Evermore: When dreams becomereal life

Wed 20th Dec, 2006 in Features

You know it’s been a pretty good year when the only lowlight you can think of is that time you poured stale milk on your Weetbix. 2006 has been huge for Evermore drummer Dann Hume and brothers Jon and Peter - and the Kiwi rockers show no signs of slowing down.

Since being released earlier in July this year, Evermore’s sophomore record Real Life has gone platinum in both Australia and New Zealand, reaching the top five in the ARIA charts. Singles Light Surrounding You and power ballad Running have been breakthrough hits with the former being used as the backing track for the season finale montage of Home and Away (a bit of a step down from the OC, but hey).

And how have the Hume brothers taken the staggering success? “I’ve been surprised how many people have heard the songs and felt something from them - that continually surprises me,” Dann says. But he is quick to point out that it hasn’t all gone to their heads: “I don’t think it’s happened too quickly,” he continues. “It doesn’t feel like we’ve been swept off our feet too much, we’re still the same guys.”

Right now they are nearing the end of their massive national Real Life tour which started in September and has seen them playing shows virtually every day since. So just how tiring is it? “It’s not like it’s exhausting, it’s just Groundhog day,” Hume explains. “Everyone’s got to make an effort to realise where you are, you know … It’s quite easy to fall into this sort of cycle of doing as little as possible. We really try to make an effort to go out and see everything.”

Barely stopping to enjoy the festive season, the boys are playing in Terrigal on Christmas Eve, the Pyramid Rock festival on Phillip Island on New Year’s Eve, and then across the country to Perth for the Side Track’d festival on New Year’s Day. Somebody should probably teach the boys the concept of a break. Surely some New Year’s celebrations are in order? “It depends, because we’re playing on New Years Eve and flying out the next day,” he says. “I’ll go out, I’ll do the big New Year’s thing but I don’t think I’ll go too nuts, because we have the show with The Grates the next day. Maybe I should pretend that it’s not New Year’s Eve until Perth,” he jokes.

Between the massive success of the band’s new record, a heroes’ welcome on their return to New Zealand (complete with horse drawn coach and ‘mayoral reception’), and jetsetting around the world in 16 days to film the video clip for Running, its not surprising that it takes Hume a moment to choose a highlight for the year.

Perhaps it was sharing the stage with fellow Kiwis Split Enz on their Australian tour earlier this year, which, according to Hume was “more of an honour than a highlight really”. “I mean playing with Neil Finn is like playing with Paul McCartney – for me anyway. They were really encouraging… I guess we’re doing what they were doing 20 years ago. They did a lot of touring – hard touring – like us. They like the fact that we’re, I guess, a song band. We don’t dress snazzy or have the right shoes or whatever. And our haircuts are quite infrequent. But you know, it’s all about the songs for us, and it’s about the songs for them … and the cool makeup of course.”

Or maybe it was playing in front of 15,000 frenzied fans at Melbourne’s Make Poverty History Concert – “That was unbelievable, [we’ve] never been more elated on stage. It’s amazing – the reception we were getting from the crowd made us give everything, you know. We thought we’d given everything before at gigs, but it was only until the end that we realized we could give even more.”

Add in the headlining slot of this year’s Coca Cola Live and Local tour, and you begin to wonder what part of the year hasn’t been one great high for the band of brothers. “When you play these massive halls and everybody’s moshing, it just feels right,” he says. “It was a bit of a taster of how it could be, you know? We learnt a lot as far as how to fill a stage. It’s going to be really good for the Big Day Out. We’re not going to go out there with no idea how to get the audience going.”

So what are the plans for 2007? “We’re going to go do the festivals and then go to the US in March and slog that as hard as we can, see if we can make a dent,” he says. “In fact, the boys may have already scratched the surface with the Dirty South remix of It’s Too Late enjoying a spell as the fourth most played club song in America. “The remix went nuts over there,” Hume says. “And then we got all these radio stations wanting to hear the original … it’s been going really good on college radio and a few LA rock stations,” he adds – though he is quick to stress that despite this, there’s a tough road ahead in the States. “I don’t think anyone actually knows who we are, but the song is getting out there,” he says. “So we’re going to go over there and go ‘Hey, that’s us – that’s our song.’”

One last question – with Real Life taking a quite a different direction than its predecessor, what can fans expect from the next record? “Probably a new sound all together,” Hume remarks. “It will have elements of both [Real Life and Dreams]. I think it will be more soundscapey … Some of the songs we are writing at the moment are … a bit more moody, a bit more patient.”

And with new material constantly streaming from each of the Hume brothers, they won’t be running out of ideas anytime soon. “That’s the cool thing about being in this band, we’ve all got these different angles and we are each bouncing ideas off each other,” he says. “It would be a lot different if it was just Jon or just Pete – it would be a completely different thing. When we all work together, that’s the Evermore sound.”

Oh and about that dreadful low point of Hume’s year?

“A few weeks ago, I finally got home and I always look forward to my six Weetbix, cereal, yoghurt and cornflakes and have this massive home breakfast,” he explains. “I put it all together and poured the milk on it, and the milk, jeez, it was like three weeks old. That was pretty bad. I had the first mouthful … and almost vomited. It was so bad. So that was my lowlight.”

It’s tough being a rock star.