Calling from the band's rehearsal space, The Butterfly Effect drummer Ben Hall couldn't be more excited to be gearing up to start their Australian tour this October.
“To be honest, I'm just really excited that we're getting a chance to play again. It's great. It's nice to be on stage and playing music. I sort of feel like we're having a second coming, we're really lucky to be in this situation, so it's great. We're having a really good time and we're really looking forward to it.”
The band's original vocalist Clint Boge quit the band in 2011 on less than amicable terms. This left The Butterfly Effect with an uncertain future, and on the hunt for a replacement worthy of filling the void left by Clint.
“We had a great time together,” Ben says. “We will always respect the things that we achieved together and did. He [Clint] was an amazing performing artist when we were all working together so yeah, I look back on all the time we've spent together and go, 'Fuck! We achieved a lot.' I look at the positives, not the negatives.”
Finding a replacement singer wasn't easy, and Ben says it left the band with doubts over whether or not The Butterfly Effect would continue, or ultimately meet their demise. “You've got to give credit where credit's due. Clint was an amazing frontman and an amazing vocalist so finding someone to fill those shoes was no easy feat. There were a lot of people who auditioned and we worked through it until we found the guy we were looking for. Then we found Paul [Galagher].
“He's a very cool character. I'm getting to know him as time goes by, but the first thing I noticed about the guy was his exceptional voice, and he's an exceptional talent. To be honest, there were times when I thought, 'fuck, we might not find a guy, this could be the end, it could be over for us'. But fortunately, about a year ago we sort of stumbled across Paul and we've just been writing and rehearsing and recording ever since.”
At the mere mention of recording, I have to ask if fans should be expecting a new record in the near future. And it seems that there are big things happening in The Butterfly Effect camp. “Our focus is definitely the record right now and we're probably half way through so we're really just going to get stuck into getting that process finished, recorded and released next year. We dropped a single ['Eyes Down'] that Triple J have just started playing in the last few weeks. We're gonna get the album finished for an early-to-mid-year release.
“[Feedback from our new single has] been very positive. There had been some concerns about us continuing without our former vocalist, but generally it's been really positive, so we're feeling pretty pumped about it.”
Before the band disappear again to record, they'll be doing a brief tour of Australia, taking in all the major cities. According to Ben, any concerns still lingering over the bands new vocalist will be put to rest after the tour.
“He's fucking awesome and they can't say that he didn't nail it. There might be a lot of, 'I like the old guy better than the new guy', but he's a lovely guy, we're having a really great time and he's an exceptional talent. We definitely had extreme difficulty trying to get someone [to replace] Clint, but we picked him on his own merits because he's got his own style. He's a unique vocalist.”
The Butterfly Effect play the following dates
Thu Oct 10 — The Zoo (Brisbane)Fri Oct 11 — Gershwin Room @ The Espy (Melbourne)
Thu Oct 17 — Rosemount (Perth)
Fri Oct 18 — Fowlers (Adelaide)
Sat Oct 19 — Annandale (Sydney)
