Ian Mackaye is a calm and collected man. So far. However, he knows what he likes, what he supports and respects, and what he doesn’t. He will always tell you what he thinks. With this in mind, and the fact that his musical career has stretched over almost 30 years, I wasn’t about to get under his skin. “I’m alright, I just spilt some tea trying to get the phone”.

Oh. Have I managed to crawl into the bad books with the mere chime of the telephone?

He remains calm. In fact, he is polite, joyful and very happy to discuss everything to do with his relatively new band, The Evens and their Australian tour. “We’re pleased to be here, yeah. You know, we realise that music is not a joke, and the fact that it has actually got us down here, we take it seriously”.

Forming The Evens in 2001 with fellow musician Amy Farina (formerly of the Warmers), Mackaye tells me the two just started playing and writing together, “we sat down with drums and a baritone guitar and we wrote songs and we sang, and we made music together, and that’s what we came up with”.

The result of this simple set up is an energetic post-punk duo with driving drums, grimy guitar, and aggressive vocals with slightly dissonant harmonies. This sound is much like post-punk duo, The Kills, especially in their 2005 release, No Wow, but with real life drums.

Mackaye explains that the personality dynamic of a band is the vital part of the sound, and in this you can distinguish between The Evens and his previous bands. He doesn’t often indulge in comparisons and believes it is often a limited way of looking at things. “Bands in my mind are relationships, the people who are in the band, each person is contributing a certain part of themselves and the combination of those contributions is the sound, the spirit of the band”.

He is extremely passionate. “Music, ah, yeah it wasn’t really a choice for me, it’s just what I do. I grew up thinking about music, you know, playing piano and being so obsessed with music, I don’t believe I really thought it was something that I could actually engage in or that I could be a part of until puck rock occurred, in my life”.

Twas in the late 1970s that Mackaye began to indulge his passion, since then he has been part of several punk and post-punk bands including, Teen Idols, Minor Threat and most well-known Fugazi. Mackaye is also a co-owner of Dischord Records in Washington DC. His whole life has been dedicated to being a part of and supporting music, but never the machinery of the industry, “I’m not a music industry person really, in fact if anything the work I do in music, I do it cause I’m tryna’ avoid the music industry”. He strongly believes that music should be created for the purpose of music; it is a point of gathering, a way to communicate. ”...music is still, it’s a populist form, people still come together, they make friends they create a community out of that… I say this pretty regularly enough, but its true, it’s a form of communication that probably predates language”.

He describes performing with Amy and their small amount of instruments on stage as a vulnerable experience, “that’s it, you’re naked you’re right there, that’s challenging, and that’s confrontational”. Quite a different feeling to his days with Fugazi, when he could hide behind a wall of powerful sound. And there is only one way to describe it, “have you ever seen The Wizard of Oz? I think you get the idea, you know, it’s the little guy behind the curtain”.

As far as what Australia can expect, Mackaye isn’t giving much away, “essentially, we’re coming down, we’re setting up our instruments and we’re making a show with people, I mean I will say this, we both sit down… that will be my little sneak preview”. In acknowledging that this tour may be awfully expensive, he finds the bright side of being a musician these days. “the worst thing that’s gonna happen, we’re gonna come down here, we’re gonna travel, we’re gonna play music, we’re gonna meet some people and its gonna cost us a little bit of money. But we’ll see, maybe we’ll break even”.

The Evens tour Australia over in Feb/March 2007 click here for details