INTERVIEW: Kate Wilson

Kate plays the drums in two of Sydney's best loved bands - the Holy Soul and the Laurels. The former has played with such talents as the Drones, Mudhoney, David Thomas of Pere Ubu, and are sound carriers in Damo Suzuki's network. The latter has shared a stage with A Place To Bury Strangers, Swervedriver, Tame Impala and Surf City. When I met up with her back in December last year, the Holy Soul had recently arrived back in Australia from a European tour. We talked about the complications of playing in two bands, being casual with Damo motherfucking Suzuki and the declining state of local music in Sydney.

You guys recently got back from a European tour – where did you go, what did you get up to?

We started in France so we kind of went 'round, did our first show in Paris and went up 'round Brittany. We've got a guy in Reims who runs a label called Beast Records – I hope I got that right, it'd be so embarrassing if I didn't – and he kind of, I think he had a part in the reason we went to the north of France for a while. It was great, then Germany we did. We were a few days there... it's becoming hazier and hazier, I've been writing it all up for this blog thing and uh... I have extensive notes. So yea, a few shows in Germany, we did three in Berlin all up, Mannhiem, Hamburg, um, then we had one day in the Netherlands, then back to France and we finished off in Spain.

I was talking to Sol from the Walk On By a while ago, and he said people in Spain just go nuts at live shows.

We had a really huge one in Tarragona, that was unreal. I think we combined with somebody's birthday party so there were quite a few people and it was going a bit crazy. I guess, well I got the impression, that everything seems to start a bit later over there... I wish we had stayed a bit longer, I'd love to go back there. I ended up getting sick just before the last show, that was a real pain in the bum. I didn't get to see any of the awesome Gaudi stuff in Barcelona.

Was that the first time you guys had toured Europe?

Yea, the last time would have been about five years ago but I wasn't in the band at the time. I think they kind of hooked up with Mudhoney for a few shows and did a few of their own. I think they did about thirteen dates last time and this time it was about eighteen.

And last year you guys did the collaboration with Damo Suzuki, how was that?

That was nuts. We did it in Berlin as well. I don't know, now it's like we're used to it because we've done it so many times and there's lots of that like, being really freaked out by this amazing dude whose records we've loved forever. And now it's just like, 'Heeyy, Damo', it's just like seeing an old friend again. Whereas before, like the first time, I was actually losing my shit. It's always awesome but it's gotten a lot easier.

But do you still get that thrill like, 'Myeah, just hanging with Damo Suzuki. No biggy, we're friends.'

Yea, absolutely! Absolutely. He's a really cool dude.

How did that come about, did he just email you guys?

It's a pretty good story, Sam hates telling it. He gets asked all the time, it's just one of those stupid things. So you know Lyndal, his girlfriend? She's a massive fan of Can and Damo Suzuki, and Sam thought it'd be a really cool present if he could get him to sign a birthday card for Lyndal. So he emailed him just like, sorry, this is a bit weird, but would you mind signing a birthday card for my girlfriend? And he obliged and Lyndal got this awesome card like, happy birthday Lyndal from Damo Suzuki. How cool is that? So a couple of years later, Damo had been booked by those Lilypad people who put on that stage at the Big Day Out and Damo had kept Sam's email and just said hey, guy I know in Sydney, do you know of any bands that want to back me? Sam was like, oh actually, I know a really great band... so that's how it all came about. It was all just purely... so chancey. It seemed to go well, obviously.

You play in the Laurels as well, how do you find that, playing in two different bands? Does it get difficult or has it been all right so far?

Um, sometimes, like the nightmare thing is a clash, when you have two gigs on the one night. And yea, I've had some pretty funny ones. I think the last one was a few months ago, it happens a couple of times a year. The last one was just nuts cause we were playing – both were really great shows – the Holy Soul had this show with Kim Salmon, which we had booked first. And then the Laurels had a show with Seekae at the Metro and obviously, you know, we love those guys. And what ended up happening was the dudes who manage the Laurels were waiting outside with this car running. It was just so like, bank robber. And I basically just had to run on to stage and just play straight away. It was pretty funny.

I always have visions of you like, going between songs. Like play one song and then quickly drive to the other gig, play another song. Getting changed in the car, like that 27 Dresses movie.

Oh man, I don't think I ever... like there was only half an hour between having to get to the Sando from the Metro. So it was pretty hectic and I don't wish to repeat it. Stylistically it's not really a big deal 'cause I don't know, maybe I just play the same thing all the time. It's not like I really get confused.

So do you think there'll come a point where you have to choose a band, or you happy to just -

I try not to think about it, 'cause I love both of them. But yea, there's always a bit of it, like I totally freak out thinking about it because I really don't want to. So hopefully they can happily coexist. Everyone's mates with each other so there's no weird...

No competition or anything.

Nah. It's still kind of a shitty and weird position though.

How did it come about, you playing in two bands?

Well I think... it's a bit blurry. I was kind of jamming with the Laurels and then the Holy Soul, like I knew Jon and it was kind of funny. I didn't really know them that well though, I knew Jon through his ex partner, and they invited me to dinner and I swear they were grooming me or something, like 'ha ha, the whole band's here!' Like going to Lyndal's house which is this secluded farm house out in Cattai. But no, it was all cool we just got really drunk and watched Father Ted the next day and then they asked me to join. Maybe, I don't know, the reckon they weren't scoping me out but I don't really know.

So it was never like, 'I can't join this band, I'm already with these other guys'?

No not really, 'cause the Laurels weren't doing much. I'd just had this other band break up, so I wasn't really doing anything so it was kind of like, yea I may as well play with a bunch of dudes. It was all pretty casual.

But it seems like the Laurels have really blown up lately. You guys played with Swervedriver -

Yea, they're like my favourite band ever. So that was a total dream. But yea, it's pretty weird. It's pretty funny. It's really weird, now we're getting good shows and I'm used to playing shit ones. I mean, not with the Holy Soul, just in general. Like, I expected to be slogging it out at hotels for the rest of my life.

This is probably a really dumb question, but there's that cliché of drummers being frustrated song writers. Do you have any thoughts about that?

It's pretty creative, I'm not at all dissatisfied. I guess for me it's just a time thing. I mean, yea, I am pretty frustrated, I've got this piano and this guitar in my room but I just haven't really had time to play them. Or do anything. I'm not by any means a song writer or, you know, an under utilised song writing talent. But yea, it would be fun to do more of that.

Do you have any opinions or thoughts on the way the local music scene is going in Sydney? I guess playing in two fairly big bands, you're kind of exposed to what's going on.

Yea it's weird, I think about it a lot. We were lucky enough to kind of play heaps of shows at say, the Hoey for example, it was my favourite venue in Sydney, I thought it was so awesome. And they really liked having both of us there, so it was always a rad night and we would always get awesome crowds and so on. So when it closed I guess we were kind of in a position where, you know, we have a bit of notoriety, we weren't just a band that was starting out. So people would ask us to be their support bands and stuff. I guess, we haven't been directly – like, it would have been a lot worse an impact with all these venues closing if we hadn't already been established. Yea, it really fucking sucks.

Does the Laurels have a release coming out? I saw you guys were recording some stuff.

Yea, we're going to go back and record some more, hopefully at the end of January. We've done like two songs but we're gonna do an album so we've got to do another eight to ten.

Is it the same sort of direction as your first couple of singles?

It's a bit different, it's probably like, shorter songs and a bit heavier. Luke's got more pedals so it's louder and shittier now. Which is pretty awesome. I don't know, it's always been loud and shitty though. It's pretty cool, we've had these songs for ages but we never really learned them properly so we've been having all these practices like, oh shit we've actually got to learn these songs properly, we suck. But yea, hopefully it'll be decent.

You Have The Right To Get Strangled By A Bra Strap

I'm going to the beach / Gonna eat some eggs / I don't give a fuck if that didn't rhyme / I don't give a fuck if that didn't rhyme

I have spent the last ten or eleven hours schooling myself on Amber Tamblyn and have come to the conclusion that she is possibly the second coming of Wonder Woman. I mean, I had a previous foggy notion that she was an actress or something (she is an actress) but she's also a writer, rapper and recent collaborator with Dan the Automator. And she's funny as all get out, as proven in these awareness raps which she wrote because Tyrese is a nosy nelly and thought her email address - which he saw cc'd on someone else's email - was that of Amber Rose and contacted her about making some music together.

This all happened a little while ago and you can read about it on her website, but the songs are finally available for download and all proceeds go to the Write Now Poetry Society, which funds creative writing workshops for women and girls and other organisations working to end violence against women. Everything about this makes me so happy. My favourite is 'All In Favour', about the recent bat shit actually insane woman hating birth control legislation that's going on in the US right now:

You think sanctioning my ovaries won't bring me to violence? / How about I tell you what to do with your caucus? / It is now illegal to think about me topless / To keep your lotion where your socks is / To refer to powerful women as monsters / Like those jocks at Fox did / I am not afraid to cock block dick / To sew an instructional video of rape kits to your eyelids and make you watch it

The song manages to simultaneously make me want to dance and grind and also go get on a plane, fly to D.C. and knee these douche nozzle policy makers in the ball sack. And as Melanie wrote last week in her blog, The Feminist Guide To Hollywood, "Why aren't actual musicians writing songs about this and bringing attention to the fact that the United States Congress is trying to ban birth control?" You can listen to all the tracks at Tamblyn's Soundcloud.

And if that doesn't get you all riled up about the situation, here's a video of Kathleen Hanna speaking at last year's Planned Parenthood rally (I know it's an old video, but I think it's worth watching again seeing as Planned Parenthood in Texas just lost some of its government funding, and Texas' Medicaid Women's Health Programme has lost all of its funding). As sickening as some of these potential laws are, I take heart in the fact that there are these inspiring women getting up and telling those stupid old men to fuck themselves.

Cards!

HOW EFFING COOL IS THIS. Playing cards decorated with feminist musicians! Done by feminist artists! Once my new credit card arrives, I am so taking advantage of their special offer and getting two decks for the low low price of $25. I'll post the second deck to my sister and we can play Nico Bingo together over the phone. Go to the Kickstarter page to see the full list of artists and some of the drawings. Everybody's there: Ari Up, JD Samson, Poly Styrene, Carrie Brownstein... They're about $3000 short of the $12000 goal, so everyone needs to go and donate. This has to happen guys, I'm already planning awesome new versions of Solitaire and Go Fish.

AMP

The 2011 Australian Music Prize shortlist was announced a few days ago (The Jezabels won) and if you've been following the award since its inception you may have noticed a growing trend: the number of female nominees is steadily rising. This year we've got a heart stopping three and a half representation! That's three and a half of the nine artists listed. They are Abbe May, Adalita, Kimbra and the female half of the Jezabels. Compare that to two last year, who were Pikelet and Sally Seltman, and the year before that we had the Lisa Mitchell shitstorm which, I think, planted the seed for this year's showing.

The 2009 awards were an interesting moment for the place of women in Australian music. Bernard Zuel (rightly) pointed out that the AMP had fallen under a "The Drones/Mess Hall/Augie March/Eddy Current hegemony" and wrote that he feared it was becoming a male rock award. As he put it, "I don't think anyone could argue that we the judges have fallen short if over the past four years only five women and two predominantly female groups have made it into the shortlist, compared with 29 men or predominantly male bands... This is a failure, for common sense would tell you there were not four times as many men as women making high quality music in those years." (Reminder: before Lisa Mitchell, no women had actually won. She still stands as the only female artist to have been awarded the prize).

Fast forward to yesterday and we have our most woman heavy shortlist yet, with three artists. Why? If Mr. Zuel hadn't put up his hand and pointed out the obvious would things have continued the way they were? Seeing as the output of female Australian artists hasn't changed much in quality or quantity since 2008, a scientific approach would tell us that Bernard Zuel's article, and the response to it, was the precursor for the changes we're seeing now.

Not that I think the AMP or its judges are necessarily sexist. Like so many forms of institutionalised discrimination, it sometimes takes a person pointing it out for anyone else to be able to see it. Like a Magic Eye puzzle or a fart, it reveals itself slowly. And what we're seeing now is certainly progress - if things keep going the way they are, next year there will be four women nominated! Practically half! I do think it's a shame that it took four years for us to see three women in the shortlist, but hey. At least we're getting somewhere?

Lady Gardens

“Lady Gardens is a zine that is the result of my research and polling about female pubic hair maintenance, a response to what felt like an assumption that a bush was reserved only for gnarly women. It is heavily illustrated and contains both scholarly research and more candid commentary from females.” - http://suckmyleftone.tumblr.com/

This is such a great, fun, interesting idea for a zine! And I am so getting one for myself and an extra one to mail to Rush Limbaugh.

The issue of female pubic hair maintenance caused so much consternation in my family last year, when my little sister decided to stop shaving her armpits, that I spent an inordinate amount of time thinking about it. My older female relatives were completely squicked out - I tended towards a more neutral position because, deep down, I totally admired her for it. And I began to think a lot about why a hairy armpit on a woman was so utterly revolting, particularly to other women. So anyway, this should be a good zine to read.

INTERVIEW: Violet Pulp

You guys just finished recording some demos, how was it?

Jess: We are quite happy with the new songs that are on the demo. It's still early days. We are definitely looking forward to the finished products

Betty: …but think our first draft has turned out quite well & hope we will be able to use some of the songs on our next EP.

What inspired both of you to get together and start a band

Betty: I always really wanted to be in a band. 3 years ago my friend told me to stop playing "for the neighbors & birds" (quote) and to get onto a stage instead. I started looking for bands online and came across Jess on Musolist.

Jess: Before we formed Violet Pulp, I was happy just making demos on my own but eventually I realised that I needed more than that. Being in a band certainly helped both of us grow as musicians.

How do you guys usually approach live shows? Do you have any preparation rituals or warm ups?

Betty: I tend to wear something purple, use a particular nail polish and wear my gig shoes.

Jess: I tend to feel slightly nervous before gigs so I try to calm myself down by distracting myself. I would usually escape to my happy place before hopping onto the stage.

I really love your cover of 'I Shall Be Released', what was it that made you want to this song? Do you plan on doing more covers in the future?

Jess: We have always adored Dylan and 'I Shall Be Released' is one of our favourites.

We love doing covers. It is far more challenging for us to do covers since there are only two instruments to work with (guitar and drums) but we love to experiment and play our own interpretations of songs by other artists.

Betty: We are currently working on 'Summertime' the Gershwin classic & will also attempt PJ Harvey's 'Down By The Water'.

Who are your dream collaborators – alive or dead – and why?

Betty: I would love to collaborate with Joy Division – their music has had a huge influence on Violet Pulp.

Jess: George Harrison- I wouldn't mind experimenting with sitars and jingle jangle percussions

What are your thoughts about the place of local music in Sydney?

Jess: We have been fortunate enough to play in great venues in Sydney in the past few years, but we honestly wish there were more venues out there for local bands. Most venues these days are happy to hire a DJ instead of live bands, which is kind of disappointing.

Betty: Unfortunately it seems the live music scene is dying a slow death which makes us even more determined to be heard.

How would you describe the band?

Betty: post punk / psychedelic folk / experimental and everything in between . We don‟t limit ourselves to a particular sound but are inspired by many bands and genres.

Jess: we definitely have our own distinctive sound due to our vast musical influences.

Do you have a favourite musical time period? (60s, 70s etc)

Betty: I like the 1920's & 1960's.

Jess: I am personally fascinated by music from the 60s. I think that was the best decade for music and art.

What are excited about for the future?

Writing new songs, hopefully recording our single and EP soon, playing more shows. There are plenty of things to look forward to. This is just the beginning for Violet Pulp.

Hear more of Violet Pulp's music at http://www.triplejunearthed.com/VioletPulp