Since they emerged in 2011, Redcoats have managed to release a full length album, tour with a number of national acts as well as land on the bills of a number of festivals.
After a sustained period of inactivity, the band are set to return to the local music landscape with talk of a new album. We chat with their drummer, Andrew Braidner
What’s fresh with Redcoats? A lot has happened actually. Our bass player, Rhys Kelly, has probably kept himself the busiest since we recorded our album. He has been auditioning for plenty of roles trying to pursue his acting career as well as writing our second album. We almost lost him for three months. He narrowly missed out on a role in Season 4 of ‘Game Of Thrones’. That would have been great for him. But in terms of getting our next album up, I think it was for the best.
How far away is the next album release? We have been writing and demoing for a while. We are gonna track a couple of songs at the start of May. While that's going on we will continue writing and working on getting an album out soon. We are hoping to get a single out to radio in the not too distant future.
Life in the studio... do you guys enjoy it? We do. It is a rewarding process. It feels like the completion of the songs journey in the writing sense. Once you take it on the road then it gets another life, but the recording process is a bit like closure on a song. We are getting better every time we go in. We’re getting more efficient and we have a better idea about what can be achieved.
The early days of the band, heading out as a group to The Espy, Prince of Wales to watch other bands... how did that influence the Redcoats sound/ work ethic? When we came together we had a pretty clear picture of what we were at that stage through the songs that we were writing and the music we were listening to. We are all pretty competitive and we always want to be the best band of the night or the festival or whatever. The bands we tend to admire are great live. Rock bands have to be great live. We learnt that form watching bands and especially from touring with bands. Watching them be consistently great night after night. The ones who do that, it seems like they have a higher level of respect from their fans. We want to be in that world.
Is the band a full-time occupation now; or do you guys still have other jobs that keep you entertained? The band can be a full-time occupation with out paying like one. Sometimes it gets quiet, other times it's fairly busy. We all fit in work when there is time, gotta pay the bills.
The songwriting process for Redcoats; do you assign roles or is it a flexible process? It starts with a riff or a couple of riffs like a verse chorus idea and from there we fiddle until it looks or feels like a song. No one has designated roles, but we all have strengths in the process that come out when they are appropriate as the song is developing.
Has the group's sound morphed away from your self-titled release? The songs we are writing sort of fit somewhere between the album and the EP. Our sound is moving around all the time. We have never set out to make a particular sound. It just happens and we either accept it or find something else that feels better.
As musicians, is there a difference to when you were Triple J Next Crop artists? We are better musicians now. We are older and more experienced. Things seem more sparkly when you are just starting to get things going and experiencing a lot of things for the first time.
If you could collaborate with any other musician still alive... Neil Young. I’d bump into him at some kind of event and he would say ‘you have beautiful eyes’. Then I would say, ‘eyes you'd like to make music with’. He’d say ‘yes’, then I’d say ‘I have a great band that can join us’. He’d say ‘well where the fuck are they? Get those motherlickers here.’
Neil YoungThe band is playing the Big Pineapple Music Festival... what's your favourite meal that involves pineapple? I really like pineapple on its own. Straight up, delicious pineapple.
Given the band's name, do any of the members have a secret miniature war figurines hobby? No. A few of us dabble in a bit of history here and there. But no figurine collections.
Another one... fair cop that Barry O'Farrell put a bullet through his own head? Who wants to be a politician anyway. He will have much more fun now that he's not one of those idiots. Hopefully we can eliminate any businesses contributing to political parties at some point and have ourselves something closer to what a democracy should be.
Barry O'FarrellRedcoats Tour Dates
Sat April 26 - The Vic Rocks ANZAC Day Weekend (O’Halloran Hill, Adelaide)Sat May 17 - Big Pineapple Music Festival (Sunshine Coast)
Sun May 25 - Cherry Rock 2014 (Melbourne)
Sat May 31 - Cherry Rock 2014 (Sydney)
