and international tours over the past 2+ years. It’s all a bit raw at the moment. We’ll get back to you on that one, haha!
What one thing do you know now that you had wished you knew when you started your career in music?
“Perfect is the enemy of good.” (Voltaire) Maybe then we would have got more sleep!