Sommerset Speed Things Up
For every high profile band in New Zealand there are probably 20 others tunneling away underground. For Auckland punk/hardcore band Sommerset, the release of their new album 'Fast Cars, Slow Guitars' ought to shed some daylight on their talent.
Despite releasing material on indie label Kafuey (run by the bass player's girlfriend), Sommerset have secured distribution for the album with Shock Records' NZ branch (under the aegis of BMG) - the first local act to do so. Guitarist/vocalist Ryan Thomas says this will mean more CDs on shop shelves.
"We've always had support from Real Groovy and Crawlspace since the early days, but just having someone keep an eye on how the units are going is great because there have been times where a shop has sold out of stuff, didn't tell us, and it's been months without having it in there."
Ready access to the CD should also please Sommerset's live fans. The band - which also includes Stefan Thompson (bass), Jay Dougray (drums/vocals) and relative newcomer Jeremy Toy (guitar/vocals) - have toured extensively over the past five years, with an emphasis on all ages shows.
Ryan says that live-Sommerset is the quintessential Sommerset.
"I think that's always been where we've come from. I don't understand why a lot of bands have a video and all this money put into them and they've probably not played a show before that - and it's not just blah, blah pop bands, it's a lot of guitar bands as well. That's our thing - without wanting to sound pretentious - I think we're for real in that way. I mean, if we end up doing a whole lot of exciting stuff with music videos and things, and none of it works out, there will always be that couple of hundred people who will come and see us play."
Loud and fast is Sommerset's trademark sound and, until this album, was also their modus operandi in the studio, mainly due to budget constraints. This time, with Shock handling distribution, the budget extended beyond stripping their bank accounts and begging their friends and rellies. The band spent two weeks recording with engineer Andrew Buckton at the wheel. Drums were recorded at York Street A and they then moved to a "small sauna of a practice room" in Symonds Street where the first job was to smash holes in the wall for cables!
"For the first time Stefan was able to overdub his bass tracks and I think it helped us all as musicians just to really be doing the best we could. Pro Tools is great for that. A lot of people worry about the inorganic nature of it but we're not a precise, sterile sounding band - our songs sound different every time.
We're always chopping and changing bits here and there, so it's always going to sound quite natural I think. The guitars were done over several days instead of all in one day and that's why there's more layering and a bit more interest.
"We're all into certain sorts of music but you've got to remember that we got into music when we were 12-years-old. Myself and Chris (Humphreys), the guitarist who played on the record, are both quite big LA metal fans, so in a tongue-in-cheek-kind-of-serious way we put across just little bits and pieces of that. All kinds of things like that came out a bit more. Some of those things become the little hooks you couldn't live without and they come from the creative moment."
Effects were kept to a minimum, as they are live. "It's not something we're really into. I've tried simple stuff like a channel switch to boost a bit louder or something like that. After a while I think it's cool, there was nothing wrong with it, but it wasn't actually necessary. In the studio we used some little bits here and there, effects to get more feedback or effects to thin sounds out.
Sometimes they were effects, sometimes they were like studio plug-ins - after effects if you will. It's not the sort of music that needs a lot of that sort of stuff. We're very much lead-into-amp players.
"Lately I've been going wireless into the amp live, which is quite cool freedom because doing the guitar/vocal thing, it is always such a constricting feeling to have your guitar and your amp and your mic stand. But generally we take a very simplistic approach although Stefan uses a SansAmp bass driver pedal - he gets teased a lot for having this really ultra modern distorted bass sound, but funnily enough a lot of people use it. It's become his signature sound because he's used it for the last couple of years."
Thanks to international affiliations, largely fostered by shared musical tastes and Stefan's 'You sleep on my floor, I'll sleep on yours' friendships, 'Fast Cars, Slow Guitars' will be released on small indie labels in Australia (Trial & Error), Germany (Get Up & Go) and the US (Phyte) with the band planning to tour to these territories. Underground they may be, but they sure know how to navigate the tunnels.
Vocalist/guitarist Ryan Thomas interviewed by Jennifer Scott, May 2001.
How did the Shock alliance come about?
Stefan knew some people from here for a while I think and I'm pretty sure that they made an offer. The guy who's putting out our record in Australia used to go with Shock over in Australia. They've been really helpful to us.
What is the main benefit?
For us, more time can be spent on the recording and the budgeting of that and just getting really happy with the recording and not having to worry about all the other things, blah, blah this and blah, blah that. And the fact that there's a certain accepted truth that if a band goes into a record shop and says 'Please stock our CD', then (they say) 'Sure yep, we'll do that straight away' (being sarcastic) but Shock can go in and they'll be taken seriously. We've always had support from Real Groovy and Crawlspace since the early days but just having someone keep an eye on how the units are going is great because there have been times when a shop has sold out of stuff, didn't tell us and we didn't know and it's been months without having it in there. Especially out of Auckland as well, because that's a hard thing to deal with. Often we've had people we know in other cities helping us by going into record stores and trying to get it in there. It's really nice of them, but it's hard.
What is your profile as a live band like out of Auckland?
It's getting really good now I think. There have been certain things that have helped it along, like we did a NOFX support a couple of years ago in Wellington and I think that, if you could isolate certain events, that probably helped a lot because a lot of people are interested in that sort of music but maybe hadn't made the effort to come out to our shows by ourselves then suddenly saw us. A lot of people had heard of us before but not gone to see us. We were down in Wellington at the weekend and got a really good turn out - more than we could have hoped for.
Where did you play?
We played in this place called Thistle Hall which is like a community hall in town - you'd never find that in Auckland now. I'm talking like a real community hall, not something flash. That was the first venue we ever played down there. We've played in bar like Valve and Indigo down there but Thistle Hall is great because of the freedom, the fact that it can be all ages and can be how you want to run it.
I guess there are probably a lot of community halls if you know where to find them.
Yeah, a couple of years ago we did a lot more of that sort of thing around Auckland but at each one there is only so long that they want to do it. The fact that they're always suburban - there's never been a centrality to it. I mean there's the Ellen Melville Hall in town and we played there a few times but as a community hall goes, it's quite a high stress environment to hire it out because it looks nice that place, you've got to make sure it keeps looking nice.
The all ages thing, has that always been a deliberate policy of the band?
Yeah, I think so. It was almost exclusive at first but we just got to a point - I think it was really going to Australia and we were playing in bars every night. Now we'll play bars and we'll play all ages shows and we're happy with both. It's always important. We play a kind of music that appeals to a lot of young people and if they can't come and see us it's a bit of a bummer. It's a different sort of energy and it gives people something to look forward to.
Have other local bands tapped into the under age audience as much as they could?
No, maybe not but then sometimes you can't just look at the bands I guess, because it's the bands and the venues and everything else after that, and it's a very difficult chain of people and circumstances to organise it all so it's going to work well. A lot of bands, maybe they just figure it's not for them, it just depends. You get bands that don't play anything but these large events now and that's quite strange, not to be playing gigs around town, but then those things are often all ages. A lot of bands just settle into nothing but the pub thing which is cool but we like to try and reach the younger people. When I started playing in this band I was like 17 so for me I know quite literally what it feels like - I was underage when I started playing and all our friends were - and they're friends who still come and see us and who have grown up but we all still remember.
You appear to share a similar philosophy to bands such as fugazi - were these bands an influence?
Certain bands for sure - you see the way they do things and you relate to it and it shows you that there are ways to make it work besides more established ways. But I'm not saying we do anything really revolutionary or anything - not by a longshot - but the fact that we try to make all ages shows happen all the time is really good and you do see it happening more.
Has it been band-driven?
For sure, especially Stefan the bass player's always been heavily involved in the organisational side of everything.
Past releases have been very do-it-yourself ...
Yeah, from whoa to go pretty much they've just been put out there, our savings accounts ruined that sort of thing. I mean we're not the first to do that, lots and lots of bands every year do that. I think we just put enough thought into it and bugged people to get our name out there. We sold all of our last album - I don't know how and I've never seen any money back - but somehow we did it because there are no copies left.
How many did you have?
We did 500 that we paid for and then someone in Germany actually did a repress for us and sent another 250 over there, so there have been 750 sold altogether and I think we'll look at reprinting that one again which is pretty cool.
You seem to have hooked into the international community.
Yeah, we've met people in Australia and Europe and stuff. Sometimes peopl just write to you - these days it's an email - but it's the same old sort of thing it's just from the horse's mouth. It's quite cool because you don't have to make an appointment with your representative, blah, blah, blah. People have just written to us or contacted us. I still get people writing to us and asking 'When are you playing in Dunedin again' and you always get that sort of stuff, and it's cool that people have made that direct effort and are interested in what's going on.
The Australian connection seems to have been beneficial, especially the double-up with Aussie acts.
That's always been a strong thing for us. That started years and years and years ago. That started quite simply with Stefan getting a demo tape of a band over there which he liked and vice versa and every time we go over there we make more useful connections. People say 'making connections' but it's just, I was talking to this guy and we said some stuff we didn't expect them to follow up. Whether it's been playing or the fact that we are sitting here right now with Shock is something that came about through the Australian connection. It's cool because I think we were the first band of the genre for a long time to go over there - it's like meeting your long lost cousins or something - suddenly all these people are interested in the same thing as you and you never bothered to check it out.
When was the first trip to Australia?
It was years ago - I'm not too good with my years these days - it was a long time ago, maybe the beginning of '97 and we've been back twice since. I still say we haven't done any serious touring over there because I don't feel like we've ever done (touring) on their terms, getting on the road for four weeks and never coming home. The most we've played over there is seven shows at a time which is a sizeable amount but you can see the end of it quite quickly.
Every time we've gone over, there has been an improvement on the last time and on the way we've seen ... the second time we were over there I remember someone chucking on a CD and saying 'Check this band out called 28 Days, they're like a new band that's just started playing. ' The next time we went over they were doing a lot of stuff. That was about a year and a half ago and now they're like, you know, videos and top 10 selling Australian band so you see all these developments along the way.
Have you maintained contact with them (28 Days)?
Yeah, it's funny all those bands, we're always catching up. Last time they came out, not most recently but when they came out with Pennywise and did some shows down country and we went with them on that. We're kind of mutual fans of the bands. It works really well and they're cool people as well. I think the Australians are really lighthearted people and make stuff fun and I think that we caught that from them, just sort of saw that being on the road can be fun, that playing can be fun. They still care about what they're doing.
What musically is the common element between yourselves and these bands? Is it a musical connection?
Sometimes it is and sometimes it isn't cos we can play with bands and meet people who really play ... although it's all associated within that genre I mean its music that might never ever touch on. Often I find I run into people who are really into the same sort of stuff that I'm into but not necessarily in a band so I think that's the cool thing with the bands, there's enough space for everyone to be doing what they want to. I don't think there are too many bands out there that sound the same.
No but if people have a similar background it comes out in different ways.
Totally. It is an accepted thing that everyone will give a little nod towards fugazi for example, but make it come out totally differently. I don't directly hear fugazi in our music but it was definitely a big influence and for metal bands all kinds of stuff is all there. Good bands are important to people regardless of sounding like them, which is probably a good thing really. You've got fugazi, you don't need fake fugazi.
What was the recording process for the album?
Recording was great. It was really a lot more involved than the stuff we've done in the past. In the past it's been get in there, pay a lot of money, quick, quick, hurry up, finish, don't think, don't be creative, get out, bye! Time is money sort of thing, which is fair because it's really expensive to record in the studio. This time around we did the drums in York Street A so we paid some serious money for that to get really good sounding drums. The rest of it we just did - Andrew (Buckton) took it all on his Pro Tools system - and we went to this place up in Symonds Street where we were playing $50 a day, plus Andrew's fee, and got to chill out for a couple of weeks in the studio and just be creative. For the first time Stefan was able to overdub his bass tracks and I think it helped us all as musicians that recording, just to really really be doing the best we could be and make it all happen and Pro Tools is great for that. A lot of people worry about the inorganic nature of it and stuff but I think, we're not a precise, sterile sounding band, our songs sound different every time. We're always chopping and changing bits here and there so it's always going to sound quite natural I think. The guitars were done over several days instead of doing it all in one day and that's why there's a bit more layering and a bit more interest.
I think for the first time as well we let some of that ... I mean we're all into certain sorts of music but you've got to remember that we were into music when we were 12-years-old and me and Chris, the guitarist who played on the record, are both quite big LA metal fans so in a tongue in cheek kind of serious way at the same time we put across just little bits and pieces of that - listen to the album and every now and then there'll be a bit where you're like oooh! Just all kinds of things like that came out a bit more.
And the vocals, the vocals were quite hard actually. Jay had been away since he did his drum tracks so for about two months we hadn't done any playing so I was a bit out of shape for the vocals. In the end it was just a matter of having to work for a long time on it and just keep being pushed by Andrew to do another one and another one and it got there in the end. I think if I was to do them now I'd probably do them a lot quicker.
Did having that extra time generate songs in the studio?
No. The way we write is generally to do with me coming up with an embryo of a song and then making it sound like us by taking it there so we're not a write on the spot sort of band much. It did give the songs a different personality than expected, not adding bloody big remixes or anything, but just little things that you go 'Oh okay'. If I dug out the demos of the songs we did just before recording there would be some different stuff you could hear that we didn't plan on but some of those things become the little hooks you couldn't live without and they come from the creative moment.
Is that the first time you've experienced that?
Yeah. It's happened before but as I said it's been on such a budget it's like that's cool, get in there do it quick get out and this time it was like let's try these things but at the same time we didn't really experiment, like with the guitars we pretty much stuck with a single sound and the same set-up every time, used different guitars for different textures but had the amps set up the same which is kind of a good way of doing it because otherwise there are so many variables it's going to blow your mind, you're like 'What am I going to use'. We let the guitars do the talking with the same set up in the amps for consistency and yeah, I think that let's us bring out those layers and have different ways of approaching the same sound. It was for the bits really. You do the rhythm tracks, which is kind of the foundation, and then you spend quite a lot of time on these bits.
Do you use effects much on the guitars?
Not live. It's not something we're really into. I mean, I've tried even simple stuff like a channel switch to boost a bit louder or something like that and after a while I think it's cool, there was nothing wrong with it, but it wasn't actually necessary. In the studio we used some little bits here and there, effects to get more feedback or effects to thin sounds out. Sometimes they were effects, sometimes they were like studio plug-ins - after effects if you will. It's not the sort of music that needs a lot of that sort of stuff. We're very much lead-into-amp players. Lately I've been going wireless into the amp live at the moment which is quite cool freedom because doing the guitar/vocal thing, it is always such a constricting feeling to have your guitar and your amp and your mic stand so it's one little boundary I can remove. But generally we take a very simplistic approach although Stefan uses a SansAmp bass driver pedal - he gets teased a lot for having this really ultra modern distorted bass sound but funnily enough a lot of people use it but it's become his signature sound because he's used it for the last couple of years.
Do you have preferred amps?
Yeah, I'm a real gearhead so I can talk about this stuff all day. I've been using this Mesa Boogie Dual Rectifier which, when I got it I thought I had something different but long the way it's become the industry standard. I think they replaced the Marshall JCM900 as a kind of standard. They're slightly more high-end and more expensive but you listen to all that American stuff, the punk rock and the nu-metal and you can be assured probably 75% was recorded with one of those amps. Jeremy's using a JCM900 at the moment which is working out fine. Chris was using some of that Marshall rack gear which was interesting but in the end it's all the same sound, eh. It can all still sound like shit. We're playing sort of modern music. I used to try and play some more vintage SGs that I had but by the time you went, 'Right, these tuners are too unreliable' and got some new ones on and 'These pickups feedback too much because they're not used to dealing with the high gain amp' you think why bother? For our sort of music I think it's better to go with the new stuff. Stefan's had the same bass for about 10 years now which is pretty cool.
Do you have a dedicated sound guy?
We've got this guy (Nick Cunningham) doing the same stuff for a while now, helping out at shows and stuff I mean that's what he does for a living, but I say helping us out because I think he does it a bit cheap for us and helps us sound a bit better. I don't know if he's 'our guy'. In terms of consistency, if you have the same sound man for a while he gets to know the way you like the sound and vice versa and you start working together a bit more. He's been encouraging us to turn down on stage. We're used to playing community centres where there's a vocal PA and nothing else so you just set everything at the level you think it should be and just let it rip and he's been encouraging us for a clearer stage sound, turn down, use monitors. We're begrudgingly getting to the point where we realise he's right, this does sound better. It takes a while to get away from those instincts of setting up the way that you're used to.
What can people expect from Sommerset's live show?
I think that's always been where we've come from. A lot of these bands, I don't understand that they have a music video and all this money put into them and they've probably not played a show before that and it's not just blah, blah pop bands it's a lot of guitar bands as well. That's our thing, without wanting to sound pretentious, I think we're for real in that way because we've been playing for five years now. I mean if we end up doing a whole lot of exciting stuff with music videos and things and none of it works out there will always be that couple of hundred people who will come and see us play. We've got a real fanbase. I think people can expect fun ... and loudness, we play quite loud.
Don't expect to come along and hear the record because we don't play as well as we do on that! It's a spontaneity thing, an energy thing and you do sacrifice standing-there-twiddling-your-thumbs-waiting-for-a-bus playing it note perfect and boring everyone. We're getting better at that - we're working towards a happy medium between playing the songs well - for a while there I think we just used to jump around like idiots and I'd hate to hear what it sounded like. I think we've got to the point now where we can put across an exciting visual act and still hold the music together.
I know some bands, like Shihad, like to have a set list and work that set list to perfection ...
Yeah, we've been facing that concept for a while. Lately we've been, not exactly the same set - I don't think we've gone as far to design the perfect set - but we're definitely playing the same bunch of songs, maybe like, we'll play it and then the next night go 'Okay we should have done that one really because it was quite hard to do it when we were too tired'. Lately, like the last few shows we've done, we've played the same songs so that's quite good to just pick a bunch and work them. I've seen heaps of bands and someone calls for a song and they've gone, 'Sorry we can't remember how that one goes'. I read something recently and Paul McCartney was saying when he plays an acoustic set and does some Beatles songs he has an auto cue because he can't remember the words! He's like 'I wrote them 30 years ago, how am I supposed to remember them?' and all these Beatles fanatics are like 'Are you nuts?'. He was saying they got quite indignant at him for using the auto cue!
People can expect that every now and then something crazy happens, something falls over - the PA fell over in Wellington because there were too may people rushing the stage. Jay, our drummer, he has some wild antics from time to time - some of them he doesn't even mean to do, they just happen. Did you see us on Space recently? We went on Space and about 10 seconds into the song Jay put metal pedal through his kickdrum, so he had no kickdrum for the whole of the song. We're always going to be live and natural and not know exactly - I think some bands pretty much know how it's going to go from start to finish - but we don't.
The main thing we're working on at the moment is timing. When you kick into the first song it's just 'bang!', you're rocking and finding it hard to breath and you can sacrifice a lot of the energy by the time you're a few songs in and you'll get these low points and realise you've lost the momentum a bit, you just shuffle around, look sideways a bit and lost it a bit. So that's what we're working on, is somehow making the end even better than the start. A lot of that is making sure you haven't crammed all your high energy songs into the start but then vice versa, if you leave all your high energy stuff until the end but can't actually summon up the energy to actually play it then the whole thing comes across as a compromise.
I used to lose my voice quite a bit, especially when we played in other countries - I don't know if it's a psychological thing possibly - maybe there was more stress on the overall body and mind than our normal shows but I haven't lost it for the last two and a half years. My voice is probably more harsh and throaty than ever and I think that's just a tolerance thing, your voice just gets used to it. I think that applies to the overall playing thing, your body just gets used to it. Some of the bands we've played with are just amazing live machines and it just comes from the fact that they've been paying so much and for so long.
Do you talk to other singers about techniques?
A little bit. Some people offer techniques but then they can work for one person and not for another. Everyone has that sort of trouble and you're more sensitive to it yourself. When we played with 28 Days, Jay the singer would come off and say 'Fuck it, my voice was fucked!' and I was like well it sounded pretty good to me. There might be some little thing but I don't get all stressed out about it.
I think in the end it's (losing your voice) got to happen. I was probably lucky that it happened to me sooner rather than later, you know. The fact that I lost my voice and can still be able to sing after, I know people who go for years and then snap, it happens and all of a sudden they can't sing anymore or have gone five years without it or something and then the night it happens is devastating. It's a bummer, it makes you feel like, you know, you lose confidence in yourself for a little while. But it's got to happen, you can't expect every night to work out just fine. But like I say, there are probably certain techniques you teach yourself after a while and ways to ... sometimes you stop and think I was screaming then and my throat's not even sore. It's just a tolerance thing.
Can you remember the first show you ever played?
I can - not vividly - but pretty well. That was at the Frisbee Lounge - remember that? There was a lot of excitement and quite a bit of nerves, especially on the part of Chris, who was playing guitar for us then, because that was his first real show. And it was good, although I shudder to think of the set list we had then. We probably played eight songs max, which is a small set list compared to what we're doing now. But I remember it was a good show, it was a good way to start. I know some bands who have had to work hard from the first show but ours went quite surprisingly well. People were really excited about it. We kind of evolved from a previous band that me and Jay had been doping and Stefan got involved later on it which is quite strange because a lot of bands come out and then put out a record later and we had our first EP out from the moment we started paying so people really knew the songs and there was a lot of excitement around the EP. We'd been playing as this other band for a while and people had been slowly going 'These guys are actually pretty good' and so by the time the newly named Sommerset, with slightly altered members, played there was a bit of excitement.
The other night at Pizza Pizza, our release show, I felt that same sort of excitement, it was almost like a first show over again. It's probably a next step for us and a whole lot of people came out and we ended up turning away people. With a new guitarist and a new bunch of sings it felt like, not starting again, but it felt like something new and fresh and exciting again. That's the thing you've got to watch for in a band, that it's not becoming a drag. You face the fact that it's not going to be a thrill every day and some days it is. I think that's what Chris our guitarist felt. He'd been doing it for five years and slowly his connection to it was getting less and less. It feels really cohesive at the moment like it's coming together nicely and everyone's happy to be doing it.
Is the plan to release the album in Germany and Australia?
The same person who did the re-release of our last album is going to put the album out over there. In the States there's a guy who runs kind of like ... over here we did our last album on our own little record label which is essentially nothing more than a PO Box and some organisation and that's the same thought of thing that they are in the United States but because of the larger population you get to the point where they become registered businesses. They're still definitely independent labels and hidden in the underground but they're run as not businesses in an evil sense, so this label Fight in the States is putting out our record. It's on a website basically. It will be released in Germany which I guess equals a lot of Europe. So Europe, States, Australia.
Will Shock Australia be releasing it?
The guy who's putting out or record there - we're putting out our record ourselves here while Shock is doing distribution - while this guy Nigel is putting out the record over there on his label Trial and Error. He was at Shock but I think he's looking at another company for distribution. It may be a case of it's not on Shock Australia but is on Shock NZ which I think is a good thing I think for Shock, it separates it out and makes Shock NZ more independent of their parent company. In the end as long as it's going to get into shops and too people, it's kind of good not to have it all just belonging to one group who's got a stanglehold on it because when It comes right down to it we still own the recording and have the freedom to do what we want.
Will you tour these places?
Australia will be later in the year. Europe was going to be this year but will probably be next year. States is also, it's possible that the States and Europe could be combined. You could spend months going all over the States and we don't really have that time or that money. It's one of those things - you just do what you can within your budget.
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