Traveller will be familiar to Australian audiences who saw the band recently at the Out on the Weekend festival and in side gigs. They will also be familiar to American audiences, both as a band and from as individuals: Cory Chisel, Jonny Fritz and Robert Ellis have so much experience and talent between them that one band possibly can't contain it all. While the band was in Australia I spoke to Cory, and learnt a bit more about them and their album
Western Movies, which has already been released in Australia but not, as yet, in the United States.
I’ll offer you a late
welcome to Australia because you’ve already been here and played the Out on the
Weekend festival on the weekend – how was it?
Thank you. It was extraordinary. It was full of our friends
from home, which is always kind of an interesting feeling when you’re far away
on the other side of the world and you’re hanging out with the same people you
hang out with at home. The audience was really the difference-maker. You guys
are incredible music fans in this country.
You’re not unknown
individuals, but this is your first venture to Australia as a group, so there
was a bit of the unknown there – but it sounds like no one minded.
You can go see all the other bands who rehearse a bunch and
know what their songs are going to be, or you can come see us, where anything
can happen. It’s fun.
That’s probably part
of the appeal – and in keeping with the spirit of a festival too.
We’ve all obviously spent a lot of time in our careers doing
not predictable things but certainly well-worn pathways, so it’s really fun to
get out there and push the boundaries of something that we don’t really know
how it will go either. It feels present, at least.
I guess when you come
into this group with so much individual experience, it’s a bit like jazz
musicians coming together: once you know the structure, you can play around
within it, and that’s when really interesting things happen.
Yeah, that’s a lot of the idea of the group in general, was
to make sure in a lot of ways that it wasn’t well rehearsed, so we could have
fun being really present and push boundaries as we’re playing. We know more or
less the road map, but which road we take to get there is the fun.
So when you are on
stage – because the three of you, I would imagine, have equal weight and equal
roles within the band – who gets to be the band leader?
Our personalities sort of work that out easily. Some of us
don’t care which song is first or last, and someone in the band really does.
They’re all leaders in their own way. Like Robert, certainly, musically sets a
lot of the tone for what we do because he’s just such a phenomenal player, so
if he wants to change the colour or the direction, he can do that very easily.
Jonny’s such a creative craftsman that I think he puts a lot of set lists
together and those kinds of things. And my job oftentimes is to be the glue
between the two forces that are pulling on the wheel.
In some ways it’s
like forming an instant family, because you have these transactional
relationships where things have to get done but it’s also intensely personal.
So I was actually quite surprised to read that your induction into the band
came via a text message and you didn’t know the other two when that text
message came through.
Well, I definitely did know them. Jonny and I weren’t as
close as Robert and I were. Robert and I really met here in Australia. That’s
the thing: inside this group it’s also incestuous. We all know who each other
is. But I hadn’t spent a lot of time with Jonny until we sat down to form this
band. I think we figured out a lot of what our strengths are individuals. I
really love writing melodies and Jonny loves writings words, and Robert’s such
an explorer in his way harmonically. The power struggle is easy because I think
we all fall into what we want to do and it works itself out.
So when that
invitation came to join them, had you had any thoughts of doing different
projects, side projects, or was it just one of those great spur-of-the-moment
things where you thought, Yep, I’m in.
I’d been writing for other people for a while and working
with people like Emmylou Harris and Rodney Crowell, appearing on records with
Roseanne Cash and a couple of other people, so I was really enjoying however
many years it was – sixteen years – professionally just kind of beating your
own drum. And then after a while you wear out on the side of your own voice. So
I was definitely looking to get into something that brought the inspiration
back into writing, and this was just the right opportunity for it.
So it was 2015 the
band had its first live performance, and then there was a gap and you came back
together to write and record the album.
Yes, that’s it. We formed for one of the largest folk
festivals in the country and I think we had four or five songs or something
like that. And Robert said, joking, to the promoter that he needed to book this
band and he took us up on it. So we were, like, we stumbled into this and now
we’ve got to get serious about it. So in that break we all went to work on our
little pieces of the puzzle and just getting our schedules to line up so we
could be in the same room took a few years, and now I think we’re all really
prioritising this group. To be in a group that has a sense of humour is really
liberating for Robert and me. So much of this job is so narcissistic and
self-gratifying, that to be able to take the air out of our tyres in a group
but also write songs intentionally has been really fun.
It must be a bit of a
relief, too, when you know that the other two are so accomplished and the level
of professionalism is the same – after all those years of doing it on your own
it must be nice to think you can relax and let some other people pick up some
slack, and then you can pick it up for them, and you can all enjoy yourselves
that way.
It’s a vacation, truly. Even doing interviews – like today,
I’m doing the one because the other boys did them the other day. It’s not so
much on one individual person’s shoulders and it really is so much easier. And
when you’re on stage in a band that you love with people you love, you don’t
really care if anyone else likes the show – we’re doing this for us as much as
anything else. It has a gang mentality, you know.
You’ve released Western Movies in Australia but not yet
in the United States – I’m guessing that’s because you’re out here for the
festival, but you must have some fans in the US who are wondering why they have
to wait.
Yeah, but that’s the way our band works – it seemed
intelligent to go exactly in a different direction with this. We thought about
even not releasing it in the United States and just releasing it in Australia.
We’ve had a band for the past two years without even releasing a record. In
this day and age it’s such an interesting process of trying to figure out what
that even means any more, to release a record. So it’s fun to come down here
where we don’t have a lot of skin in the game; we’re not trying to be the
largest band in Australia, we’re just trying to come and have as much fun as
possible. And then when you release it in the States it starts to feel more
like, How many albums are we selling?
And all that kind of stuff that none of us are really all that eager to get
into.
When it came to writing
the album you took ten days, and it was January so it was cold and a good time
to be inside. That’s a really intensive writing process, but had things been
bubbling away in your mind and the others’ minds so that when you came to write
it flowed pretty easily?
I don’t worry about anything other than the melodies, so I
have a Rolodex, phone memos, voice memos full of ideas. The other two have such
strengths of their own. I don’t think we set out as a rule but when we all came
together we’d been doing our mental work ahead of time. Jonny is extremely … he
gets on these creative rolls. He’s got a story and he’s saying, ‘We should
write a song about this’ and ‘We should write a song about that’, and as long
as I have a melody to match it, we’re good to go. We could write a whole other
record while we’re here.
I work with words in
my day job and I love music obsessively, but I can never imagine coming up with
a melody – not even a bar that works – even though I play instruments.
Well, that’s why you’ve got to have me in your band – I’ll
help you out.
[Laughs] In terms of
your musical background, are melodies things that have always come easily to
you?
Yes. It always sounds a littlepretentious or boring when you
hear it, but they’re really around all the time. You’re humming things and
they’re not songs that you’ve heard before. So you just go about collecting
them and capturing them as best you can. If you’re in a public place it gets a
little awkward if you’re trying to record and remember things, but they leave
really quickly, so you have to be vigilant about grabbing them when they come
in.
It’s a discipline to
be able to capture them when they come – did it take you a while to develop
that discipline, or at least that awareness that you need to do that?
No. You said the right word. I personally think everybody
can do it. I think you’re sort of conditioned away from it. If you’ve ever
watched a child, they’re always making up songs. They’re always making up words
that sound fun together to say. And it either gets nurtured or it gets turned
into ‘Oh that’s nonsense’, or ‘What are you singing?’ There’s so much, like,
song shaming, I feel like that is [laughs]. And then if you foster it – my
parents, the minute they caught on that I was doing this stuff, and I was
really young, they got me this little tape deck and would buy me endless
amounts of tapes, and they taught me how to press record and rewind. They made
it into a real special thing, so I just have a long habit of cultivating it,
I’d say.
And also you’ve
maintained it. That’s a practice you started young and you’ve still got it, so
I can’t imagine you’ve had many times away from it.
I’ve been lucky enough – knock on wood – that I’ve never had
a dry spell or a time when I couldn’t access … I’ve had lots of times where the
melodies don’t necessarily tell you what they want to say, and I get very
frustrated in that part of the process. I don’t want to just write instrumental
music, necessarily. So teaming up with other guys – if you’ve ever met Jonny,
you would know in a second, he’s got a constant inner narrative running that’s
funny, interesting and sad. And right on the money. It’s sort of how he walks
around too. So combining those things. And Robert is literally an energy ball
of ‘Give me a guitar, give me a guitar, give me a guitar, let me touch that.’
If you sit in a room and there’s only one guitar, he has it.
Therefore, it is a
perfect trinity. It sounds like it has been a meeting of minds in many
different ways.
And I think all of us always really wanted to be in a band,
we just couldn’t find enough people in our home towns, who we grew up with, who
wanted to stick with it as long as we would. So this is always what I wanted to
do, essentially. I’ve never really had a huge need to be, like, ‘The world
needs to know what Cory Chisel thinks’, but I do love being in the creative
process with people who are pushing you and expanding. And we get to travel the
world together, with our best friends. And the rhythm section of the group –
you could do a whole separate article on their diverse backgrounds that they’re
bringing in. When you get the right chemistry it’s fun. Until we break up and
hate each other.
It sounds like it’s
going too well for fights – yet.
Oh, we’ve had a shitload of fights. That’s every day. One
member of the band hates the show every time we play. We rotate it.
I think that’s also
part of keeping sharp. You’d get complacent if every single one of you walked
off and thought, That’s great.
Yeah, we all can’t run to the same side of the boat. We have
to balance each other out. Different personalities sort that out as it goes.
But everybody’s really on each other’s side at the end of the day, so if
there’s people who came and liked it, great, and if not – who gives a shit? We
had fun.
On a slightly
technical note, I read that the album was recorded and written in your 57-room
former monastery. How did you manage to choose one room to be the studio –
which room did you pick?
Well, we used a lot of different spaces for different reasons.
The technical aspect is that there’s certain rooms that are a little easier to
control musically. All the reverbs and everything like that that are in the record,
we were able to use the chapel as the place where we went after those kinds of
sounds. It’s a really interesting place. It’s kind of hard to explain unless
you’re in it, but there’s endless options. We could make a lot of
different-kind-of-sounding records. So we just want to get back in there. We’re
all ready to make another one.
And do you, on your
own time, experiment with the sorts of sounds that come out of those rooms or
do you wait for that recording process?
This project with the monastery is really what has … other
than this group and a small amount with my own music, but really the main
project is understanding that building and how to use it for art making. Then
when everyone shows up I get really geeked out and excited about a specific
spot that I want everyone to see, and hopefully one of them gets it and we get
to use it.
How amazing that you
could actually find a building like that and also really engage in exploring
it. That’s beautiful.
It definitely was kind of a dream-come-true scenario with
the whole property. So I plan on exploiting it to its fullest over the next
thirty years.
And you have many
rooms in which to do so. Now, for this album you did not have a record label.
We didn’t want one [laughs].
I did some research
but couldn’t find out if you’ve had one before for your own work. But I imagine
it was somewhat liberating to not have a label.
It was amazing to not have anyone else’s opinions other than
our perfect opinions.
[Laughs] I often talk
to Australian country music artists and there’s a lot of self-funding or
crowd-funding going, and the quality of work coming out is so good that one
wonders whether record companies have in the past meddled too much.
All the time. All thetime. Every one of us has a story like
that. It’s our job, if we want the audience to enjoy what we’re making and if
the audience at first is the record company and there’s just not giving you any
positive feedback, it’s pretty impossible to not change something in the
record, because you’re just getting all this negative feedback. This is really
from our brain and from our mind, and we like it, and if there was a recipe –
if any people from a record company knew what was going to sell and what wasn’t
going to sell – they wouldn’t all lose their jobs every other day.
Part of this
development of artists producing their own work is that it’s so much more
direct to their audience, and the reason to do this is, in large part, to reach
your audience. So the audience probably feels more connected without having a
record company in the middle.
We live in a direct-to-consumer world. I watch Netflix. I
want to pick the show I want to watch. I don’t want to arbitrarily have someone
else force-feed me the content of what I want to digest. So I think it’s really
important for artists to have that access that we’ve been granted through
technology to really just cut out the people who previously have been
gatekeepers – arbitrary gatekeepers and bad bankers who give us shitty loans
that we have to pay back, and even when we do pay them back they still own the
company. It just doesn’t make sense.
To go back to your
album, and its title, Western Movies,
I would like to ask you: which Western movies do you like?
Ẁow, that’s a lot to answer there. We all have our own
favourite. I personally love Pale Rider.
Robert’s saying [The Outlaw] Josey Wales.
I don’t remember what Jonny’s favourite is – some spaghetti Western. But that’s
one thing a lot of us connect on in our music, exposing the stuff that we feel
maybe we’re a little nerdy or dorky for liking, and then we’re, like, ‘Let’s
write songs about that – let’s exploit ourselves.’
If it’s stuff you
love, passion always connects with an audience.
Every girlfriend in the world has been bored to death having
to sit through one of these movies because we forced them on the world.
So for my last
question I’m going to ask just about you and your music separately. Do you have
plans for music of your own soon or do you think it will be another album with
Traveller first?
I released a new record in the States in August, and really
have an interesting time releasing my own music. I don’t know if it’s just a
growth phase of time. I really enjoy making them and enjoy people close to me,
having something to give them that I feel belongs to them too. But the whole
process of going around and stumping for everyone in the world to care about
what you think, I have an interesting relationship to. But I do have a record
that I’m really proud of and now on this trip we’re making plans to come over
again, just solo, with my partner Adrielle, hopefully maybe in February.
Western Movies is out now.
