The Rocketsmiths - Riding with Horace and Clyde
» The Rocketsmiths announce east coast shows - July 24, 2008
Brisbane band The Rocketsmiths are “five best mates who love getting on stage and playing music together” Dominic Miller caught up with The Dwarf to give us an insight into the band, their latest EP and tour, where that name came from and why Horace and Clyde should be avoided at all costs if you wish to keep your dignity intact.
The Rocketsmiths have been together as a band for about two and a half years, but their friendship goes back a little further than that. “We’ve known each other for about ten years now cause we all went to highschool together and played in the highschool jazz band together in out last couple of school years.”
A jazz band? Not exactly how you would describe the music they are producing today… According to Dominic, The Rocketsmiths “play energetic, ecstatic and hopefully good music. It’s like a mixture of Johnny cash, The Zutons and Madness(… welcome to the house of fun!)” Does that help? Let’s just say if you get a chance to catch these guys live, energetic and fun are complete understatements.
For a band who haven’t really been around too long, there have been one or two name changes along the way. Will they be sticking with The Rocketsmiths? “I’m thinking we should change to The Gearsticks. Don’t ask me why. Keep people guessing? A friend of mine says The Forks is a really good name. He smokes a lot of pot and his reasoning behind that is “Man… How weird is the word fork??” Maybe we could keep changing our name? That’d be different don’t you think? Like a different name for each release? For instance, a band like Silverchair or Eskimo Joe should change each album cause their music changes so much… But seriously? It’s way too much trouble to change your band name. And we love The Rocketsmiths.”
And where did the name come from? “It’s a long story but to make it short... For about three years of knowing Heff (keyboarder) was at uni, I was convinced he was studying Aeronautical Engineering (building Rockets = Rocketsmith). I told EVERYONE that’s what he was studying and people used to go up to him and say "Shit man, Aeronautical Engineering. That must be tough going!" He would they'd be joking and say "Yeeeaaahhhh!" Smile and give them a thumbs up. Then one day in rehearsal I said "How's aeronautical engineering?" and he said "Why does everyone keep saying that? I study biomedical science." This was around the time we were looking for a new name and I said "Wow, I thought you were a Rocketsmith!" and then Ianboy said "We ARE The Rocketsmiths". And it stuck!”
The Rocketsmiths have just released a new EP- “Meet Horrace and Clyde” and have just returned home from their EP release tour, which saw them play shows in Brisbane, Sydney, Adelaide and Melbourne. “Meet Horrace and Clyde” “is songs we've written over the last year which are about lotsa different things but mainly, living in Brisbane and seeing the things we see. We're so happy with how it’s turned out. There's trumpets, there's a choir and it’s wild. Effin Wild.”
Who are Horrace and Clyde?? They are the drunken alter egos of band members Brent and Heff. “Please do not approach either of these men after 1am on a Saturday night. For the protection of your innocence, self-worth and possibly nipples. They are a lot of fun, Horace and Clyde, but only in small doses.”
And these guys are pretty self sufficient. “We do everything ourselves at the moment. Book shows, manage the band, artwork, website, tour manage, pay for everything and yes, we recorded everything ourselves. We did have an engineer in there with us in the form of Ianboy (our lead guitarist). He is an absolute genius when he gets behind the board but yeah.. he still is a member of the band I suppose but yeah, we did have an engineer. We did it in our rehearsal room and took our time with it, did what we want and made it work, I think.”
The “Meet Horrace and Clyde” EP release tour was “pretty incredible. Too much beer, fast food and everything else as well as little sleep contributed to five unhealthy boys arriving back in Brisbane but the shows were so good and we got lots of happy and enthusiastic people along and fun fun fun fun fun.”
But were there are any good stories from the trip? Well, in note form…. “ Jager bombs. Cocktails in teapots. John Steel Singers. Yves Klein Blue. 24 hour bar. Long car trips. Red wine and Ryan Adams with Cuthbert and The Night Walkers. Long car rides. Overnight drive from Sydney to Melbourne. Espy closes at 3am. Spooning with Jordy Lane (D'Arcy). Crankers (Adelaide). Playing Root or Shoot. Kissing The Cold. If you know what to make of that... you're a better person than I.”
The Rocketsmiths new EP Meet Horrace and Clyde is out now. And if you missed them on their last tour, don’t worry… details of their upcoming tour in October should be released soon…
