Timber and Steel

Image Courtesy of The Little Stevies

Evan Hughes spent a very rainy and wet Blue Mountains Music Festival unsuccessfully trying to see Melbourne pop-folksters The Little Stevies due to packed out venues and clashing appearance times. While this wasn’t great for Evan it’s got to be great for the band who have just released their sophomore album to glowing reviews and are at the beginning of a massive national tour. Luckily Evan did manage to pin down Sibylla Stephen, Beth Stephen and Robin Geradts-Gill from The Little Stevies for long enough between packed shows to chat to them about their experiences in the USA, their struggle with the term “folk” and their plans for the rest of the year.

Evan Hughes: It’s been a very rainy Blue Mountains Music Festival so far. Have you been enjoying yourselves?
Sibylla Stephen: Yeah very much so. It has been really rainy – it’s full on. Robin’s been complaining the whole time about his feet being wet and that’s been quite annoying.
EH: The wet feet or the complaining?
SS: Well, both.
Robin Geradts-Gill: Someone went home early because of the rain last night. And it wasn’t me.
SS: I just don’t have the stamina anymore. I love a couple of glasses of wine more than anyone, especially with good friends, some food or whatever. But more than that just makes me sleepy. I no longer have the stamina to stay out late or do anything. It’s tragic – because I planned to do that last night. I planned a big night. Anyway, whatever. Robin did, he got back at 5am.
RGG: Yeah it was a good night
EH: Does that mean it will be an interesting performance this afternoon?
RGG: I think I’ll be right. I think some food will put me right. I’m hoping.
EH: You guys are friends with quite a few bands at the Blue Mountains Music Festival. Is it like coming out and catching up with old mate?
Beth Stephen: It is fun having people that you know when you go away. And there is quite bunch of people here. It’s kind of nice just to walk into The Clarendon and go “oh hey, how are you?” and have a little chat.
SS: I haven’t seen Sal the whole time. I don’t know where Sal Kimber’s staying
BS: It’s funny how many people you do end up knowing at a festival that you go to that you don’t end up talking to.
SS: Or you just know by face.
BS: Just because you don’t spend that much time actually watching stuff anyway.
SS: It’s crazy how much time you don’t spend watching music at a music festival when you’re playing at it. Well for me anyway. Like, y’know, my hair and beauty routine is just so full on (laughs). In the lead up and then taking it off after – it takes me forever.
EH: Because there seems to be lots of Melbourne bands here.
SS: Yeah, there’s TiPan [Orange]. Sal Kimber and the Rolling Wheel – we’ve been recommending them to everyone, making sure people go and see them. Who else is from Melbourne?
EH: Band of Brothers?
SS: Oh yeah [Robin] went to school with one of them
RGG: I watched them last night. I’ve known Leonard [Grigoryan] since school. In fact we were at school for years and years, he was the year below me, but I’ve never actually gone and watched him perform with Slava [Grigoryan] – I did last night, it was great.
SS: Were they amazing?
RGG: Yeah, yeah. Pretty freaky.
EH: Yeah they’re amazing. Top guitarists.
SS: Wow
EH: I’ve seen you guys a couple of times and on stage you talk about this experience you had when you went over to the States and you played, like, folk festivals where you showcased stuff?
RGG: It was the Folk Alliance Conference. It’s like a showcase conference.
EH: And you were dong showcases in hotel rooms? From what you’ve said on stage it was a fairly surreal, almost uncomfortable experience.
BS: It’s kind of like a folk festival confined in the space of three levels of hotel rooms. And as you can imagine the hotel rooms are tiny so if there’s more than fifteen people in there it’s so uncomfortably jam-packed.
SS: And if there’s only one person in there it’s so uncomfortable.
BS: People are sort of roaming around the hallways and it’s completely packed. And it happens between 10pm and 3am which are the weirdest hours for it.
RGG: But pretty cool though.
BS: It does feel like this massive folk party. It’s weird
SS: It’s awesome but totally weird as well. There’s a smattering of really amazing stuff, which is awesome and you go “Whoa, that’s incredible”
BS: “I can’t believe I saw this in a hotel room.”
SS: Then there’s a bunch of pretty mediocre stuff and then there’s also, because of the thing it is, there’s also a bunch of really tragic people just playing in their hotel room to one person the whole time. You get the vibe they’ve been there year after year. Good on them – that takes confidence to keep going back.
RGG: It took them years to get to that point
SS: It’s full on. And it’s so raw as well. It’s like watching someone in their lounge room or in a smaller version of their lounge room, just playing in the corner.
BS: There’s nothing to hide behind. Everything shows.
EH: Was it a positive experience for you guys?
SS: For us it was great. It was great from the start for us because we did so much work before we got there. All the festival bookers and, I don’t know…
BS: Booking agents
SS: Yeah, booking agents and stuff go to this thing along with heaps and heaps of artists and also the odd person who’d just paid for a ticket I think. We’d done lots of work before we got there so our first show was packed. And that meant it would just have a flow on effect with the rest of our shows. Which is good – it would have been tough if you went there and no one knew you. So it was kind of like Beth said – a mini version of a folk festival. If you see something that’s good you go and tell your mate and they all go to the next show.
BS: Everyone walks around with name tags constantly for the three or four days. So you get into the lift and everyone checks what’s on your name tag.
EH: Was it the name of the band as well as your names?
BS: Yeah
SS: We amped it up as well because we had these tote bags made up as merch things with this huge Little Stevies sign on it. We just walked around with marketing all over us (laughs). We were like walking billboards.
EH: Was that the same American trip that you were doing video tour diaries as well?
SS: Yeah.
RGG: Yeah, we did them for both trips.
EH: That’s really using social media and new technology to your advantage. There’s a lot of bands that don’t do that very well but you guys seem to be on top of it.
BS: I really like the idea of having videos because when there’s a band that I love, and I’m becoming obsessive about for a little while, once you’ve looked at all their video clips on YouTube that you can see anywhere, on Rage, on Video Hits, you like to find out about the band and what they’re like. You like to feel like you know them personally a bit. I guess that’s where [the video diaries] come into play.
RGG: There’s obviously a few hundred people that think that as well (laughs)
SS: Any new fans of The Little Stevies have got at least three hours worth of internet content to watch through.
EH: Going back to folk festivals – I get the impression being labeled “folk” doesn’t always sit well with you guys. You’re obviously playing at folk festivals, you have folk-type instruments in your band, your bio calls you pop-folk, we call you pop-folk as well. Do you think of yourselves as folk musicians?
SS: Not at all really (laughs). That’s not to say we’re not very grateful to be able to fit into that spectrum because it means we do, like you say, get to come and play at these festivals which are perfect for really because they’re full of music loving individuals who want to hear great music and want to buy your CDs. It’s funny – we set out to make a really great pop album with [Attention Shoppers], the word “folk” didn’t even come into it. Except for when we were recording “Last Summer Day”, the last song on the album, we definitely wanted that to sound like an old time folk song. But with most of the other stuff our intentions weren’t to make any type of folk album. But it’s funny once you get put in that box, what ever it might be. Reviews of the album have come out and they talk about “Accidentally”, the first track on the album, and go “a great folk-pop gem”. And I’m like “what is folk about that? There’s nothing folk about that!” (Editor’s note: We’re pretty sure Sibylla is talking about our review). But that’s cool.
EH: At Timber and Steel we think that if you’ve got an acoustic guitar or a banjo or a ukulele in your band then you’re folk enough for us.
SS: Absolutely. And there’s so many of these festivals where there’s so many bands who aren’t strictly folk – and how boring would it be if you just literally went to a music festival all based on this one tiny genre? It’s so great that there’s such a huge realm I think. It makes it interesting for everyone.
RGG: The other thing that I always think is that folk music and pop music are just like German versus the Latin way of saying “music for the people”. Folk is the Germanic route of the word “people” and pop comes from “popular”, the Latin base of which means “people”. They mean exactly the same thing when you think about it. There’s no real difference except in this day and age folk has come to represent something different from what it originally was. Because popular music back in, say, the nineteenth century, the music of the common people who didn’t go to the opera or whatever, was this Celtic dance music with stringed instruments it sort of got stuck with that association. Really what it was meant to mean was music for people who may not be educated or may not be rich enough to attend operas and recitals and that sort of thing.
EH: Probably why I would identify you as folk the most, and it’s not because you play “folk” instruments – although if Robin doesn’t get an upright bass or we might have to stop covering The Little Stevies, but is more to do with the story telling aspect of your writing.
SS: I was just about to say that. Maybe that’s why we’re still on [Timber and Steel] and that’s a great thing. I hope we always write music with stories in it. That’s what excites me about writing songs.
BS: That’s what makes a song linger, sort of stay in your head. To have a really strong impression and a lot to read into rather than it being black and white and a bit boring.
EH: I really like the way you weave your storytelling through the phrasing in your songs. I don’t know if you do that on purpose. I’m thinking in particular “Sunshower”. It’s got this lovely story which is pushed forward by the fact that a sentence will meander over multiple phrases in the music. You feel like you’re going on a journey.
SS: Aww thanks. Yeah that was really deliberate (laughs).
EH: So there’s a new album out Attention Shoppers – how’s that been going for you so far?
BS: It’s going really well. It only came out two weeks ago and since then we’ve had Port Fairy Folk Festival and [the Blue Mountains Music Festival] which have both been so good in terms of getting the album out there to lots of people. We’re stoked.
EH: I love it. When I got it I just absolutely slammed it and I’ve been recommending it to everyone.
SS: Thanks!
EH: And you’ve just started a national tour?
BS: We’re going everywhere over the next two months. It basically ends at the end of May. Everywhere I think.
SS: Except for Darwin.
RGG: I’d love to get up there.
EH: And any plans after the tour?
BS: Yeah, it looks like we’re going to Canada in about June. We’re going back there for about five weeks. We’ve got a couple of festivals over there that we’re booked into because we got a booking agent from the last trip. That should be really fun. And we’ve also got, possibly, North By Northeast…
SS: Which is the Canadian version of South By Southwest.
BS: So yeah, it’s really really exciting. Can’t wait.
EH: You seem to go overseas all the time. Is it surreal to be in a band and getting to travel all over the world?
BS: Yeah, it’s cool.
SS: It’s funny – when you’re doing it, like anything that you do, you don’t spend all your time going “I can’t believe I’m doing this”. But then every now and then you have a moment and go “oh yeah, that’s cool!”. It’s a lot of hard work as well, like anything that’s worthwhile in life.
BS: Money well spent
SS; (laughs) That’s right. Time well spent. Money well spent.
EH: Is there anything else you guys want to plug while you’ve got our attention?
SS: One thing that might be interesting to mention is that we’ve got an audio commentary of our whole album which is available on iTunes. It’s a funny little interesting extra thing. We had it out and it was supposed to be this extra content thing for iTunes and we just haven’t ended up making as big a deal out of it as we thought we would.
RGG: We want to make it available to [non-iTunes users] on the website at some point as well.
EH: Well we might wrap it up there guys. Thanks so much for chatting with us.
BS: Thank you.
SS: No problem

Check out the tour dates for The Little Stevies here – but get in quick so you don’t miss out!