After catching the last rays of summer at West Coast Blues & Roots, Melbourne 3-piece The Basics head into studio hibernation for the winter. Before disappearing with the last of the sunshine, lead singer Kris Schroeder chatted to OUTinPerth’s Megan Smith from a Melbourne tram.
‘More than any other festival, I reckon, I’m all over this one,’ Kris exclaims. ‘I’m a bit of an old Delta blues fan. I haven’t been to many festivals in my life, just the ones we played at, so to do something like this where there are old folks getting up there and rocking out hard – I want to see everybody.’
Kris’s love of timeless classic rock is largely responsible for the start of The Basics. As the story goes, he and Wally de Backer (aka one-man band Gotye) met at a mutual friend’s party. The friend, also a musician, had a drum kit and other instruments set up. That was all it took for the first jam session to occur.
‘We had a bit of a jam for three hours. Most of the interaction was just playing songs, like Cream and the Beatles, Creedence Clearwater Revival, a whole bunch of Crowded House – old classics like that. More than the conversation, it was the musical connection that we had. When we did end up talking, it was about those bands and around our shared love of classic pop music.’
Out of that first jam, The Basics formed and soon released an EP and an album ‘Stand Out/Fit In’. Now, after a full summer touring, including simultaneous residencies in Melbourne, Brisbane and Sydney and a Blues & Roots performance, the band is ready to take their studio sound to the next level on album number two.
‘We just want to get it right this time. The last album was great and a lot of people loved it, but a lot of people who know us really well commented on how it sounds like a different band – a really great band, but a different band.’
When asked what was so different between the studio and live version of The Basics, Kris explains, ‘We’re a very raw band. When we get up on stage, there is a lot of energy and rawness and mistakes and just really getting stuck into it. The record that we had was a little too well played in a way. We want to capture more of the rawness and the spontaneity that people love about us on stage.’
However, that’s not the only change the band is looking to make on this album. With drummer Wally de Backer moonlighting as the poppy electro act Gotye (and winning a 2007 Aria for Best Male Artist in the process), The Basics are thinking about taking a few pages from Gotye’s songbook and using samples on their next record.
‘To me, the real difference is that he takes samples from other records, so he has access to orchestras that aren’t actually there and all these crazy instruments. Everything we do, we’re actually playing it. We’ve limited ourselves in the past, and now with these recordings, perhaps, we are going to unlimit ourselves.’
And when Melbourne sees the sun again, hopefully, the new album from The Basics will see the light of day.
If you missed The Basics at Blues & Roots, you can cop a listen at www.myspace.com/the3basics
