Shimon: Hey how you doing?
Access All Areas.net.au: I’m good thanks. How are you?
Shimon: I’m just in the middle of nowhere doing a phone interview with you in somewhere else in a middle of nowhere.
Access All Areas.net.au: Are you still in the States at the moment?
Shimon: Yeah I’m outside a shopping mall.
Access All Areas.net.au: Been touring for three years is a long time. Were you worried that you guys wouldn’t have enough time to focus on writing for Tri-polar at the time?
Shimon: Not really cause we kinda knew that we’re gonna take time off the road to do it. We’re given a timeline and the record label wanted us to do it in a short amount of time. We came back and we had a few good songs but we didn’t have enough, so we just took a little more time to write it and we recorded it really quickly and we put it out straight away so we didn’t really waste any time.
Access All Areas.net.au: Were you happy with the album?
Shimon: Yeah absolutely, what do you think? Do you like it? It’s okay if you don’t!
Access All Areas.net.au: I enjoyed listening to your new songs. I just thought that with the time constraints that you had, maybe there wasn’t enough room for experimenting and it didn’t sound quite different from your previous album. What do you think?
Shimon: Well I think we didn’t want to make a record that was different from our first record in terms of being different. I think we wanted it to just be a natural evolution. Because a lot of people came and saw the band live and really liked what we did live so we just took all this stuff off the first record that worked as well and made the second record better. Took all the best stuff from the first record and put that on and slightly grow from it. I really don’t want to be sort of the band that makes a completely different album just for the sake of doing it. We wanted to make sure that all the people who liked certain things from the first record got a good taste of what they wanted on the second record because they’re the guys coming back to the shows. So that was the main focus for this record but we definitely got a lot time to experiment on stuff but we didn’t want it to be an experimental record so it probably doesn’t sound like there’s experimentation because most of our experimenting was just done getting the right tones for the guitar to sound really big, ‘cause we wanted the record to sound really big.
Access All Areas.net.au: Cool. Do you have a favourite track of the album?
Shimon: Probably Odd One. I think it just makes you feel good. I like the way it feels to play it. I like the way it feels to hear it. It’s really simple and positive.
Access All Areas.net.au: Is there a song that’s more personal to you?
Shimon: Odd One’s pretty personal. I mean White Balloons and Odd One are most probably the most personal songs.
Access All Areas.net.au: You guys have worked with Rock Mafia previously and now on Tri-Polar. How would you describe the creative relationship you have with Tim James and Antonina?
Shimon: Just a very musical relationship. We’re very hands-on sort of band and they’re really hands-on producers. A lot of producers won’t be there for certain parts of it. They’re pushing a lot of buttons and pushing our buttons and a lot of the experimenting came from jumping ideas back and forth between the two producers and the band.
Access All Areas.net.au: And you’ll be touring Nickelback in November! Are you guys excited about coming back?
Shimon: Yes! Definitely. We’ve been waiting to come back for a long time but we haven’t really been able to come back by ourselves yet because as soon as we got off the road, we made the record and we had couple of tours already lined up here. But luckily the first chance we had to come home, we got the Nickelback tour so a) it’s good to come home but it’s also really good to come back with a band like Nickelback.
Access All Areas.net.au: What has been the most enjoyable part of playing and touring in the US?
Shimon: Seeing people when they learn the songs. When people know the songs and they sing the words with you, that’s definitely the best part by far.
Access All Areas.net.au: Some Australian bands hope to crack the US music industry but some choose not to stay in the US as long as you guys have. What inspired you guys to relocate in the first place?
Shimon: Well we wanted to succeed. And the best chance of success was to stay here. I mean if you’re coming and going, coming and going, all you’re really doing is giving people a chance to forget about you. So that was the main reason so we just wanted to win.
Access All Areas.net.au: The Free Hugs video sort of propelled you guys to stardom. Do you guys still feel like the same band from Sydney or has a lot changed since?
Shimon: I still feel like the same guy, think we all kinda do because luckily for us…The sort of success we had with the Free Hugs clip wasn’t really about the band. The band didn’t become overnight success, the video did and luckily the band got a lot of attention for a moment and then we’re able to tour for two years and get a second record and tour for a lot of years and do all that stuff. So for us, we had a lot of steady progression towards success so it wasn’t like a straight up or straight down. It was quick but it was different. The video clip was very popular for two or three months and then people stopped talking about it for a while. But it just became something that people still know about but for us, we’ve just been doing a gradual ascent towards trying to get successful so nothing has really changed for us, it’s been gradual so we haven’t had a chance to get ahead of ourselves.
Access All Areas.net.au: Do you always feel as though you have to always match your new material with the success of previous songs?
Shimon: Yeah it’s important to try and be better at every turn that you make, every step that you take should be a step upwards. There’s a difference between matching the success and matching the sound. Because you don’t want to make a song that sounds like Dress Up as Life (Part 2) or All The Same Part 2 or Free Hugs video Part Two. You just wanna recreate the success, you don’t wanna re-create the song. You wanna keep doing stuff to an extent. I mean we did that with this record; it was good. It doesn’t sound exactly like Dressed Up as Life but it doesn’t sound like a different band so I think we’ve done pretty well.
Access All Areas.net.au: How do the three of you work together when writing a song?
Shimon: It really comes any different way…a lot of people ask that. A lot of other bands have a best formula where one person writes lyrics, one person writes the song or everyone writes it together. It all comes together different ways. Emma writes the bass idea and then we’ll take it away and I’ll write lyrics to it in one night and there’s other songs where Emma comes in with a bass lick and we’ll write the lyrics altogether. And there’s one where I write the part and Emma starts playing bass over it which I then get a melody for it and then we write lyrics altogether. Emma writes half a verse and I write half a verse and Mark comes in with the beat and it’s all different man, it all comes up differently. But the good thing is, we just pick whatever the best song is at the end of the day.
Access All Areas.net.au: Do you remember the first song that you wrote?
Shimon: The first song that I ever wrote was four chords. It was based in D minor and it was written the night a friend of mine called me when I was fourteen years old or thirteen years old. And a friend of mine called me and told me her father had died. So that night I wrote a song about how her father died.
Access All Areas.net.au: Do you still remember how to play that song; do you play it sometime still?
Shimon: I don’t really play it but I think it’s like when you lose your virginity, you never forget how to f*ck and you never forget how to play the first song you ever wrote.
Access All Areas.net.au: You guys have a lot going on, with ‘War’ being featured on Street Fighter video. And you guys have appeared in Robert M. Knight’s documentary, Rock Prophecies. What else do you guys really hope to do in the next year or so?
Shimon: I don’t know, I think just to make it good. It’s the best answer you can have. I’m really looking forward to come home and show everybody what we’ve done because my whole family hasn’t seen our show. My parents, everyone, my family they haven’t seen the show so I’m really looking forward showing all my family and friends what we do. And just making the best music. It’ll be nice to sell a bunch of records and sell out shows but at the end of the day if the music’s good, you can sleep well at night knowing you’ve done the best that you can.
Access All Areas.net.au: Alright thanks a lot for your time Shimon.
Shimon: Thanks, thanks for helping us.
Access All Areas.net.au: Cool, no worries. Take care
@ Becky!
