After rocking Singapore for some time, folk trio Outrageous Modesty have shifted to some very different surrounds: South-East Queensland.
With their first full-length album, 'Almost Live', released last month, the band are ready to bring their sound to the locals. The band features a Brisbanite with 20-plus years of songwriting experience, a death metal guitar player from England, and a keyboardist from the wilderness of Michigan.
Talking to lead singer Peter Fogarty about the group's “acoustic folkcore”, he says was a lot of fun. “At this moment I'm just deep in tour logistics trying to finalise Facebook events and posters and all those kinds of things. Locking down some supports for the last few shows, that kind of stuff.
“When you're setting up so many Facebook events at once you don't want to kind of bombard people with invitations to every show on the same day because the people just go 'Oh it's them again. Make them be quiet, I said I'm coming to the first one.'”
The horrors of social media RSVPs aside, the debut has come at a strange, transitional time for the band. But acclimatising to their new surroundings doesn't seem to have phased them. “The reception in Singapore where we have a reasonable following and where we actually recorded the album has been quite positive, so it's been a double-edged sword having worked to finish the debut album in Singapore and then relocate countries.
“We've got the people who have been following our shows in Singapore and are excited that they've finally got an album to put their hands on but at the same time you know going 'Why did you move to Australia?!' And then people in Australia who don't quite know us yet going: 'Soooo why should we be excited?' But hopefully these shows will show everyone why they should be excited.”
If 'Lion City' is the only thing you know about Singapore, there's a lot more happening politically in the island nation. “I've always been, as a person and a songwriter, not afraid of letting people know what I think about various issues facing the world. And so I have a range of issue-based songs I guess.
“I wrote a song called 'Not On' as part of the White Ribbon Not On campaign [violence against women], and a couple of songs that are anti-death penalty songs; the Singapore position is very much that 'if you speak up, we're allowed to kill you'. They do the death penalty quite vigorously, so I've had some reasonably scary moments on stage in Singapore where people have wanted to start physical violence because they disagreed with me disagreeing with the political position of their government.
“It's really disheartening to play music when people just look like they're asleep, so the fact that they're getting excited enough to want to punch me in the face, I think that shows that they're listening and paying attention. So that's good.”
As you'd expect, Singapore can be a tricky place to make it in the music industry. Thankfully the Irish-born owner – who used to live in Melbourne – of the city's Hard Rock Cafe appreciated what the band were about. “We even found ourselves listed in Trip Advisor as one of the highlights of things to do in Singapore for a while. I guess Singapore is mostly not what you would expect. Singapore is very covers oriented, so lots of people wouldn't understand why I would write songs, when there are already so many good ones out there.
“It's very heartening to feel like you're walking into a space [Hard Rock Cafe] that's supportive of what you're doing. So much of Singapore is dominated by cover bands, mainly from the Philippines, playing Top 40 music. And those musicians are incredible, they play the most perfect renditions of whatever the current Top 40 looks like.”
Outrageous Modesty play The Zoo 5 May, Ric's Bar 15 May, Shamrock Hotel 20 May and The New Globe Theatre 29 May.
