Ezekiel RodofiliDumbsaint: if you know them, you know them, and if you don’t, that can change. Regardless, you’ve a chance to see them live.
The band haven’t played in a while. Things change. Life happens. However, they’ve come together to support toe for a few dates on their upcoming Australian and NZ tour.
I was recently afforded the opportunity to speak to Nick Andrews, one of Dumbsaint’s four, about the upcoming tour, and some of Dumbsaint’s past too.
Information about the tour on Bird’s Robe‘s site here.
Dumbsaint‘s music is available here.
Photo taken by James Connor / From the Pit.
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Ez: Obviously you guys haven’t been around for a while. You’ve been relatively inactive for a while. You;re now sort of reviving, at least for this upcoming tour. Was it the opportunity to play with toe that got the ball rolling again?
Nick: That’s the only reason. The story is, basically they’re a seminal band for us in terms of giving us the confidence to go down the instrumental route all the way back in 2008, 2009 onward. It was nice to find some common ground in bands that had established themselves with a unique sound and the confidence to play without the fear of feeling like something is lacking.
When this came along, it was a very fortuitous, full circle moment for us to kind of tie things off this way, and a good chance to have a couple of shows with hopefully no major accidents or family emergencies, much like our last tour with MONO back in 2017. It ended on a bit of down note, and so I’m hoping we can end on a bit of a high with this one.
Ez: Is it fair to say that this is a redo of a final tour then?
Nick: Heh.
I think for as much as we can for this music, I think to revive it all… essentially we wrote the bulk of this music between 2014 and 2017, and coming back to it after seven years was definitely part of the challenge, or the allure of the challenge, to see if we could it again and how we’d approach it differently as older people, with hopefully more mature minds and ears.
After this, it’s really just seeing what a way forward would look like in whatever shape or form it would take, but I think as far as this music, it would really take an opportunity of equal or greater significant to wind it all up again.
It’s been about twelve months of work. We’ve been chipping away at it since mid-last year to get to this point, and it’s taken quite a while to tease out a lot of issues. Rebooting everything after so much time, personally and also musically – ’cause I haven’t played drums properly since 2017 – and to pretty much relearn the instrument and the songs concurrently has taken quite a lot of commitment, and I feel like maintaining that, especially around this type of material is just not…
Just don’t want to live in the past anymore.
Ez: I guess a way to put is a clearing of the plate and a redo of the final tour, and seeing where things lie after if things do lie after.
Nick: Yeah. It’s just a good full stop, and I’m hoping it’s a bit of a family reunion for everybody, and something in the scene that we were heavily ingrained in for ten years. It’ll just be nice to get back into that without much riding on it, cascading or following into something else. Having something tied of neatly at the end of it is a good way to keep the expectations and also just try to have fun, most of all.
Ez: That’s the thing as well. Seven years in music is not much time, despite how it seems on the outside, but seven years of life lived after music is a long time.
How do you feel that time is gonna affect how you guys play?
Nick: It was very important for me this time to look at all the material that we chose. We chose the set list pretty early on because we wanted something to compliment and not feel like a bit of a down note on the night. In saying that, I wanted to reevaluate how the music was played and felt, especial as a listener at the other end of it, so we’ve tried to pay a lot more attention to how it’s presented and how it sounds, and the dynamics, and what’s not working as a player, so it allows us to be more present in the music, ’cause unfortunately – particularly this batch of material – it’s very demanding, sonically and physically. That has always been a bit of an Achilles’ heel for us in terms of being able to be truly present when we play.
Having the ability to now be a bit more honest about what is working and what isn’t has to kind of override what may have been established ten years ago. When you get older as well, some things don’t click with your body, or some things just don’t feel good like they used to. I think there’s a bit of a maturity there, but also a bit more vulnerability, [and] hopefully [honesty] with what we’re actually doing with the music, as opposed to feeling like it’s infallible, and I think that’s a lot to do with me and my attitude to life as well.
I think there needs to be a bit more… a greater attention given to what I’m contributing or what I’m doing with my time and energy, and if I’m doing anything with it, it’s gotta be worth the trip, so to speak, and the journey to make it happen.
Twelve months ago I pretty much sold a chunk of my drum stuff I didn’t need immediately. I hadn’t played for so long that to jump back in has been really like digging into an old life that I didn’t think I would be keen to do. Now that we’re here it’s kind of like “How do I still feel like [doing] it now as opposed to in my mid-twenties?
Ez: It’s interesting that you say you sold a bunch of your drum stuff that you felt you didn’t need, but you hadn’t played drums for about seven years either. Did you ever have the intent to go back and pick them up and it just never came to be?
Nick: I held onto the important things, but a lot of the perishables, or big, heavy bulky stuff is just not convenient to carry around when you rent and live in a small terrace. It got to the point where I felt like “This is dead weight that I didn’t need”.
The idea of ever playing music again: My only journey with drums has always been in this band, and so everything had always been funneled into this outlet exclusively. To think about starting something from the ground up, either with new people or separately is a lot of brain space that I don’t think I have, or had at the time, and you’ve also got to think about why you’re doing it.
We started playing and making noise back in 2007. There were a lot more venues and there was a lot more activity around that age bracket as well, when you’re in your early twenties, and a lot more energy and commonality or common goals with what you each wanted out of it. But as you get older that narrows and fractures quite a bit, just in terms of people’s reason for being there and how much time they can give, and so the idea of approaching something from the ground up this later in life just… definitely not an impossibility, but the magic or the sheen has worn off after the reality check of ten, fifteen years of doing it, week in week out.
So long story short, I wish I hadn’t sold some of it *laughs* especially when this tour has rolled around. It would’ve been more cost effective for me over the last twelve months. It’s definitely been inspiring to know that the body and the mind is able to get back into the groove of things, figuratively and literally, in terms of just being able to reacquaint yourself with an instrument in an entirely different mindset that I have pretty much haven’t needed to access in all of that time.
It’s interesting. That was part of one of the main reasons I said yes was to see if I could actually do it, even if it’s just like a sport. Just to get reacclimated to playing and getting in that shape, where I could feel like I’m playing better than I did, ten years ago.
Ez: As you said, some of the lustre wears off as the reality sets, especially when you do spend time not in the music life, as it were, but there’s something about approaching an instrument after that time because obviously you’re thinking about things differently and you hope you’ve matured a bit, and the way that you access the instrument and interface with it… hopefully it doesn’t start feeling like work, but you appreciate it in… maybe no less passionate, but a less intense way, because you’re no longer dealing with the intensity of being a twenty-something year old, right?
Nick: I agree. I think it’s just it used to be my whole life in terms of how much energy I put into it, and a lot of the sacrifice that came with it because of time and money and brain space. I think we went pretty hard week in week out in terms of keeping the ball rolling, in terms of writing, just playing music and staying active, always having a goal in mind to work towards. Once you take that framework away – for me at least – I feel like I always something like that in place as opposed to playing for the sake of it. It always has to have a goal in mind to justify the commitment and turning up every week.
We would rehearse weekly for years and years and years, and it always required us to turn up mid-week after work, three or four hours at a time, and over time you could tell that was starting to be a drain on everybody’s commitments, being distance or how much time they could give to it, whether they were prepared when they came in, just the maintenance of staying in physical or musical shape.
Like I said, life fractures quite a bit and everyone has different tolerances for that. As you get older, if that goal isn’t worth the input, then everyone feels different about what that is, what it means to them. Then what you get out of that isn’t going to be as fulfilling or as realised as it could be, and I think where we left off was very much the breaking point for life and the band at that time.
I feel like everyone has had time away to realise either what they missed or what they could do better this time around, and we’ve certainly approached it with a bit more maturity, but I still feel like some of the framework is still in place in terms of what keeps it from…
It needs to be that one goal, that one thing; a record or a song or anything that’s the only thing that will bind this to keep on moving, much like this tour has been the thing that has been the north star to everything we’ve done in the past twelve months, ’cause I can guarantee if that wasn’t there, looming over our heads as a deadline of sorts, it wouldn’t have been approached in this way at all.
So long story, but you need those things, I feel, to give you that forward momentum. Otherwise you just run out the clock.
*laughs* bit of a downer, but I think bands lose sight of that. The minutiae or the big picture. Whatever they’re doing it for, if that’s not the goal and unanimous between everybody, it’s just not going to get there.
Everyone has kids or has moved interstate, and suddenly realises “Oh shit, there goes my twenties” *laughs*
Ez: It is good to at least be able to play with each other, but unless there’s something that everyone can agree on that keeps people invested, it can be difficult if you want to do things like play gigs and tour, or work and release music, and I think – especially when some people get older – you never think about the sacrifices when you’re young because it’s just what you do, but later on in life you might have friends that you see and you start thinking “Am I missing out on other things in life?”. From there, it can be difficult for people to stay on the same page. It’s something a lot of bands need to be aware of.
Nick: It was something that I brought up ten years ago as we were about to record our second album. We’d prepared everything, we were definitely putting in the extra hours to get it ready on time, to meet those recording deadlines, and it was always backed by me saying, based on where we were, age, career and life-wise, “This is kind of as good as it’ll get in terms of the ability for us to give this much energy to it, because any time we come up against something like this again, it’s always going to have a lot of red tape around it”, and it did by the time mid-2018 came around [and] we were in the middle of trying to write a third record. To be honest, by mid-2018 we’d only written really two songs through gritted teeth all the way between 2014 and 2018.
All our other time was just being show ready for tours and stuff like that, and being match fit. We jammed a lot and had a lot of material sitting there, but the commitment and the common ground and the work flow that enabled us to stay having that goal; it ceased to materialise in a time-effective way because by that time (mid-2018) only half of us were turning up to practice *laughs* and you can’t get anything done when this band is such a four-way split in everything we’ve done.
It goes to show that, as much as you can prepare and try and brace for adulthood, it just sneaks up on people in a way where they don’t really know how to handle it until they’re in the middle of it. You know, make this the sole hobby, or financial commitment for your play money. It just ends up becoming a bit of a chore *laughs* unless everybody’s pulling a paycheck from it, and having to tour three months of the year to pay the bills, but without that there there’s no real impetus to turn up every week when you can go “You know what? I’d rather be at home with the family and sitting on the couch” *laughs*
My advice is to any band starting out: if they’re serious about music in general or the band that they’re in, the band has to have a – even though it’s impossible to envision the reality of it all – ten year plan on the table, just in terms of what it means…
Of course the landscape has changed so much in the [last] ten years, with music and touring and the reality of it all, but if you actually wanna create work that will live beyond the active years of the band, and have at least some sort of musical legacy, fuck making a living off it, ’cause [with] the idea of having something that means something to you and some listeners out there, you need to have a plan in place to know you can achieve those things in that much more limited time frame than you think you have, ’cause the years will add up very, very quickly.
In all the years that we were active, I would say that we were most prolific in three or four of them. What the fuck was all that other time used for? I have no idea.
Having rebooted it all at the moment, and not having to think about any of that stuff makes you realise that, yeah, it’s a real lot of work that you just absorb through emails, listening, playing, buying gear, staying musically fit. It’s all-encompassing until you’re away from it.
It’s really just about finding that balance but also having that goal that shapes or forms or guides the band forward. Otherwise you just end up playing a pub on a Sunday afternoon with five other bands and you go “Oh, is this it?” *laughs*
If that’s what you want, then sure, but you can easily fall into that and go “Really, is this it? Is this where all that time is going?”
Having this [tour] as a goal has been so much more reinvigorating than the idea of “Oh we need to write or we need to tour more and turn up weekly, and blah blah blah”. It’s just been like a bit of a holiday, really *laughs*
Ez: All that pain has now become pleasure.
Nick: Yeah, exactly.
Ez: I have seen you guys refer to yourselves as Australia’s best support act. Are you also changing your name to Blacklevel Embassy?
Nick: *laughs* No, I just put that there because we always played best and were most well-received when we did good support slots. Whenever we did our own tours or our own headline shows, we were sort of cursed in a way, and so I feel like us being under the wing of somebody else allows us to really play to new people and feel like there was more to gain from it. And usually they were better venues, and more people were on our side ’cause the whole night’s meant to run well. Not just your show.
And everyone is a bit more excited either with a band that they like or with new people, and so I’m trying to use that mind trick on myself, but that was our goal in life; to be the best support band out there, and I think we’re almost there.
Ez: *laughs* Fair enough.
A support band is a good thing to have, obviously, but I guess as a support act you really want to be – at times – challenging the main act. You wanna make sure that they’re gonna put on a good show.
Considering it’s toe, and considering how they treat their band as it is, it’d be unsurprising if they put on a good show, regardless of conditions.
So how are you guys gonna challenge toe on this tour?
Nick: To be honest, if I just play the set that I’m thinking I’m gonna play, I’ll be happy. Again, with how challenging some of this music is, just to push it out, I feel like if I can do all the things I wanna do and still remember it all while I’m doing it… ’cause fortunately time up there moves much quicker and much slower than you think, and your ability to be present and internalise it all flies by so quickly, even though it’s a forty-five minute set, so I really want to feel like I’ve actually hit as hard as I can.
Whether people like it or not, I don’t care. It’s really just… I feel like it’s complimentary enough as an instrumental act, but I feel like bringing something a little different, and I’m really just playing for me this time around. I don’t really care how many shirts we sell, or CDs, or who keeps in touch with us afterwards. I’ll happily just turn up, play drums, and go to the next venue, you know? *laughs*
Everything else is white noise for me this time around, and I have to have that narrow view of it, just because getting caught up in the emails and all the extras, the other 95% of being in a band…
Ez: The business.
Nick: Everything about it usually fell into my lap, and this time around I’m trying to either stay out of that, or somebody else is handling it, and so I can actually just play drums for once, as opposed to feeling like I’m solving other problems in my head while I’m trying to play the show, and so if all the gear turns up at the venue, and I feel good, and I play well, that’s the win for me.
And getting to see toe play, that’s even better.