The John Steel Singers FUSE in Adelaide
Amongst many, one of the best stories to come from the Fuse @ Fringe headline act The John Steel Singers has been the band’s partnership with Robert Forster. There’s a beautiful poetry to the cyclical nature of the team; with Forster, one half of arguably Brisbane’s most influential musical export The Go-Betweens, now mentoring and producing one of the cities best young pop talents in The John Steel Singers. For lead singer Tim Morrissey, it really was a dream come true.
“It was very surreal, basically this is a guy who I’ve got a giant framed poster that I got him to sign years ago on my lounge room wall,” he delves. “And then next thing you know I’m tracking an album with him, one of my song writing idols. And at the end of the tracking he’s having dinner at my house, and he’s around admiring himself on my own wall!”
“The partnership came about through a benefit gig we did for the bushfires last year. Because it was thrown together pretty late his band couldn’t make it, so he asked us if we wanted to play as his backing band and we jumped on that in an instant. Playing Go-Betweens songs as Robert Forster’s backing band, it was probably to date one of my top three moments on stage, or of anything really.”
You get a further sense for Morrissey’s affection for the man as he recounts anecdotes from the recording process with a joyful retrospective tone to his voice. “He’s a very eccentric fellow, and I’d say we all consider him as a friend now,” Morrissey says. “But working with him, he just sort of gets weird cravings. One day we were just in the middle of traffic in Melbourne and he’s like “we have to get pesto”. And so he went off and ordered everyone pesto. And a few days later he got a craving for KFC, and he hadn’t eaten KFC since the late ‘70s previous to that. And he actually ate someone’s Hot n’ Spicy burger, because he obviously had no idea what a Hot n’ Spicy was, and he’s like “oh it’s a bit spicier than I remember!”.
The John Steel Singers’ debut album was released in November this year to great acclaim, and after what Morrissey describes as a long and interrupted gestation period, the end product couldn’t have come together better in his eyes. Again, he cites the influence of producer Robert Forster in perfecting the band’s sound. “Well he’s just got such a pop brain really,” Morrissey explains. “His brain’s just sort of wired to write off kilter pop songs. He was really good at just helping us to trim down the instrumentation, because we usually overload our songs having six members. If everyone’s playing something at one time the song can already be overloaded, and that’s before the overdub. So he was really good at just trimming the fat off the songs.”
The John Steel Singers also owe much of their success to Triple J. From unearthing them in 2008 and the sustained rotation of their EP and mini-album, to 2010 where they featured debut record ‘Tangalooma’ and spun lead single ‘Overpass’ to the brink of exhaustion. But the recognition and the realisation of The John Steel Singers being marketed by commercial stations is something that doesn’t faze the modest Morrissey. “It’s fantastic,” he says. “We just came in the Hottest 100 at 52, and to even actually get into the Hottest 100 was amazing. So I was just so happy with everything.”
Being Brisbane natives and having close friends devastated by the floods, the band was obvious thrilled to play a flood relief benefit show on February 7, but likewise are equally excited to be moving on the play Adelaide’s Fuse Festival on Friday February 18. Beginning on February 16 in the heart of the city, the industry conference and showcase festival runs for three days and aims to give a platform to some of the best young bands in not only Adelaide, but also Australia. Further along the horizon for The John Steel Singers, Morrissey describes the band’s plans to tour the United States and hopefully release ‘Tangalooma’ to the rest of the world.
But, more importantly for fans, Morrissey had the pleasure of revealing the group is already working on new material, and was gracious enough to give an insight into the new album. “Well hopefully by September we’ll be able to record the next album, and we’re already doing some demos for it as we speak,” he explains. “A lot of people describe our songs and always find a sunny sort of vibe I guess, and I’d say there’s probably a little bit less of that. ‘Tangalooma’ was almost a little bit half and half in some respects, the new material will definitely still be pop songs and that sort of thing, but fans might see a different tilt to it.”
The John Steel Singers will play the Fuse Stage at 12.25am on February 19 (the night of February 18) at Rymill Park.
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