78 Saab At Home On The Ranch

Mon 29th Aug, 2005 in Features

Picture a man and his dog sitting in the lounge room while his neighbour, a fellow musician, is practicing his guitar in the backyard next door. There is no strange imagery in this scene; it is simply 78 Saab’s drummer Nicholai Danko talking to FasterLouder while his dog listens to his master’s voice.

Home is where the heart is. For 78 Saab this is no exception, even though they will soon hit the road for a national tour. Constant touring can be a grueling schedule for some people. The band’s lead singer, Ben Nash once said that they stay sane on the road by acting as stupid as possible. “I think we just stay as tired as we possibly can. Therefore, you kind of go into a half state of losing your mind. Then you don’t notice the amount of time you’re spending on the road, you just breeze through it that way.”

Needless to say, it helps to have entertainment during the long rides. Ben previously noted that the band’s entertainment comes in the form of a “Guitar-tech-come-international-vibe merchant, Stoltz (who) terrorises retirement homes, council road workers and unsuspecting cattle with his trusty megaphone.” Nicholai adds “His trusty megaphone, he brings it on the road with us, every single tour. When the mood starts to get down or a bit flat when we’ve been driving for three days or whatever, he just starts yelling at people. He does a bit of beat poetry.”

“I remember when we were going down the main street in Melbourne (laughs). We were going down near Fitzroy and Brunswick Street and he just does beat poetry out the window and stuff like that. And then he yells at council workers in Armidale. It’s completely random, you never know what is going to come next.”

Can Nicholai give us an example of the poetry? “I can’t do it.” He pauses and then adds in a singsong voice, “The sky is blue, falls down, the clouds make sense.” After contemplating this snippet, Nicholai adds, “It’s madness, really, it doesn’t even make any sense.”

Nonsense or not, Stoltz now provides entertainment to the audience. “He’s actually not our guitar tech anymore, he’s our keyboard player. We gave him a bigger responsibility (laughs). That’s him with the cowboy hat. He definitely needs to get a new cowboy hat. That one’s starting to wear out a bit.” The hat has been given a beating after being stuffed into road cases on many tours. Nicholai recently saw some old photos from when Stoltz was their guitar tech and he thought, “Shit, the cowboy hat’s so fresh, what happened to it?”

It appears the hat may have a few days left for retirement. In the meantime, something that has ‘stuck’ is the band’s joke of calling each other “Ray.” Some people may recall that this was mentioned in the band’s previous interview with Fasterlouder. “A few years ago when we were touring we used to listen to lots of The Jerky Boys.” One of the jokes is of a guy ringing another and calling him Ray for no reason. Nicholai demonstrates “Hello Ray.” “Hello Ray.”

“For some reason we just started calling each other Ray and it was around the time we were recording our album (Crossed Lines) with Tim Whitten. We’d go into the studio all calling each other Ray. And then Tim got into it and he was calling us Ray and no one knew who they were anymore and it just became a big blur. It becomes difficult when we come across someone called Ray because they think we’re paying out on them but we’re not, it’s just a silly in-joke.” Does the band have any new jokes? “No. With Ray it is just a real stayer.”

The conversation turns from one man’s name to another. “Can you hear that in the background? Alex Lloyd lives right next door to me and he’s rehearsing for his Rove performance or something. Check it out.” Through the phone I can faintly hear Alex singing and playing guitar. “He’s in the back garden playing guitar. I’m next door. I just spoke to him like ten minutes ago, he’s my neighbour. It’s pretty funny; we’ve got the guy from Wolfmother who lives about three or four doors down. And Paul Mac lives on the street so Daniel Johns is often walking around. It’s just one of those weird streets. There’s more I just don’t know the rest of them.” Nicholai admits he had no idea when he moved in eighteen months ago that this strip played host to a community of Australian musicians.

No Illusions, the band’s new single is now available to the general community. Nicholai had previously claimed that the song was about the band’s dissatisfaction with the country’s leaders. “Ben, our lead songwriter has quite a political viewpoint in a lot of respects. We’re not a political band by any means but often he hints at political ideas and he’s just concerned with the leadership in this country at times. And as a result, No Illusions is one of the songs where that comes through a bit. It’s definitely not in your face. Each song can be taken differently by each person, (just) like any song. Rage Against The Machine is obviously political stuff, but with us you can take it as a love song or just a mixture of relationships.”

Relationships can help a song receive airplay. Some readers may be familiar with the new single, as it has featured on Grey’s Anatomy. “I’m not sure exactly who made the handshake. It was a combination of Ivy League and Mushroom.” For those of you taking notes, the band’s songs have also featured on The Secret Life Of Us, Home And Away and Blue Water High.

Some readers may be familiar with the No Illusions video, created by Sydney-based company, Mathematics. “They had this idea of a kite going through the sunset and clouds. Its got a nice, dreamy sort of psychedelic feel to it and we were happy with that. Plus, we’re not the best actors.” This comment is not necessarily true as there was some fine acting in the Beat Of Your Drum video.

Acting need not be an important part of the band’s lives as music was and continues to be their primary aim. Jake Andrews, the band’s guitarist, used to play the flute from a young age and Ben performed in a marching band until about age fourteen. Nicholai knew from an early age that he wanted to be a musician after a diet of INXS, Midnight Oil, U2 and The Cure. “I wasn’t so much like Jake with the flute thing. I wasn’t going in that direction, I just wanted to play in a rock band. I used to get Tupperware containers and empty margarine containers before I had a drum kit, when I was really small. Like empty, little margarine, Meadow Lea tubs and I’d drum at it and things like that. Peanut butter jars…Mum loves that.”

Parents are a positive influence and this was the case when the band went to stay at Ben’s parent’s farm to work on new songs. “In Orange in the middle of NSW, we were in complete isolation in this little hall for four days. We just set up and played. We didn’t really have many songs when we began and we walked away three days later with ten songs. We were surrounded by sheep. There were about a thousand sheep outside the door. There was no mobile reception; there was nothing to bother us. There were no pubs to go to, it was just the four of us and our instruments.”

The new material is “A bit heavier. They are just a bit thicker. There’s a richness to them, which we haven’t done too much of in the past.” In the meantime, the band plans to demo some more new songs by the end of the year and record properly in January or February of next year, as they do not want to repeat the extended break that occurred between their first two albums.

Back to the present, a siren wails in the background. Maybe it’s a warning that the interview is over. Or it might be that the police have come to take away Alex Lloyd. “Yeah, they’ve come to take him away and do harmonies. The train line’s right next to me, Alex Lloyd’s on one side, Wolfmother’s on the other, it’s great.” For the sleuths out there, you could try and track down this suburb as its name was withheld to protect its colourful residents. For those without a detective bone in their body, they could just as easily catch 78 Saab at one of their upcoming shows.

You can see 78 Saab when they play at a venue near you:

September
Thursday 1 – Ruby’s Lounge, Belgrave VIC
Friday 2 – The Evelyn, Melbourne VIC
Saturday 3 – Jive, Adelaide SA
Thursday 8 – ANU Bar, Canberra ACT
Saturday 10 – ‘Come Together’, Luna Park NSW
Thursday 15 – Prince of Wales, Bunbury WA
Friday 16 – Swan Basement, Fremantle WA
Saturday 17 – Rosemount Hotel, Perth WA
Thursday 29 – The Globe, Brisbane QLD
October
Saturday 1 – @Newtown, Sydney NSW