Lindsay Interview on PBS 106.7 FM

Lindsay: Ryan, it is very nice to be here.

Lindsay: Yeah, I just get so lonely when I'm down here by myself. I was just walking past PBS and I thought, oh, it's progressive. I'm relatively progressive. They'll let me in.

Lindsay: No, I'm here because we are announcing-it's only being announced tomorrow, so I figured you can get it tonight early-that we've decided to do another anniversary tour. See, there are a few missteps that bands make in their careers. One of them: you do a reunion show if you break up for a bit, it's so successful you think, "Oh my god, this is the best. Let's quickly book a 45-day tour to every part of regional New South Wales," and then it sucks and you break up again and never play again. We haven't done that, but that does happen to some bands. The other thing bands do is they finally fall prey to the album anniversary show, it goes really well, so they think, "Let's do that for every one of our albums." And that is the one we've fallen prey to. So a couple of years ago we did A Man's Not a Camel 25th anniversary tour and it was excellent. Did a bunch of shows in capital cities, and last year we did a bunch of regional shows and they were so good.

Lindsay: We did. That was on the regional touring. We'd never played the Tote before. So that was very fun. And so we thought-that was the 25th anniversary of A Man's Not a Camel-we had a look at all the different albums, and we've always wanted to play more songs from Sans Souci. And this year happens to be the heralded 23rd anniversary of Sans Souci. Obviously 23 is a really important number to someone somewhere.

Lindsay: Yeah, that's it. We're big basketball fans. Actually, Dal is a basketball fan, so he probably could have told me that. I tried to shoehorn some kind of-we've got 23 chromosomes in the standard human genome, that's vaguely accurate, I suppose. There's a psalm in the Bible about the Lord being our shepherd (Psalm 23). We're big with sheep farmers. Anyway, we just wanted to do it because maybe by the 25th anniversary, the world won't be here anymore.

Lindsay: Yes, exactly.

Lindsay: We're going to play the songs from Sans Souci and some other songs. That's pretty much it. With the Camel one, that was fun because you force yourself to go back to that time-1999. This is 2002, 2003 by the time we put it out. It's been fun listening to the songs and remembering all the stuff that was happening. Jason bought himself a little audio recorder and was putting samples on the album. This one had Jason finding bits and pieces and putting them into songs. We had the glorious documentary Cunnamulla set in Western Queensland, at the end of the train line, showing families that live in that town. Jason grabbed audio from that, didn't think anything of it, and then we ended up meeting a bunch of them. There was this guy, a DJ, the one who says, "I used to take my earrings out, you know, and they still call me it and I'm low down." We met Mart and he ended up coming to a bunch of shows. For us, Sans Souci was having a look at Australia-songs like "Greyhound" about the greyhound racing industry, "Hippie Song" set squarely in the Northern Rivers of New South Wales. Some of our great actors turned musicians were sung about, or New Zealand actors turned singers. It was fun to look back at all that. I remember for the album tour we had blow-up pool toys, a working bar on stage, and a working casino blackjack table on stage. Haven't decided whether we're going to have those yet.

Lindsay: Yeah. I haven't actually thought about playing the songs yet. It's just about doing all the extra stuff.

Lindsay: Yeah.

Lindsay: Yes, it was.

Lindsay: When I joined the band, Gordy joined shortly after. This was the second musician to join after me. The main thing I remember: before Tom joined, there was a bit of time where it was just Jason, me, and Gordy. Jason and me at his place on Angel Street in Newtown-I'd never really played bass before and we didn't have a bass player. We were just demoing songs and I was like, "This is the best. What is this cool thing?" I remember writing "Who'd Be a Cop" just mucking around on the bass like it was a toy I'd opened for Christmas. Obviously I sucked at it. Then we got Tom. He auditioned and got in all in one day. That day we were at Jason's house and said, "We're going to watch Grinspoon at the Metro in Sydney, you want to come?" He looked sheepish. Jason's very observant and goes, "You're not 18, are you, Tom?" He turned 18 shortly after. Very funny that he'd lied-or obfuscated-about his age to get into a band.

Lindsay: Also a very sick bass player. That was the first time we got Tom's vocals as well. There are songs on that album where Tom sings as well as shredding on bass. I was even allowed to sing on this album-me singing at the back of a couple of tunes. There's a song right in the middle of the album, a beautiful power pop song about Jason getting over his heart attack and getting back on the horse. It starts quite depressing and ends very hopeful. Mid-pace, with a rad guitar riff. Jason decided to call it "Cocksucker" because he wanted to shoot himself square in the foot for writing such a perfect pop song. This was after A Man's Not a Camel had so many pop songs and did really well-we didn't want to just write a bunch of pop songs to stay in the charts. But that song has all of that. I was allowed to sing because I wrote the harmonies and sang the bit at the end-"I'm getting up"-when I was not a very good singer back then.

Lindsay: Yeah, starts in August. Doesn't start here. Starts over in Ganner country at The Gov in Adelaide. Then we're doing a snow show in New South Wales. Then we get to the Croxton on the 12th of September, but the day before that at the Barwon Heads Hotel first. So Friday 11th of September at Barwon Heads Hotel, then the Croxton on the 12th of September. That's it for Victorian shows for now. We'll probably do that thing where we say, "This works well, let's add regional shows"-last year we played Castlemaine, Ballarat, Warrnambool. The Loft closed in Warrnambool, but there's a new joint just around the corner, which was so much fun. So for now, Barwon Heads and the Croxton are the two if you're listening in Victoria.

Lindsay: It's not as close as the Tote, but you know.

Lindsay: Yeah. I played the Croxton a couple of months ago with Lagwagon-very fun. There are like 14 record shops and music shops within a short walk. I spent far too much money on pedals I probably won't use on this tour.

Lindsay: Yes, 100%.

Lindsay: I'm very happy to exclusively announce that we have texted each other about writing songs for a new album. That's the first step. Separately we've written songs, and we're supposed to get together soon. This tour has enough space that we'll probably squeeze a few days at the Pet Food Factory near Jason's house to demo some songs. Write them separately, get into the studio, bash them out together, then work on them separately again until we record. But thing is, Ryan-I don't know if you've heard of the United States of America.

Lindsay: It's a trying time there. You've worked with Bill Stevenson the last three records. That's where we found the most symbiotic relationship in terms of a studio. As much as the Sans Souci record with Eddie is great, the way Bill does stuff at The Blasting Room in Colorado is the best. People reckon that's when we worked out how to sound really good as a fast punk band on record. I'd love to say, "Yeah, we're going back to Fort Collins to bash out a new album," but I'm not getting into that country unless I change my identity, scrub my social media, come in with a burner phone and tell immigration, "Oh no, I've only ever had a Nokia phone. Social media? What's that? My name's Lansancy McDagle." So we'll see.

Lindsay: So if we look at Cup of Pestilence being 2023, a six-year gap would be 2029. Whoever is in charge of that horrible place might no longer be-but you look to his best mate Vladimir Putin, who's been very good at sticking in charge with his puppet elections. So yeah. Also, when someone has a horrible explosion in a public toilet, they get to leave, but someone has to clean up that mess before anyone else can come in. There's still going to be diarrhoea. There's a metaphor for what might need to happen in the States. It's a shame because I love that part of the world. Who knows how long it'll take us to write good songs. Maybe it'll work out.

Lindsay: Work out how to do almost all of the Sans Souci songs live. We didn't do all of the Camel songs live. We trimmed the fat as the tour went on-prefer having fun on stage than playing horrible songs. There were a couple of dogs on that record. Only one person, before we even got off stage, took to Facebook to complain that a) we weren't playing the album in order, and b) they left early-they asked for a song that was on the setlist, but because we added other songs in between, they thought we just played a couple of Camel songs and left. So stay at the show. We'll probably play your favourite Sans Souci songs. I can't guarantee they'll be exactly the same, or have four tracks of 12-string guitars in the middle like "White World" does. If you have one of those acoustic guitars on a stand-like late-'80s bands and Iron Maiden still do, so the guitarist can walk up and play the acoustic bit with their electric still around their neck-I would love to borrow one. Voyager in Western Australia almost certainly has one. Dead City Ruins probably have one. Hot Machine-I'm going to see them this weekend-they almost certainly have one. Hit the DMs.

Lindsay: Yes. "Punisher"-us doing nu-metal. I think Jason wrote the bassline, but Tom had a lot of fun doing that mid-tempo song. Very of the era. I remember the term "punisher"-someone who won't leave you alone at a gig, slightly menacing with their friendliness. Americans would ask, "Why are you saying punisher?" and you'd explain it. Like when we wrote "Cunt-act" on Hi-Viz and they'd say, "Oh, you mean a dick move?" Now we hear Americans saying it-Fat Mike loves saying "cunt-act" because he loves swearing unnecessarily. I feel like "punisher" entered the lexicon a little bit in the American crew: "Oh yeah, be careful of him, he's a punisher." So maybe we can lay some claim to that.