_Jae Laffer - The Panics (13/11/2011)
_
In the
lead up to Laneway Festival, we recently caught up with The Panics
frontman, Jae Laffer, to talk about their fourth studio album, the monarchy and
touring with Stevie Nicks and Dave Stewart.
It’s been four years between your last release ‘Cruel Guards’ and your latest release ‘Rain on the Humming Wire’, what do you think has changed with your music and outlook on life in that time?
In the last four years? Yeah I mean, I’m not sure, I guess it’s just a time after a good decade of hanging out together and writing songs and being completely dedicated to this group, that it’s probably the first time we took stock of you know where we’re at and what we wanna do.
It’s just this is the first time we had a tiny intermission in everything that we do you know, it’s not like we took our eyes off the ball or anything, we just kind of found ourselves overseas just having some time where we just slowed it down a tiny little bit.
I’m not sure of what I’ve learnt, but I guess it’s just that thing where you realise that you’ve really dedicated your life to one particular cause and you’ve been so one track minded the whole time and kind of ignored everything else in your life, and then you find yourself being a little bit older and wiser and just wondering what to do next.
I think we’ve kind of got to that stage where, I don’t really know how to explain it, we’re taking great pride in what we’ve achieved and I think I got to a point where I needed to get more ambitious than what I was at the start of the whole band. I hated the idea that over time you could water down your dreams a little bit, or get complacent with what we were doing. I think we’ve got to the stage where we’re completely reinvigorating our goals and what we want to do and the places we wanna go, you know I feel strengthened.
‘Rain on the Humming Wire’ was recorded in Dreamland Studios and mixed at Electric lady studios in New York. What was the recording process like and why did you decide to record there?
The process was pretty fun, we were in a church on a hill in the middle of nowhere in the woods and it was fall, the forest was like a bright red and it was very beautiful and so that was just a nice atmosphere. That was kind of why we went apart from being offered to go to New York to work.
I mean you don’t turn it down, because it sounds like too much fun. I don’t know how many chances in your life you get to make an album, so it’s just about creating a unique and inspiring atmosphere for people to work in and hopefully it gets translated down onto the record. It was just about having fun and it was literally a big open space with sun shining through stained glass into the room, and you know that’s a nice way to make music.
Genero.tv ran a music video competition for your latest single 'Endless Road' which Indian Director Achyutanand Dwivedi won, were you guys involved with the selection process for those clips?
Yeah we were directly involved to the point where we just sat down one night and watched 50 to 60 video clips and decided what we liked. It was really flattering, I mean the idea that you would make a film clip to enter into a competition and it may not get shown ever again, people really giving their time to a song of ours, it was beautiful. There were clips from Russia and Poland and the States and India, all these places and it was so much fun to watch.
Some of them were just like people filming their grandparents dancing in the backyard or whatever, it doesn’t sound that good, but when you’re watching all this stuff and it’s like somewhere in Sicily, you’re just like wow. I think it’s a really great way to see what people think of your ideas and it’s just like touching a place in people’s lives.
We chose the guy because there was just a really unique kind of character in the film clip and he seemed to represent the song nicely, and also it was just something completely different for a change.
What was it like basing yourself in England for six months and how do you think it influenced the song writing process?
I mean it’s always had a pretty good effect on what we do, in fact every record we’ve made, which is about, well we’ve done four albums and a mini album. For every one of them we seem to be able to go to England for a little bit of time to do some recording or touring or something like that. We’ve just found it’s been a nice way to space out our time and you know to get away from everyone, it can be a good thing for your work and it’s just inspiring to be somewhere, especially somewhere where a lot of our favourite bands came from.
Obviously we love music from everywhere, but in high school when we were hanging out, we were right into the British stuff and so it was a nice little dream to realise we could just end up in Manchester you know, just hanging out and we just made friends, we love it.
How did you cope with being away from your family and friends for so long?
Being away from family and friends, it’s not too hard when you’re doing something that you love. It can be testing you know, we make songs about it.
You recently conducted a Facebook poll to gauge what songs people wanted to hear on your latest tour, what was the outcome of that and was there anything that surprised you?
It’s not really surprising so much as really comforting and flattering that you have people kind of saying ‘Oh man I love this song’ and it’s something that we wrote and recorded, it could be seven years ago or something. As a creative person it’s just nice to know things that you create stick around in people’s minds and don’t get forgotten about. Because you invest so much in it emotionally that sometimes you just think god, if an album just comes out and flops, you just go ‘I don’t know if it’s worth all the trauma!’
Because it can be so draining to sit and write songs, especially about yourself for a long period of time, so to have people loving the music, letting the music into their lives and for them to consider it important, it’s a beautiful thing. It’s just nice to see all the different songs that people might remember and bother to even get in touch about it, it’s great.
What was the inspiration behind the new album’s name and cover?
I get asked that and in a nut shell, the record is quite retrospective, kind of a lot of angles in the subjects. It reflects back on a time in my teenage years and things like that and it’s kind of based around the hills of Perth where I grew up. That song seems to be summarised up, you know the song ‘Creatures’ which I took the lyric from and it was basically the lyric in the song describes a time just after the storm.
I grew up in a place where there seems to be very little cars or people around, you always notice all the wires buzzing around the neighbourhood and I have that in the song. I just thought, for a record which seems to be looking back a little bit, it’s nice to have the title of the record being at the moment, at the time in my life where I was looking forward at what was going to be the start of my life, so it’s kind of a bookend is the idea, and it just looks and sounds really good.
You're set to play the Laneway Festival next year, any artists on the lineup that you're looking forward to seeing?
To tell you the truth I’ve only just kind of touched base on who’s playing, so still not quite sure but I just noticed that it’s all new and up and coming bands and I find that really exciting. I’m looking forward to discovering a bunch myself.
I think when you compare the festivals, the Laneway they just kick ass in terms of, they’ve just got their finger on the pulse a lot more than a lot of other stuff going around. There’s a lot of great international and up and coming stuff and I find that exciting and we’re very happy because there are only one or two Australian bands on the bill and we get to represent the local stuff. So we’re going to try and put on a good show, get some new material together in the next few months as well and try and play some new things and just hopefully surprise some people.
What should Laneway festival goers expect from your set?
We’ve been on the road a lot and we’re feeling pretty good about the live show. Like I say we’re hoping to surprise ourselves with a bunch of new songs, we might even get something new out in the meantime, we kind of feel like moving quickly so we’ll see. It should be a good time; it’s a great way to start the New Year.
The first single 'Majesty' off the new album touches on Australia's relationship with the monarchy and some say it reflects pro-republic sentiments, considering this, what did you think of the Queen's recent visit?
Look I’m opinionated, but I’m not aggressive about it, it was more just I like the idea of bringing up these subjects. I just feel like I grew up in a time the same as everyone else where when you were young you didn’t quite understand what the point of these funny people in costumes were doing on the wall of your classroom and you know I just kind of touched on that.
I don’t think much of when I see the Queen on the TV, I just think it’s a waste of money you know, but I also think that she pleases and warms the hearts of lots of old women in our country and that’s very nice. Apart from that I don’t really know I just think you’ve only got to live in England to see that the people think differently about it over there. It’s just a lot of money for a family who may be very nice but are also just a bunch of rich people, it’s a silly thing.
I’m only pro-republican because I like the idea; inevitably we’re going to head that way anyway. People talk about it’s nice to have allies like Britain and keep them close in case there’s a war or something , well that’s just assuming you have the same opinions on world issues as Britain. We don’t necessarily have much in common anymore. I just think you’ve got to move on and think for yourself. That was all I was trying to get across.
How do you feel about the publicity your music is receiving from airplay in shows such as Ugly Betty and Underbelly Razor?
That stuff’s really, really cool I mean the one in America, Ugly Betty, I wasn’t there to watch it, but it’s a very powerful thing when you’re on a TV show that gets watched by hundreds of millions of people you know, I mean I don’t know how many. It’s quite exciting and you know I don’t have a strong opinion about it.
Sometimes my mother will call and let me know if we’re on the TV or something and I like it because I just think ‘well it’s really nice that you’re getting into people’s living rooms and you’re part of popular culture in some tiny way’. I like hearing us when we’re on the football and stuff like that, it’s not all the time but I think ‘ah that’s so cool’, people are sitting around tucking into their lunch and for 15 seconds we get to change the mood in everyone’s living rooms, I think that’s pretty cool.
Where was the weirdest/strangest place you've ever heard your music played?
I’m trying to think, it’s been some in places where it’s just really surprised me like, often I hear it when I’m buying my groceries it’s come on in the store. I’ve walked past like some very aggressive looking men out on a construction site and it’s been pumping out of their ute, just stuff like that. I can’t remember anywhere too weird. I heard it on the aeroplane one time and driving through a drive-through bottle shop, just like in those places. It’s really cool you know, to be on in a variety of places. That’s the coolest thing about radio in general, it gets to places where no where else does, because people just leave it on when they’re working and going on about their day and its part of it.
Final question, you're scheduled to go on tour in a couple of weeks with Stevie Nicks and former Eurythmic member Dave Stewart, how did that come about and how are you feeling in the lead up to it?
I’m feeling good, practicing hard and we’ve got a lot of new songs to learn, but we’re very flattered someone mentioned that we could be a good band in Australia to call up if you need some rockin stuff played and we just went that sounds like something very novel to do. I love Stevie Nicks and Dave Stewart from the Eurythmics, he’s an amazing producer and songwriter and I look forward to picking his brain a little bit and hopefully making friends with the guy. Plus you know it’s something completely different for the boys, we’re yet to play a stadium so we get to do it for a whole month and it should be a lot of fun.
Thanks for taking the time out to speak with me, it’s been a pleasure.
Thanks for the good questions, all the best with everything.
Rain On The Humming Wire is out now.
Nazia Hafiz
It’s been four years between your last release ‘Cruel Guards’ and your latest release ‘Rain on the Humming Wire’, what do you think has changed with your music and outlook on life in that time?
In the last four years? Yeah I mean, I’m not sure, I guess it’s just a time after a good decade of hanging out together and writing songs and being completely dedicated to this group, that it’s probably the first time we took stock of you know where we’re at and what we wanna do.
It’s just this is the first time we had a tiny intermission in everything that we do you know, it’s not like we took our eyes off the ball or anything, we just kind of found ourselves overseas just having some time where we just slowed it down a tiny little bit.
I’m not sure of what I’ve learnt, but I guess it’s just that thing where you realise that you’ve really dedicated your life to one particular cause and you’ve been so one track minded the whole time and kind of ignored everything else in your life, and then you find yourself being a little bit older and wiser and just wondering what to do next.
I think we’ve kind of got to that stage where, I don’t really know how to explain it, we’re taking great pride in what we’ve achieved and I think I got to a point where I needed to get more ambitious than what I was at the start of the whole band. I hated the idea that over time you could water down your dreams a little bit, or get complacent with what we were doing. I think we’ve got to the stage where we’re completely reinvigorating our goals and what we want to do and the places we wanna go, you know I feel strengthened.
‘Rain on the Humming Wire’ was recorded in Dreamland Studios and mixed at Electric lady studios in New York. What was the recording process like and why did you decide to record there?
The process was pretty fun, we were in a church on a hill in the middle of nowhere in the woods and it was fall, the forest was like a bright red and it was very beautiful and so that was just a nice atmosphere. That was kind of why we went apart from being offered to go to New York to work.
I mean you don’t turn it down, because it sounds like too much fun. I don’t know how many chances in your life you get to make an album, so it’s just about creating a unique and inspiring atmosphere for people to work in and hopefully it gets translated down onto the record. It was just about having fun and it was literally a big open space with sun shining through stained glass into the room, and you know that’s a nice way to make music.
Genero.tv ran a music video competition for your latest single 'Endless Road' which Indian Director Achyutanand Dwivedi won, were you guys involved with the selection process for those clips?
Yeah we were directly involved to the point where we just sat down one night and watched 50 to 60 video clips and decided what we liked. It was really flattering, I mean the idea that you would make a film clip to enter into a competition and it may not get shown ever again, people really giving their time to a song of ours, it was beautiful. There were clips from Russia and Poland and the States and India, all these places and it was so much fun to watch.
Some of them were just like people filming their grandparents dancing in the backyard or whatever, it doesn’t sound that good, but when you’re watching all this stuff and it’s like somewhere in Sicily, you’re just like wow. I think it’s a really great way to see what people think of your ideas and it’s just like touching a place in people’s lives.
We chose the guy because there was just a really unique kind of character in the film clip and he seemed to represent the song nicely, and also it was just something completely different for a change.
What was it like basing yourself in England for six months and how do you think it influenced the song writing process?
I mean it’s always had a pretty good effect on what we do, in fact every record we’ve made, which is about, well we’ve done four albums and a mini album. For every one of them we seem to be able to go to England for a little bit of time to do some recording or touring or something like that. We’ve just found it’s been a nice way to space out our time and you know to get away from everyone, it can be a good thing for your work and it’s just inspiring to be somewhere, especially somewhere where a lot of our favourite bands came from.
Obviously we love music from everywhere, but in high school when we were hanging out, we were right into the British stuff and so it was a nice little dream to realise we could just end up in Manchester you know, just hanging out and we just made friends, we love it.
How did you cope with being away from your family and friends for so long?
Being away from family and friends, it’s not too hard when you’re doing something that you love. It can be testing you know, we make songs about it.
You recently conducted a Facebook poll to gauge what songs people wanted to hear on your latest tour, what was the outcome of that and was there anything that surprised you?
It’s not really surprising so much as really comforting and flattering that you have people kind of saying ‘Oh man I love this song’ and it’s something that we wrote and recorded, it could be seven years ago or something. As a creative person it’s just nice to know things that you create stick around in people’s minds and don’t get forgotten about. Because you invest so much in it emotionally that sometimes you just think god, if an album just comes out and flops, you just go ‘I don’t know if it’s worth all the trauma!’
Because it can be so draining to sit and write songs, especially about yourself for a long period of time, so to have people loving the music, letting the music into their lives and for them to consider it important, it’s a beautiful thing. It’s just nice to see all the different songs that people might remember and bother to even get in touch about it, it’s great.
What was the inspiration behind the new album’s name and cover?
I get asked that and in a nut shell, the record is quite retrospective, kind of a lot of angles in the subjects. It reflects back on a time in my teenage years and things like that and it’s kind of based around the hills of Perth where I grew up. That song seems to be summarised up, you know the song ‘Creatures’ which I took the lyric from and it was basically the lyric in the song describes a time just after the storm.
I grew up in a place where there seems to be very little cars or people around, you always notice all the wires buzzing around the neighbourhood and I have that in the song. I just thought, for a record which seems to be looking back a little bit, it’s nice to have the title of the record being at the moment, at the time in my life where I was looking forward at what was going to be the start of my life, so it’s kind of a bookend is the idea, and it just looks and sounds really good.
You're set to play the Laneway Festival next year, any artists on the lineup that you're looking forward to seeing?
To tell you the truth I’ve only just kind of touched base on who’s playing, so still not quite sure but I just noticed that it’s all new and up and coming bands and I find that really exciting. I’m looking forward to discovering a bunch myself.
I think when you compare the festivals, the Laneway they just kick ass in terms of, they’ve just got their finger on the pulse a lot more than a lot of other stuff going around. There’s a lot of great international and up and coming stuff and I find that exciting and we’re very happy because there are only one or two Australian bands on the bill and we get to represent the local stuff. So we’re going to try and put on a good show, get some new material together in the next few months as well and try and play some new things and just hopefully surprise some people.
What should Laneway festival goers expect from your set?
We’ve been on the road a lot and we’re feeling pretty good about the live show. Like I say we’re hoping to surprise ourselves with a bunch of new songs, we might even get something new out in the meantime, we kind of feel like moving quickly so we’ll see. It should be a good time; it’s a great way to start the New Year.
The first single 'Majesty' off the new album touches on Australia's relationship with the monarchy and some say it reflects pro-republic sentiments, considering this, what did you think of the Queen's recent visit?
Look I’m opinionated, but I’m not aggressive about it, it was more just I like the idea of bringing up these subjects. I just feel like I grew up in a time the same as everyone else where when you were young you didn’t quite understand what the point of these funny people in costumes were doing on the wall of your classroom and you know I just kind of touched on that.
I don’t think much of when I see the Queen on the TV, I just think it’s a waste of money you know, but I also think that she pleases and warms the hearts of lots of old women in our country and that’s very nice. Apart from that I don’t really know I just think you’ve only got to live in England to see that the people think differently about it over there. It’s just a lot of money for a family who may be very nice but are also just a bunch of rich people, it’s a silly thing.
I’m only pro-republican because I like the idea; inevitably we’re going to head that way anyway. People talk about it’s nice to have allies like Britain and keep them close in case there’s a war or something , well that’s just assuming you have the same opinions on world issues as Britain. We don’t necessarily have much in common anymore. I just think you’ve got to move on and think for yourself. That was all I was trying to get across.
How do you feel about the publicity your music is receiving from airplay in shows such as Ugly Betty and Underbelly Razor?
That stuff’s really, really cool I mean the one in America, Ugly Betty, I wasn’t there to watch it, but it’s a very powerful thing when you’re on a TV show that gets watched by hundreds of millions of people you know, I mean I don’t know how many. It’s quite exciting and you know I don’t have a strong opinion about it.
Sometimes my mother will call and let me know if we’re on the TV or something and I like it because I just think ‘well it’s really nice that you’re getting into people’s living rooms and you’re part of popular culture in some tiny way’. I like hearing us when we’re on the football and stuff like that, it’s not all the time but I think ‘ah that’s so cool’, people are sitting around tucking into their lunch and for 15 seconds we get to change the mood in everyone’s living rooms, I think that’s pretty cool.
Where was the weirdest/strangest place you've ever heard your music played?
I’m trying to think, it’s been some in places where it’s just really surprised me like, often I hear it when I’m buying my groceries it’s come on in the store. I’ve walked past like some very aggressive looking men out on a construction site and it’s been pumping out of their ute, just stuff like that. I can’t remember anywhere too weird. I heard it on the aeroplane one time and driving through a drive-through bottle shop, just like in those places. It’s really cool you know, to be on in a variety of places. That’s the coolest thing about radio in general, it gets to places where no where else does, because people just leave it on when they’re working and going on about their day and its part of it.
Final question, you're scheduled to go on tour in a couple of weeks with Stevie Nicks and former Eurythmic member Dave Stewart, how did that come about and how are you feeling in the lead up to it?
I’m feeling good, practicing hard and we’ve got a lot of new songs to learn, but we’re very flattered someone mentioned that we could be a good band in Australia to call up if you need some rockin stuff played and we just went that sounds like something very novel to do. I love Stevie Nicks and Dave Stewart from the Eurythmics, he’s an amazing producer and songwriter and I look forward to picking his brain a little bit and hopefully making friends with the guy. Plus you know it’s something completely different for the boys, we’re yet to play a stadium so we get to do it for a whole month and it should be a lot of fun.
Thanks for taking the time out to speak with me, it’s been a pleasure.
Thanks for the good questions, all the best with everything.
Rain On The Humming Wire is out now.
Nazia Hafiz