On Friday 19 May the PIERCE BROTHERS released their much anticipated new EP The Records Were Ours. To coincide with the release, the Melbourne folk-pop duo will be touring the East Coast of Australia before setting off to Europe and the UK for festival appearances and headline shows, plus supporting Tash Sultana across Canada and the USA.

Two years since their last release, Jack and Pat Pierce decided to release this EP as the first in a Trilogy of EPs before they take on the rest of the world with their energetic and dynamic world-class live shows.

With Sydney receiving a sneaky preview of the new EP on Thursday at The Lair (Metro Theatre) to kick off their tour, Amnplify’s Emily Horton was lucky enough to chat with Jack Pierce about the EP and all the exciting times ahead!

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Hi Emily, it’s Jack Pierce here, how are you going?

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I’m very good thank you, and how are you?

I am exhausted!!

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I could imagine! What an exciting day though?

Ah yeah it’s been a crazy day! We’ve just finished busking and now we’re heading back to the back-line place before we have to turn around and head to Bondi!

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Nice!!

And then I think I’m going to do a wash of all these clothes… and then we’ve got a 7am flight tomorrow morning.

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You have got a big weekend ahead of you!

Yeah, look I’m sorry I couldn’t speak to you earlier we were running around trying to figure out the busking setup.

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No that’s all right, it’s all good. I understand you have to get a permit from the council and everything…

Yeah, well you see we had planned all that and we had all our gear with us, we borrowed a speaker and all of a sudden, low and behold we plug it all in, everything’s gone to plan so far. We’re kind of juggling a whole lot of things on the day, and a lot of things can go wrong. So we got there, everything was on time, we got a really go spot, it didn’t rain really.

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Awesome.

And then all of a sudden…the speaker wouldn’t work!

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Oh no! Really?

And we’re like OK, we’re all set up here and we start in like five minutes…that’s OK, not a big deal, so what do we do? Well there were two other buskers that play down there frequently and um, they saved our asses!

They came down and said what do you need? We were like this doesn’t work, and this… OK just a sec, and they ran straight home and came back with a new everything. It was like ‘bang’ as soon as it was plugged in we started straight away. And it went off like a rocket, it was fantastic!

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Wow, that’s so awesome. What a way to save the day!

Yeah, seriously we owe a lot to those guys.

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Well first of all, congratulations on the release of the EP!

Thank you, it’s been a long time coming. We are very excited to have it out.

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Oh good, I’m glad. I was lucky enough to get a preview of it last night at the Metro Theatre (The Lair), which was an awesome show.

Awe good! Thank you so much, I’m so glad you enjoyed it.

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Yeah I had such a good time. I am still on a high.

Ha ha ha oh good on you. Yeah well I didn’t really get to sleep after the show until like 1.30 AM just because I was on a high as well. I was really nervous heading into the show yesterday, I was really quite nervous. I think both of us were because it the start of just a really long, 8 month, stint of some heavy touring and it’s a new set-list, and of course you know the new CD! There is just a lot of things up there, and as soon as I stepped on stage, it all just went away and we just felt amazing. Everybody made us feel welcome and it was just fantastic. We had such a great audience.

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I’m glad Sydney welcomed you with open arms.

So am I, believe me.

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Tell me a little bit about the title The Records Were Ours. I heard a little bit about it last night, about the title track, can you tell me about the story behind it?

Yeah so, we wrote it in the studio, we were in the middle of recording an album and Pat and I just kind of had a day off so we went to the rehearsal studio because Pat had this idea for a waltz. He said he wanted to write out a waltz, 6/8 timing, bum ba da bum ba da, bum ba da bum ba da, he said that’s the idea so we played around with what we could do and I started playing the drums to kind of a shuffled bear. We were talking and trying to figure out a melody to go with it. As we were coming about, we were kind of singing, you know you sing along with vague words “ba da I don’t care much for you” and I went that’s actually pretty funny I don’t care much for you, its a really polite way of saying “Get F*-ked.”

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Yeah ha ha!

And so we were like that’s a really good idea. And Pat was saying that he wanted to write it about his recent breakup. So I took it home and just ran with that, then what had actually happened is, when Pat broke up with his girlfriend um ah she split up the record collection without him.

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Oh no!

And oh my god…people are playing quidditch! Sorry, I’ve just never seen people playing quidditch before in real life.

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Well you would be surprised what you see around Sydney sometimes, well nothing surprises me anymore really!

They are actually riding around on broomsticks. I’m sorry.

(Laughter) 

Anyway… she split up, Pat went away and stayed on the Gold Coast and she split up the record collection and you know that sort of thing happens, there was no animosity you know it was fine… BUT, there were just a couple of records that were particularly special and she got those ones. And I think it’s the classic story, I saw it happen, so that’s what we thought would be kind of a really good way of saying a story about a break up and similar to the vain of Somebody That I Used To Know. We wanted to make it a universal feel so it wasn’t that one girlfriend that you know got you addicted to cigarettes or the one girlfriend that split up your record collection.

It was kind of a collection of different things that people could say; yeah actually that’s happened to me. And then the chorus is “I don’t care much for you anymore” I mean, I think the third verse is “doesn’t count as much telling me you love me when you were drunk, I got your phone call at 3 AM I couldn’t understand a word you said.”

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Yeah that probably sounds very familiar to a lot of people.

Yeah because you were just f*-king out of it and that when we wrote that verse that wasn’t about that particular girlfriend at all. That was really probably about something that I’ve done you know what I mean. But then Pat came up with a name, what did we call it The Records Were Ours and it was just a great name for the song.

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It is really catchy!

And then we thought actually you know what that sort of encompasses the whole album because, the albums about love and a lot of our songs are. So the first song is kind of about dependency but that can go both ways either drugs or love. Then the second song, you know, is about The Records Were Ours. The third song’s called the Only One,  which is almost from the other point of view of the records were ours because it was written about a different breakup, a different girl and it was more about how I’ve done something wrong, I shouldn’t have done it, what was I thinking, I’ve been lying to myself and that sort of stuff. Cos in the third song it’s got a line called “cos I’m the best at believing lies especially when I’m the one that told them” and that’s kind of the point of that track.

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Yeah.

Rhodes is just a song about going away with someone you love to a place that’s really special and camping and swimming in the river or whatever. And ah after Rhodes you’ve got a song about Trump actually ha. Then the final song is just a song about loss.  So “The Records were Ours” as a name kind of just gave a theme to the album and we just really liked the idea of it and the only one that’s not about love is about Trump and we just thought it was too good a time not to put that song in there because well,  fuck that guy.

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Yeah exactly! It was really fun that song last night, I had a ball and I’ve been listening to it on repeat since.

Did you like it? Ha ha good, we actually were very lucky because on that song in the harmonica solo there’s a piano lying underneath, only it’s like a Rhodes or just an electric piano and that’s Ollie from the Cat Empire that came in and laid down some stuff on that at 2 AM at my place on the electric piano one day.

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Oh wow, nice! What a neat little collab. Well you’ve pretty much already answered my question about what has inspired the EP.

Yeah sorry I kind of just went off on a tangent and I thought I may as well go through all of the songs.

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No that’s perfect! When I was listening to the new CD last night and again today I’ve found that some of the tracks on this EP, like Rhodes and Only One, are a little bit more stripped back if that makes sense, to a lot of your other previous songs and records.

Yeah I think with Rhodes especially we just wanted to make just a groovy step along song and that was kind of the idea when we wrote it, almost an Angus and Julia Stone just kind of chill out hum along song that was quite easy going. And wasn’t huge in dynamic range but kind of had a dark tone to it. A lot of our songs have a kind of very dark sad lyrics though we do it to a happy upbeat sound. With Rhodes we actually swapped that around. It’s this kind of, not dreary but a frolicking dark sound and it actually has the happiest words of the whole EP.

And with Only One, that was just you know again, we just wanted to do a sadder, real poetic kind of song and then when we recorded it we just put that beat down that really kind of again just lets it roll along. The solo we put in the end is probably my favourite part of the whole record. We just felt this vibe in the studio and it’s something that we can’t really recreate live if there is just the two of us so we have to do it with our voices instead if you heard last night.

We just did a big vocal solo at the end rather than the electric solo because otherwise we need a drum and a bass player as well.

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Speaking of performing and recording live… you often include tracks that have been recorded live. I know that not many artists have the confidence to do that. What is it about recording live tracks that makes it so unique and why do you keep doing it?

Well we did it this time because there is going to be a trilogy of EPs, this is the first of three and we are planning on doing an album. We have all the songs recorded for a full album, but we had too many songs, and that is why we are doing the three as their own unique kind of collection of songs put together. So the next EP is going to be a little bit bigger and a little bit round of sound with some big horns and that kind of stuff which I am really excited about. I think that’s going to be the big one. I really really love this one and I’ve put a lot of time and effort into this one, but that second one I’m very much looking forward to. The reason that we did it in a trilogy was so that we could do them in their own complete things rather than having 18 songs jumbled together, and so the design will be similar for each one so really it will be a trilogy, you’re supposed to listen to them back to back but they are their own separate thing. What that meant was, we could do, and because we are touring so much this year and we have done so many tours in the last year, we could add live songs that are done really well. So for example Brother…

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I heard that one last night.

Yeah, I think, which closes off this EP, we tried to do it in the studio and we couldn’t. We thought that was going to be the next big single, And we were like, that was the first time, on that CD where everyone starts singing that was the first time we ever played it, ever.

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Really?

Yeah, and we went to play another song so we picked up another guitar and people start singing that tune again so we swapped back guitars and finished it, and we couldn’t believe it!

Then we came home and we were like we’ve got the single. Even our manager over there I think one of the guys from Sony that was there said “that’s it, that’s a single”.

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Nice!!

Ha ha what a song, we’re like YES single aye, we’re gonna be famous, we’re gonna be the biggest. Then when we got home and we got into the studio we were like ah Shit! There are just three chords there is nothing to this song at all it’s just three chords and Oooh woah oh oh, and so it’s quite difficult to put that song down. So I think on the third EP of this run I’m hoping I’m getting it on there but the question is how do we do it? We’ve tried a bunch of ways; I think again we are going to have to maybe get string section in or maybe a cello line or something to break it up because otherwise it is too monotonous a song to do on an album as an album track.

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OK yeah.

No having said that, the live version is fantastic!

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It is! It was a hit last night that’s for sure.

So bringing it all back to answer your question, the reason that we could, that we decided to add all these is that some songs just sound better live and we find it quite hard to get it down as a studio release.  We might lose a bit in trying to get it as a studio release so we decided if we are only doing six songs in the studio, let’s put some live ones on there.

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Exactly, why not!

Let’s put this song on there, we loved the way it sounded that night and we haven’t been able to recreate that, so let’s bloody put it on. So that’s the reason why. I know that was a really long answer but that’s why ha ha.

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That was actually really interesting, because I noticed that Take a Shot is on there, both the studio version and the live version, but Brother was just the live version so I was wondering about that.

Yeah so we had some other versions of the different songs however with Take a Shot it was just the best sounding.

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OK, nice.

It’s just as simple as that, it sounded better than any of the other ones we had done.

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Awesome and it really works and completes the EP nicely.

So how are you feeling after last night by the way?

Pretty tired, but pretty stoked. We made a call at the very last second to get lights in, because we thought that there were lights at the venue and there wasn’t so there was a bit of a mix up. So right at the last second, the eleventh hour, we said we need to call out to get somebody with lights and so they brought some lights in and set it all up and that really made the show I thought. Otherwise it would have been very flat and very you know, not quite so exciting.

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Yeah I know what you mean; I used to work in theatre actually, doing lighting.

Oh did you really?

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Yeah so I understand.

And you probably saw in the room that there is not a lot there already.

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Well I was quite impressed, I didn’t even notice that it was a rushed job or anything like that. I thought well that was just the way it was meant to be.

No well all those lights had to be put up, they didn’t really have a rig, it had those four ones across the top and they can be either on or off and that’s it. Doors opened at about what, 8 o’clock and they got there at 7.30 PM and set it all up and we wrote some notes on our thing and gave it to the lighting guy and just said righto I will just play along… and he played along it was splendid.

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Well he did very well it was nice, simple, and intimate and yeah that is awesome… I’m impressed.

Because usually we would have a technician, it was just one of those things that is unavoidable that happens from time to time its rock n roll you know.

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Yeah.

You never know what’s gonna happen and so for someone to be able to pull it together and still have that cohesive a show without too much of a problem I was thrilled, absolutely stoked.

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Well you should be, it was such a great show!

Thank you.

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I could not stop dancing the whole night.

Oh thank you so much, I’m so happy.

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I hope that Sydney gave you a really nice warm welcome because that show last night was the start of your big tour, and by big I mean BIG!

Oh yeah! There is another two months or so…

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That’s crazy.

Yeah, two and a half months in there that we haven’t announced yet!

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Wow that’s exciting.

So we will not stop until…no actually I lie, I have a week and a half off in June and so you know, that will be good. But I think we will be in the studio for that.

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Yeah I could imagine you wouldn’t really get a break, a proper break at least, while you are on the road.

Yeah not really. I Think in about you know March, no maybe January next year we will have a bit of a holiday maybe. We might get about a couple of days off so I’m probably just going to go hiking with the girlfriend.

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Yeah that sounds nice! So the US leg you are touring with Tash Sultana, which is really exciting.

That’s right.

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What is it like working with her, have you worked with her before?

Yes we know her quite well actually, we’re old friends. She’s signed to the same management label as us and so she is fantastic to work with. She actually at the start of last year supported us around Australia.

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Oh that’s right!

Yeah I think she has done two tour supporting us so now as she’s the biggest band in the world, she’s returning the favour for us which is really lovely.

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That’s so great.

And we get to travel through the states and just play these amazing places that we never would have gotten the opportunity to do otherwise.

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Wow, that is so exciting!

It is really exciting! And you know, we’re good friends and we always catch up when we have a chance.

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So how are you preparing for the big tour?

Pretty much we are trying to be as good as we can and just be like alright, that’s it… No more drinking!  Ha ha ha, eating healthy , but after days like today. Last night we were very good but after days like today that no drinking rule has to go out the window somewhat because I am going to need a beer when I get to Bondi tonight.

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Well you do need to celebrate. You did release the EP today!

Exactly, we’ve got to celebrate the release.

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You have a very good excuse to celebrate!

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The Pierce Brothers performing at the Lair (Metro Theatre) in Sydney 18.5.17. Shot for Amnplify by Malcolm Katon of Firefly Photos Australia.

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I just want to add something briefly while I’m talking to you. I want to mention how much I personally appreciate the incorporation of the Didgeridoo into your music. I know you’ve done it in the past quite a bit, but it doesn’t get incorporated into modern music that often and it is such a unique sound.

It’s an incredible instrument to be able to play, it really adds to the sound but not really because of melody, more because of well literally vibrations, because that’s all it is really. It’s some real deep vibrations that really just enhances the song and enhances the feel, it’s such a tribal instrument that can really connect people. I truly believe that it can really connect people especially when we play and incorporate it into a pop song; well you know a folk song or whatever. It can really make it you know so much better.

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It’s quite a skill to have, and another skill to add to your repertoire, on top of all the other instruments you play.

Ah, well you see that’s the thing, I think we just trick everybody. If you put me in a rock band and gave me an electric guitar and were like go and do a solo…I would suck! I’d be so bad, but of all the solos I play I have learnt them. So I’m actually not that good, I just trick everybody! I play just enough to make them think that oh he knows what he is doing, and anymore and I’d be cactus.

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Well you’ve fooled me that’s for sure!

Ha ha good!

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Thanks so much for talking to me today. Big congratulations on the release of the EP The Records Were Ours today, and all the best.

Thanks again.

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I had such a wonderful time last night so, thank you very much.

Oh I really appreciate that and I look forward to seeing you again at the next one!

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Yeah, I also feel very privileged to have listened to the EP the day before everyone else.

Good I’m so glad.

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I’ve already put it in my car so I will be listening to it all the time.

Good on you, I hope you enjoy it.

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Good luck with the tour.

It’s going to be a long one but I’m sure we’re going to get through it. Hopefully… well we will get through it as far as energy and stuff goes, just as long as we survive each other. We very well may kill each other by the end of the trip.

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You won’t need a break from touring you will need a break from each other!

Yeah that is quite often the case.

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How do you go working so closely with your sibling…I know you’re twins and that can be a different story, but I could not work with my brother that closely or be on the road together for that long!

Well we bicker and fight all the time and so we’ve just really got to, I’ve learnt that we really need to keep a sharp eye on it or it could get pretty bad, especially if you are three months into a tour in the Netherlands or something and shit goes wrong… it can be pretty rough sometimes. But… at other times you know, he is my best friend and so it’s the most rewarding thing in the world in some ways.

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And you probably wouldn’t want to do it with anybody else?

No, probably not…but don’t tell him I said that.

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Don’t worry. He won’t hear it from me.

Yeah good on you.

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Alright well thank you so much for talking to me today. Hopefully when you come back to Australia I will catch up with you again.

We haven’t announced anything yet but we know we’re going to be back in Sydney at some stage.

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Great that’s very good to hear, I look forward to it.

Alright well I will see you then.

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Enjoy Sydney while you’re here and enjoy your travels on the tour. Have a good one.

Thank you. Bye.

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AMNPLIFY – DB