Day Dreaming
Anthony Horan
In*Press - 6/8/1997

Committed to their craft as few artists or bands are, Something For Kate have carved out a solid reputation and a respectable following through sheer hard work and a refusal to compromise. With their compelling debut full-length album Elsewhere For 8 Minutes out this month, singer/guitarist Paul Dempsey sat down to talk about the record and the perilous nature of the meeting of art and business...

Something For Kate have had a huge all-ages following over the last few years - is that still the case?
We still have our all-ages fans, but it's a lot harder to do all-ages shows now, especially since organisations such as Scenestar, The Central Club and The Corner Hotel stopped doing them. So it's a lot harder to get an all-ages show now. We try and do them as much as possible, but it's just not as easy these days. But you're not wrong - the all-ages scene was definitely a launchpad of sorts for us.

It's that aspect that is most frequently mentioned in press on the band. Has it been a stone around your necks to an extent?
No, it's fine. The all-ages crowd are just as relevant and valid and important as the over-18s crowd. They're just often forgotten. But they're the people who are out there buying the records, and we should cater for them as much as we possibly can.

And that's despite the expense of CDs in this country...
Well that's something else - our seven-track first album was ten dollars. We try and keep our prices down - our last EP was five bucks. But Clint has seen the first EP selling in shops as an album for 30 dollars - we've had to issue stickers, and fax all the chart stores to say 'you're charging too much for this, pull it back already'. There's just no way you can police it. But we make as much of an effort as we can to keep our prices down. We take less of a royalty for ourselves so we can do that.

Your bass guitarist left just after the album was recorded...
Julian, basically, is engaged - he's getting married, he's running a vineyard with his fiance, and living in the country. Basically, it was just a case of him wanting to settle down. There are no hard feelings, it was nothing personal. He just wanted to settle down and get married, and that was fine. And it was also very well-organised - he stayed in the band and kept playing for us until such a time as we had a new bass player that was willing to step in. It was a very smooth transition. It's all very amicable.

Julian had left before the album was started, then, but still plays on it...
Julian announced he was leaving the band in December, and we went and recorded the album in February. We said to him, "look, you should come and record the album with us, because it's only proper, it's the proper send-off that you deserve".

Why did a debut album take so long? Were you waiting until you were ready for a full-length record?
No, we were ready for that a long time ago. It's just a matter of waiting for what the music industry dictates as appropriate, really. We were ready to record a full-length album when we signed, but it's not 'appropriate', you know. That shits me to tears. These days, what the music industry dictates as 'appropriate' fucking keeps me awake at night. But you can't slap the system from the outside. Whatever you want to call it, it's still an industry, and what they dictate as appropriate and inappropriate at the end of the day is not in line with my ideas. But hell, what can I do? I'm a pleb.

And you find yourself on a multinational label...
I have absolutely no problem with our record company. We couldn't have a better bunch of people working with us. I'm talking about the institution. Record stores, media, radio… even the audience. I mean, the audience is so fickle that if you put out an album every three months they wouldn't be able to keep up. We could put out an album every three months if we wanted to, but you just can't do that. I'm sure there are many bands out there that think the same way.

What inspired that choice of Brian Paulson as producer on the album?
Well, he's an American who recorded Foolish by Superchunk, that latest Archers Of Loaf album, the latest Jayhawks album… he worked with Slint, The Wedding Present, Uncle Tupelo, the latest Beck album… I'm just reeling off all the records I've heard that made me want to work with him. He's worked with a large variety of bands. He's versatile, and he knows sounds. And he has a large vocabulary of knob-twiddling techniques, which impressed us.

You have a pretty clear vision of what you want to achieve - does that make it hard working with a producer at all?
It was totally collaboration. We were completely open to each other's ideas, and we found a great middle ground. He's been doing it for ages, and he's worked with a good range of music. That was what attracted us to him. We did have a short list of producers that we wanted to work with - and Brian was at the top of it. And we got him - we didn't even have to call the other people we were thinking about.

Why record in New Zealand?
We didn't want to be here. It's hard to concentrate and focus on something and pour your whole entire self into it when your family and friends are calling up and dropping by the studio, and people want to do interviews, or you've been booked for a show in the middle of recording. New Zealand is three hours away, and it costs the same as going to Brisbane; we don't know anybody there, and nobody there has a clue who we are. We didn't get bothered by anybody, and we achieved twice as much.

No distractions at all?
There was only one thing. We left Australia to escape all these distractions, and all you have to do is put a Playstation in front of us and we stagnate. And we also got addicted to this drink called Red Bull, which is a smart drink that's not available in Australia. It makes you go so fast that eventually you create the illusion that you're moving very slowly...

The usual inclination of previous singles doesn't apply to this album...
Why rehash something we've already done before? We've got so much new material building up, the sooner we can get it out the better. We left four or five songs off the album, and we're already playing a couple of songs in the set not that have been written in the last six weeks. Especially with Toby in the band now, everything's so fresh that we can't stop writing. Anyway, why ply people with what they're already heard? All the singles have new b-sides as well.

The audience isn't moving fast enough to keep up with the band's output?
It's the fact that you record an album in February and it comes out in July. If you're lucky. I've been getting really attracted to the idea of putting out cassettes.

Why isn't this a 75-minute album, then?
It was. The master CD we got back was 75 minutes long, but as I said, we've left five tracks off, because a 75-minute album - not to us, but to what the music industry dictates as appropriate - is inappropriate. Unfortunately we're not in the position the Smashing Pumpkins are in - we can't put out a double album, as much as we're like to.

You play live more regularly than most bands...
We do about as much playing as it's possible to do in this country. We play nearly every night as it is. Seriously. If we're not playing in Melbourne, we're playing in Geelong, Ballarat, Bendigo, anywhere.

Where does all the drive come from?
We love what we do. We love music, and we just love what we're doing. That's why you start a band, that's why you make records, that's why you play and tour - because you love it.

Something For Kate's album Elsewhere For 8 Minutes is out now through Sony. They play August 7th at Bridgemall Inn in Ballarat; August 8th in the GrandBuffet at Melbourne University; and August 9th at the Barwon Club in Geelong.

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