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 A longtime admirer, GEARED uses the opportunity to catch up with the formerly Melbourne-based [ME] guitarist DAMIAN TAPLEY prior to the fast-rising Australian band’s return to London.
GEARED: How’s your UK stint going so far, Damian?
DAMIAN TAPLEY: It began when we got signed over there – we were lucky and turned up with a booking agent and played every week. Our main purpose of going there was to record, but we ended up staying on.
The audiences in England are the basically same. We’ve played in Paris and Hamburg besides that, and both those audiences were exceptional – they really get into it, which is great.
G: I imagine getting gigs in Europe is a completely different story to here.
DT: We went out a lot and tried to make new friends, that kind of thing – certain gigs pop up from that kind of stuff. We’ve only played one festival so far – Secret Garden Party; it’s not unlike Woodford, actually. In the last couple of months, we’ve done support tours, which we never did in Australia besides Dead Letter Circus: we’ve supported Evanesence, done a few shows with Kasabian and we’re about to go back and play with Panic! At The Disco.
G: What was it like supporting Kasabian?
DT: We’ve never played in front of that many people before, but it didn’t take long to get into the groove. It’s pretty intense; they’ve got such good fans – by the time we were on, 95 per cent of the people that were going to show up would be there, so every night we’d be playing to 4000 people. By the end of it, we learned how to play in front of that many people.
G: When can we expect to hear [ME]’s new recordings?
DT: We’ve got a mini-album coming out in February, but that’s more of a UK thing and the full album is going to be out in June. We’ve actually recorded 16 or 17 songs for it – we’re going to cut it down a bit, so there’s plenty of material. It will be released worldwide.
G: Living in London and travelling to other European countries, do you often meet fellow expat bands?
DT: Sure! Bonfire Nights have moved over there from Brisbane and we went to Hamburg to play Reeperbahn Festival, which is a massive music conference that has over 190 bands – mostly from Eastern Europe, but The Jezabels, Cloud Control and Gypsy & The Cat were there.
It doesn’t really remind me of Melbourne in the sense of every second person you meet being a musician, but we’re constantly running into bands that have recorded with the producer we’re recording with. His name is Barney Barnicott – he’s done some bigger stuff like Arctic Monkeys, Kasabian, Placebo and The Temper Trap and we keep running into bands that have worked with him, so that’s more bonding than generally being an expat.
G: Seeing as both of us play guitar, I was going to wonder what your set-up is currently comprised of.
DT: I’ve got a 1m x 50cm board – bigger than a guitar case – and I’ve got a rack delay on there, which I control through a [Tech 21] MIDI Moose. There’s a Line6 M9 tuner, which I also use for some weird reverb effects – I wish Line6 would put all their reverbs into one unit, because I’ve got really good stuff and I don’t use any distortion or anything else on the M9. For distortion, I use a [T-Rex] Bloody Mary – I’m starting to use it more than ever before. Basically, it’s a “metal” distortion; I also use a Hotcake everywhere except for a couple of songs which use a TS-10. Apparently the guy who invented the TS series only uses a TS-10, and I won it on eBay from Germany – it’s got a weird boost on it, and I’ve been using it for a while.
I use an octave/whammy thing a bit and I run through Blackstar amps – I’ve got a semi-endorsement with them and I’ve been using an Artisan combo, but I want to upgrade to a head and a quad. Blackstar are actually Marshall designers and engineers who asked Jim Marshall to let them do their own stuff in the mid-‘90s and he wouldn’t let them, so 10 years later they went, “screw this – we’re going to start our own company!” – which was fine, because Marshall started out from the guys working for Fender.
G: You’ve mentioned earlier you won’t be coming back to Australia for at least a year…
DT: We got told we’ve got to be prepared to play 300 shows this year in UK and Europe, so we’ve allocated some time to come back in January 2013, so that’s definite. Things got busy over there!
G: Thanks Damian!
[ME]’s new single LIKE A FOX is out through Lizard King. For more info check out www.meband.com
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