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So you guys are playing ‘Rock Im Park Festival’ in a few days, in Germany and I know you’re all massive fans of the Foo Fighters and Dave Grohl and they are also playing that festival, what do you think your chances are of meeting him? Do you think any of you would have the guts to sneak into his dressing room?

I reckon after a couple of shots of whiskey and you know maybe just a bit of telling yourself that he’s known for being the nicest man in Rock ‘n’ Roll you’d potentially pipe up the courage to sort of knock on his dressing room and ask him for a drink. Joe – in the band – is the biggest fan ever and he, a few years back, the Brit awards were on in the UK we all got invited. Joe was like ‘Oh, I fly back late from somewhere, I don’t know if I can go‘. So I was like, ‘look; come and head down later or something‘ and he’s like ‘I don’t want to do it‘ so we went regardless. We’re knocking around in this afterparty and someone walks out of the lift wearing a hood and I was like, ‘That’s obviously someone that’s a pretty big deal‘ so, in my drunken confusion, I just followed them, I don’t know why. I was just like ‘I need to know who this is‘ and they went into the toilet and I  was like, ‘This is too weird if I follow them into the toilet‘. I was waiting outside, and low and behold, Dave Grohl walks out and I was like, ‘Wow, if I don’t say something now I’m just going to fucking kick myself‘. So, yeah I just had a chat with him and he was just like the coolest dude ever.

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So, are the rumors true, is he the nicest guy in Rock ‘n’ Roll?

Yeah, he is! It was so funny, I was obviously a bit pissed, it was quite late and I was completely like, ‘I love what you do! You inspire so much music and my band! You’re one of the reasons I’m in music, I love this… but…” at the end of it I was like, “but, I’m not a huge fan of that jacket you’re wearing” and he was like “Dude, I hate this jacket” it was so funny! He was just like, “Dude I hate this jacket” and he was just talking about the sleeves being too tight, it was so funny!

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That’s so crazy! Has anyone else met him, or was it just you?

No, just me. I’m the lucky one where I find myself in random situations where I meet these people… I’ve got the Holy Trinity now! I’ve met, Dave Grohl (Foo Fighters, Nirvana), Thom Yorke from Radiohead and last week I met Josh Homme from Queens of the Stone Age as well. So I’m like, I can retire now!

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How did you manage to do that?

We were in Mexico and the only other band we recognised playing the festival

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So, speaking of your inspirations and stuff I know you guys absolutely adore Tom Petty, especially Conor, you’ve been playing his stuff on tour. You even said in one interview that, The Pixies ‘WhereIs My Mind?’ is your favourite track to play live at the moment. As a band, you’ve also covered Jeff Buckley and you’ve covered Gnarls Barkley and you’ve covered everyone, but, is there anyone that you cover when you’re rehearsing that you kind of wish you could play live?

That’s quite a good question actually! We play really, really stupid stuff when we’re together. Like, I say it’s stupid, we’ll play like hair metal stuff or like really old school rock. We can do a mean rendition of ‘The Trooper‘ by Iron Maiden and you know, it takes us back to being 16 years old where we were still just learning guitar parts and reading tabs off the internet or watching YouTube videos of how to play these songs. We play a bit of Iron Maiden, probably a bit of AC DC as well, I don’t know. We’re not really good enough to start playing songs without rehearsing, like learning them, we’re just not that band. I think if we were better we’d be doing a covers set. We’d be doing wedding gigs on the side I reckon. That’d be great, wouldn’t it?

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Yeah, that’d be so cool! If I ever get married I’ll be on the phone like, ‘Excuse me, Dom, everyone, come to my wedding, I need you to play!’ 

Totally! We’ll do a mates rate and we’ll play a few songs and as long as we have the free buffet and couple of free drinks, we’ll be easy!

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Next up, a fun one! Tell me, if you could make a playlist of songs that you could only listen to for the rest of your life, let’s say 5 songs, what would you choose?

That’s good! I’d go, Grace by Jeff Buckley, No One Knows by Queens of the Stone Age. Then maybe like Pyramid Song or Everything In Its Right Place by Radiohead and then the last, I’d just say, let’s just take… I don’t know, it’d be quite good to have some longer songs… I’d probably take like a symphony piece like a nice long one. Maybe a violin piece, just for good measure…

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That’d go down pretty well on like a beach or like an island somewhere…

I reckon you’d play them for like the first day and then you’d realise that you’ve only got an hour’s worth of music to listen to for the rest of your life and then you’d probably be pretty sad after that…..

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Well one of the songs I’d choose, for me personally would be Tempt You (Evocatio), that’s like my favourite track of all time… 

That song is really interesting actually! What it was originally, was not what is it is now! It was initially really upbeat and quite heavy, that was just an alternative version that we wrote and that was the one that made it on the album, but, before it actually had like huge drums and stuff. It was a lot harsher. Conor was like belting it, then we just stripped it back… It is what it is now.

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Is there a song that you wish you’d play live more often? I know obviously you don’t play ‘Tempt You (Evocatio)’ very often and ‘Neon Brother’, do you ever wish that you did? 

We did Neon Brother for a short while. I’ll just come out openly and say that we don’t really like that song that much, as soon as we did it we just sort of came off of it. There are a few people in the band that like it and there’s a few that don’t like it that much…

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Who’s that?

I’m unfortunately one of them, Conor and Joe aren’t huge fans of it… But, I think. There’s a song that’s called ‘Emergency‘ from the first EP, we don’t really play it. But, it’s a really ambient atmospheric, mellow tune that doesn’t really get too big, but, I love where Conor’s voice sits in it and we don’t really get that out because even if we’ve got an hour and a half set, to play you don’t really go back and play EP songs, you know?

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Do you ever wish that you did though? Like, if it was up to you, if you could pick the set list every night, would you put it on there?

Well, I suppose it is up to us to an extent but then you’ve got to realise that in a live show, obviously the excitement in the upbeat rock songs is always important to make sure you have and then people want to hear the singles and then people want to hear the bigger songs, the songs that have more success. So, before you’ve even added those up you’ve got a whole sort of set, but, from time to time, throwing in something that is a bit like, niche or like only a few fans would know it, is quite cool I think. There’s just so many boxes to tick when you’re working out a setlist it’s almost impossible to play everything you want to.

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Yeah, I guess it’s a bit tough when you’ve got a crowd to please and you want everyone to be happy…

Yeah, like imagine going to see Foo Fighters for instance and they didn’t play ‘Best Of You‘, ‘Everlong‘ or ‘The Pretender‘. You’d be a bit like, ‘Oh‘. You’ve just played something from a new album, without tracks from the first record, you’d probably be a bit sad. But, you know, it’s always a bit of a compromise. We always mix up our setlist so we can kind of incorporate that.

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Lucky last one, what’s one question or one thing that you wish you got asked about more in interviews?

Probably more about the songwriting process and how we actually go about forming the songs and being asked about rewriting demos or who’s role is what and how does everyone bring their own sort of influence to song. Just to talk about more depth in that process. I think it’s one of the unique things about our band that I’m really proud of. We’ve worked really hard to get good. So, I think something to do with that. Also, I apologise for waffling about other shit on the phone and probably killing your question time, I’ve just been enjoying talking.

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That’s okay! I’m so excited to see you guys when you come back in July, I’ll be jumping straight off a plane and going straight to your show. Thanks so much for your time!

Don’t be silly! Thanks so much!

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NOTHING BUT THIEVES

TOUR DATES:

Thursday July 26th – SYDNEY Factory Theatre

Friday July 27th – BRISBANE Eatons Hill Hotel

Saturday July 28th – SYDNEY Metro Theatre
SOLD OUT

Sunday July 29th – MELBOURNE Forum Theatre

Tuesday July 31st – PERTH Capitol

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Tickets: On Sale NOW – HERE

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AMNPLIFY – MJ