What’s in a name, eh? Busby Marou might seem like a curious title for a band, but the inspiration behind it is rather straightforward.
See, it’s derived from the surnames of the Queensland duo’s two constituents, vocalist Tom Busby and guitarist Jeremy Marou. However, aside from the name’s linear origins, it brings attention to the way the band functions. “I’m the country-slash-blues, John-Mayer-wannabe type person,” says Jeremy Marou, “and Tom wants to be more of a Neil Finn, Paul Kelly singer/ songwriter, type person. [One day] we both just went, ‘Stop arguing. It should be like this.’ He does it his way, I do it my way.”
The pair’s separate personalities combine to produce music that not only encompasses folk, country, pop and blues, but it tends to grow with listeners over an extended period. Busby Marou’s two full-length releases – 2011’s self-titled effort and last year’s ‘Farewell Fitzroy’ – revolve around acoustic instrumentation and delightful vocal harmonies, which convey a calming immediacy. The sound gains definition courtesy of Tom’s imagistic storytelling and Jeremy’s virtuosic, guitar fiddling. “Tom’s lyrics, people can determine them in a thousand different ways,” Jeremy says.
“I think that really gets people. What the songs are about, the harmonies, and I think my style of guitar playing is a little odd as well – put them together and it will play on people’s minds.
“A lot of people ask ‘how do you categorise your music?’ and I think it’s hard to categorise it. Is it country? Is it pop? Is it country-pop? Is it folk music? Is it blues and roots? At the end of the day it crosses over a lot of those genres. People seem to connect to it in all different forms.”
Despite the music’s relaxed disposition, the band can’t avoid the business side of the music industry. Busby Marou are signed to a major label – on the one hand, it’s thanks to the label that they travelled to Nashville to record ‘Farewell Fitzroy’ with producer Brad Jones and have toured with the likes of k.d. lang and James Blunt.
But there’s also a commercial criterion to satisfy, which applies heat during the album-making procedure. “We’re signed to Warner Music,” explains Jeremy, “so we’re obviously thinking if these songs are going to impact people straight away – are they going to like it, are they going to buy tickets, will this get airplay? You’ve got all of this in the back of your head.”
While these are distracting considerations, Jeremy can’t deny the luxuries afforded by the major label budget. But he also knows how fickle the industry can be. “Working on new music now, we go into the studio to write a hit song,” he says. “At the end of the day, if you’re not getting radio airplay or you’re not on TV, people aren’t going to buy tickets to your shows.
“With the first album we had a lifetime to write those songs. When it came to ‘Farewell Fitzroy’ we went, ‘Okay, we’ve got to put 12 or 13 songs together. The label’s got to be happy with it; if it doesn’t sell we lose our contract, in a fortnight’s time we’re sitting back in an office.’”
Anyone’s who’s heard ‘Farewell Fitzroy’ can confirm the bureaucratic burdens haven’t marred the tunes with tacky-radio gimmicks. The record came out last October and the band’s endearing warmth – responsible for securing the major label deal in the first place – stands strong.
The commercial imperative mightn’t fade from view completely, but external pressure takes a back seat when they’re in the creative zone. “When the song first comes into your mind it’s important not to be thinking about whether it’s going to sell or not,” Jeremy says.
“When you’re recording the song, producing the song, that’s when you start to think about, ‘Okay, for radio this needs to be between three and three-minutes-thirty-seconds, so let’s cut this part out.’ But when you’re actually sitting down with a tune you don’t have a care in the world about what it sounds like.”
Following on from August’s national tour in support of ‘Farewell Fitzroy’s third single, ‘My Second Mistake’, Busby Marou have a run of festival dates. In contrast to the strains of the studio, the stage is a completely concern-free environment. “Live for us is easy,” Jeremy says.
“If people start to say, ‘Your album’s better than your live performance’, then we’d start to work on it, but we’ve never had that feedback and hopefully we never get that feedback. Our live performance should always be a lot better than what our album is. We’re all very confident that we can do that. It’s just purely because we’ve done so many live shows. I think last year we did twice as many shows as most touring bands would do. That’s pretty much how you get it right.”
What allows Busby Marou to have such an expansive touring itinerary? First of all, hailing from Rockhampton, they’ve always been encouraged to play shows off the beaten track. Also, the band’s inherent stylistic conflation makes them a good fit for a variety of major festivals. “We’re lucky in the sense that we can play at CMC Rocks The Hunter and Blues & Roots Byron Bay, Splendour and Woodford Folk Festival. We’re one of the very few bands that actually can play at all of those.”
Even after doing so many gigs, the band is far from blasé about performing. Jeremy explains that embracing the singularity of each gig makes playing live a thrilling event, night after night. “Nine times out of ten we’ll never stick to a setlist. People are yelling out songs, we’ll do them, we’ll try out songs that we’ve never done before, we’ll throw in new stuff. It’s always fun.”
Busby Marou play the Bramble Bay Bowls Club as part of the G20 Cultural Celebrations on Thursday 6th November.
