Australian country sweethearts, The McClymonts are back in town as part of their 'Forever Begins Tonight' tour.
Sam McClymont took time out to talk about how the tour’s progressing, inspirations, and their dedicated fans.
You’re in the middle of your 'Forever Begins Tonight' tour, celebrating the release of your latest single. How’s it been going?
It’s been going amazing. We’ve been on the road since January and we’ll be touring right up until the end of May. It’s been nice just getting out there and playing the songs off 'Here’s To You And I' and so many people [have been] coming out to the shows and having a good time. It’s been nine years, I guess, for touring. It’s nice to know that we can still get out there and do it.
What do you want people to get out of attending one of your live performances?
People hear your album, but we want them to be able to come to a show and feel like they’ve got to know us – the people behind the music. You know, we’re up there – three sisters – having a chat, having a good time. We want people to walk away going 'I know who The McClymonts are', and that the songs sound exactly like they do on the album, and that they had a good time.
What is it you enjoy most about touring?
We get to go see all the amazing areas of Australia. So many people haven’t even seen their own backyard in Australia and we feel we’re so lucky that we get to do all this travelling, and go to towns that you might not necessarily have passed through or gone to.
You released your latest album 'Here’s To You And I' in the middle of last year, after a bit of a break. What was the fans response to that?
It was awesome. It went to the top of the charts – right up to number eight on the main ARIA album chart and number one on the ARIA country chart.
When you were on a break, what did you do with your time off?
Well, we still were working, that’s the funny thing. We say it was a break but we still worked the whole time. We were writing and doing gigs – it just wasn’t five a week, as we normally do, so just doing gigs here and there, not a full tour – and making the album. I don’t think we know how to take a break or how to have a rest. We can do that later on in life.
You’ve had a fantastic response to your latest single, 'Forever Begins Tonight'. What is it about the song that you think resonates so strongly with people?
We wrote it with a particular theme in mind. I was getting married. When we were writing the album, I was engaged and we were like: 'We don’t have a wedding song on any of our albums'. To us, it really epitomises a true, love song. It’s for someone to use for their first dance or walking down the aisle. Everyone wants to be in love or is in love. It’s just that feel-good song. A lot of people say it takes them back to their wedding day. People are using it for their upcoming weddings, which has been kind of cool, and they let us know on Facebook and all that kind of stuff. It’s been really lovely to have that much of a great response to it all.
Were you surprised with people’s reaction to the song?
You never know how a song is going to be responded to. We’re just so lucky that we can release things and people are enjoying it. We were pretty overwhelmed that we had such a great reaction with people. We love that our music touches people and makes them happy and they want to come out to our show and hear that music because it relates to them. That’s really special to know that you’ve done that for someone.
Country music is slowly gaining more popularity with the success of people like Keith Urban and Taylor Swift. How do you see the music industry now, particularly in regard to this genre?
We absolutely love that country music is so versatile now. It’s great that artists like Keith and Taylor are getting country music out there to people who might not necessarily have listened to it before. I think people really stereotype country music and generalise it, so it’s nice that these artists are showing that it’s great music; it’s not about the label that’s put on it. So the more people that listen to it, it’s great. We love that people want to hear good music and they don’t care if it’s country or pop or rock – they just want to hear good music.
What are some of the highlights of your career thus far?
That’s a hard one. I would say winning the Golden Guitars and the ARIAs have been pretty amazing. It’s nice to get recognised by the industry, that you’re on the right track and doing the right thing. [Another is] recording albums in Nashville and playing the Grand Ole Opry there. We’ve had some pretty awesome moments.
This is the first album you’ve made in Australia. How did that influence your process?
I think it was so much more laidback because we were here at home. When we do record them in America, we’re on a time [limit]. We’re in the studio from sun up to sun down making the album, but here we could be in the studio in the day and go home to our own beds and really think about it. 'Do I want to change this?' Or 'do I want to change that?'; and wake up with a really fresh headspace about it.
You’ve performed as part of festival line-ups as well as in smaller venues. Do you have a preference?
They’re so different. You love the smaller venues because they’re more intimate [and] you feel you can chat more, tell stories and have more of an interaction with the crowd. Then you’ve got the festivals which is just all about being out there, rocking it, having that great time [and] getting a lot of energy, but you can’t necessarily tell stories because there are so many people and it might not be conveyed how you want it to be conveyed. They’re so completely different but [I] absolutely love both.
'Here’s To You And I' was produced with Lindsay Rimes, who’s worked with the likes of Tina Arena, Lee Kernaghan and Stan Walker. What was it like working with somebody of such experience?
Lindsay is just a really good friend of ours. We’ve been writing with him since our second album ['Wrapped Up Good'], so we’ve known him for a long, long time. Whenever we wrote with him, we would do up demos and just thought he was brilliant. So when it came to do this album, it was a no brainer. We just felt he knew us so well and what our sound was like and he would really be able to bring us to life and really reflect The McClymonts in a good way.
If you could perform with anyone in the industry, who would it be?
Oh, that’s hard! I think we’d all have different answers, the three of us. I’ve always been a huge fan of Alison Krauss. I think she’s amazing and grew up listening to her music, so that would be a highlight for me.
What else in store for you in 2015, beyond your current tour?
After the tour, we’ll do the festivals, leading up to August. That’s when we’ll sit down and start thinking about the next album. It’s always a cycle. This is our second tour for this album, so we just make sure we’ve been to as many places as we can with this album, and then we’ll start focusing on the next one.
Written by Jackie Smith
The McClymonts Tour Dates
Fri 24 Apr - Shoalhaven Entertainment Centre (Nowra)Fri 1 May - Brothers Sports Club (Bundaberg)
Sat 2 May - Norths Leagues Club (Brisbane)
Sun 3 May - Blue Mountain Hotel (Toowoomba)
Fri 8 May - Lismore Workers Club
Sat 9 May - South West Rocks Country Club
Fri 15 May - Young Services Club
Sat 16 May - The Cube (Sydney)
Sun 21 Jun - Broadbeach Country Music Festival (Gold Coast)
