With the AIR Awards hitting their sophomore year and ready to kick off at a gala ceremony in Melbourne next week, FasterLouder settled back with one of the nominees (Wolf and Cub) to find out how they first got into the biz and what being nominated for an AIR Award means for the band…

Answers by Joel from Wolf and Cub
Growing up, how important was music to you?
Very important! I grew up in a small town that had was a bit limited as far a creative outlets were concerned, music was very much a tool for escapism. Films, books, comics, art was all essential when we were growing up because there really wasn’t much of an outlet next to sport.

Did you come from a musical family?
No not really, my parents are very working class, so anything that was in the realms of creative occupation wasn’t really taken seriously. I got most of my music appreciation from my older brother, music for him was, is a very important part of his personality and it rubbed off on me.

What’s your earliest musical memory?
Playing an acoustic guitar that my brother owned is my earliest memory. He used to take guitar lessons but it didn’t develop into anything serious, I imagine it contributed to him losing interest in the instrument actually. I owned a set of drums, and used to play in the band at school, during assemblies and church mass.

What’s the first album you bought, First concert you went to?
I think it may have been Weezer’s blue album, and I played it to death, that’s probably the first piece of music I truly absorbed and learned how to appreciate. The first record I owned was Poison’s Open Up and Say Argh! My parents bought it for me for Christmas. First Concert that I got really excited about was Blur at Thebarton in Adelaide.

Was a career in music always on the cards?
No definitely not! Like I said my parents were very working class and a little conservative so anything like what I’m doing now never seemed feasible or possible. My dad had one wish; that I attended University and I get a degree, I did and the next day after graduation we played our first show in Melbourne and then shortly after got a record deal.

What inspires your music?
I’m not sure, I’ve always found it difficult to articulate an answer to this question, maybe because I don’t know where the inspiration comes from, it’s rarely just one thing, I think the initial inspiration was born out of the desire to achieve something that was always seen as unattainable when I was younger. The idea of being in a band and creating music was such a foreign concept to my friends and family in the town I was growing up in, that it was always viewed as being a bit of a fantasy or a pipe dream so to be doing something that was viewed like that motivates you to continue to try and be creative.

What bands would you love to share a stage with given the chance?
Ween, Can, Amon Duul, Gong, I don’t know there’s a few but I’m what I could bring to the performance, I’d just mess with the dynamic. Fleetwood Mac would be pretty cool, playing with Miles Davis or Zappa would be great, but I haven’t spend many years practicing because it’d be far too intimidating and I couldn’t help but feel completely inferior, Prince too, and NEU!, oh and Faust. Too many!

How did you and the band get together? Who’s the boss? What’s your creative process like?
Three of us grew up in the same town and we all moved over to Adelaide after completing high school. The band really started after Tommy, our bass player, was required to record a demo as a part of his final assessment in the sound engineering course he was taking. After recording the demo we decided that there was enough on there to warrant us to stay together and maybe take ourselves a little more seriously. I’m not sure if there is a boss as such, it’s fairly democratic, but I guess if a situation arose where thieves burst into our rehearsal room and demanded to be taken to our leader, then perhaps, in that situation I might be the one they are shown too. Lately our creative process has been that I’ll develop a skeleton of a track outside of rehearsal, bring it in and then we’ll all interpret that initial idea and try to develop it further.

What do you think of the Australian music scene at the moment?
It’s really competitive at the moment not just within the Australian industry but also and especially in the world market, it was a lot more uncommon 4 or five years ago to have Australian bands one deals outside Australia or having a presence in another country, but these days it’s more of a common occurrence to hear of Aussie bands doing well overseas.

How does being nominated for an AIR Award effect you/your band?
It’s always an honour to have your music acknowledged but to have it acknowledge in such a public way that Awards go about it is a little more exciting. As an independent to be acknowledged by the Independent organisation, it carries far more weight also.

What opportunities do you think being part of the AIR Awards will bring for you?
It’s all part of getting the word out I guess, it’s just more good publicity for the band and that’s always positive for indie bands that don’t have much of a marketing budget. It also validates all the hard work that gets put in by everyone involved.

The Jagermeister AIR AWARDS take place on Monday December 10 at The Toff in Town. Stay tuned to FasterLouder for the results…