A Good Ship Gone Bad
October 10th 2010 10:42
Hailing from Brisbane via the open seas, The Good Ship offer up a blend of sea-shanties and folk, with tales of drinking, debauchery and dicks (6000 of them!) on their debut album “Avast! Wretched Sea.”
I caught up with band members Daz Gray and John Meyer for a pint and a yarn or two.
So how did the band come together?
DG: We got together after doing the same shows and bemoaning the state of our current bands, I played John some of my songs, which were different from the kind of stuff we’d been playing.
JM: I’d been concentrating on my solo stuff and, one night, we had a kind of bitching and drinking session and we began to realise that the songs we both had seemed to go together.
DG: So it became a bit of a side project that we really started doing for shits and giggles but, from there, it all sort of happened organically. I mentioned the project to my mate Geoff who said he could play mandolin so he was in the band, John knew Colette who said she played trumpet in a school marching band, so she was in the band and so it went on and on. At times we have between 7 and 9 members in the band.
Listening to the album, there seems to be a relaxed and fun feeling to the group
JM: It is. Both of us come from a songwriter mentality, agonising over structure and syllables and that sort of crap, so the songs themselves are still well crafted but I think we realised that you don’t have to mess with those structures and they can be really natural. I mean, if it’s a country hoedown, we all know how that goes.
DG: Once you have those parameters, you can add the colour and put your own stamp on it. From there the song almost writes itself and you start making it sound like a Good Ship song.
JM: I like the whole story telling idea. If you’re writing an indie-pop song or some kind of heartfelt, obscure, intelligent rock song, you’re almost trying to be a bit clever or a bit different whereas, in this kind of space, the idea comes to you for a character or a story and you can just let it happen.
DG: You don’t have to force it; you can let it develop as opposed to wanting to be a bit hipster or a bit cool
JM: Not that we ever did that successfully
A lot of the songs on the album are quite explicit, was that also a natural progression?
DG: Well that’s kind of what brought it all together, the last song I had with my old band was called “A Day in Your Wife” which could quite easily be a Good Ship song and I always had a few of those so, when John played me a couple of his songs, I thought I have a shit load of those kind of songs. That’s how my friends and I talk, that’s what we talk about and that’s the language we use.
As a storytelling songwriter, unless you’re inhabiting a character from 1705, I like to speak how the character speaks and that’s how people talk. I’m not going to put on any pretenses or high fallooting language. I like the honesty, and people relate to that.
JM: It is concerted in a sense. After that night when we realised we had four or five songs that sat together and were a bit dark, you do start to write some in that way and start to push the envelope.
DG: I don’t see us as a joke band, but you don’t want to give people the impression you’re a joke band either so we have a number of songs on the album such as “Cut Off My” and “No Shortage of Company” that are song songs. You can’t be taking the piss all the time.
There is a very distinct maritime/sea shanty feel to the album. Did this come about from the songs or did the name Good Ship push you towards this imagery?
JM: I can’t remember which came first. I remember us coming up with the name fairly early on and there were maybe only one or two sea related songs around that time, but once you have those parameters set, you move in that direction. They’re not really sea shanties, more influenced by sea shanties and old folk tales. There’s only really “Sea Monster” and “Harbour Fair” on that first album that are necessarily sea related, everything else is unrelated but still seem to fits.
DG: Although we do have a few more sea songs that we play now. It gives us a bowl to sit it in almost.
JM: Although that can be a danger too as you don’t want to start disregarding songs because they don’t fit in.
One of the tracks on the album is called “Tavern Song” where are the taverns in Brisbane?
DG: Yeh, there’s probably not many bars in Brisbane you would class as tavernesque. That song came about as I was listening to a lot of Waterboys at the time, hence why the names in the song are Irish.
JM: It’s such a classic structure that song. It ticks all the boxes
Has advances in technology over the last couple of years made this project easier than your previous ones?
JM: It’s always an effort getting anything done in the music business. Having spent many years playing shitty gigs while you’re developing bands and writing songs meant that, when it came to the development stage for Good Ship, we just hit the ground running and didn’t mess about.
DG: It’s really a case of not thinking too much about it either. The concept and the feel of the band means the video can be a bit more ramshackle. For “A Harbour Fair” we hired The Zoo in Fortitude Valley for four hours and it took us two and a half to set up so we only had an hour and a half to film so it was pretty intense.
JM: We’re not some slick label act so I don’t think people expect a slick $20,000 video from us.
DG: We’re just a fun band that occasionally makes you think and we want people to see the video and think “These guys look like a bunch of dickheads, that’s awesome, I’m gonna go see them”
So you obviously like to have fun on stage?
JM: Yeh, we like to arse about quite a bit but you obviously try to play the songs as best you can.
DG: Having so many members in the band brings its own challenges, particularly when you have members like Geoff who are a bit nutty and you don’t know what they are going to do next.
JM: Geoff almost destroyed the bar at The Labour in Vain in Fitzroy. He got up on the bar and started ringing the bell. We were sure we were going to get kicked out.
DG: We’re a fairly tight act so you have that combination of structure and arsing about, just like the album.
JM: There’s nothing worse than seeing a drunk band on stage that just doesn’t care, that’s not what we’re about. But each live show is a specific individual thing that happens and you can’t plan it too much.
DG: I don’t think I could be in a band that rehearsed to the point of planning the dropping of the microphone on the third song. I think the thing I’ve learnt most about this band was that playing in a band can be fun. Playing in The Good Ship, I just piss myself laughing and have a great time.
You released “Avast! Wretched Sea” as a full album and not an EP. Was that simply due to the amount of tracks you had?
JM: There were a couple of reasons. It was partly because we’d been in the music for a while and when this band just coalesced there didn’t seem any point in bringing out an EP. An EP is a taste of what you think you are as a band and then you develop, sort of like a calling card. That’s not what we’re about.
DG: We already know what we are. We already had a shitload of songs and we already knew what our style was. Plus, we had a couple of band members at that time who we knew were leaving so we wanted to grab Good Ship mark one before they left.
JM: This album is basically a record of what we did in our first year.
DG: We’ve got another two albums of material ready for as soon as we can afford to record.
JM: There’s nothing tentative about this band
The Good Ship’s debut album, “Avast! Wretched Sea” is out now on Autumn Recording, you can catch The Good Ship at The Troubadour, Brisbane on Sunday 29th October.
I caught up with band members Daz Gray and John Meyer for a pint and a yarn or two.
So how did the band come together?
DG: We got together after doing the same shows and bemoaning the state of our current bands, I played John some of my songs, which were different from the kind of stuff we’d been playing.
JM: I’d been concentrating on my solo stuff and, one night, we had a kind of bitching and drinking session and we began to realise that the songs we both had seemed to go together.
DG: So it became a bit of a side project that we really started doing for shits and giggles but, from there, it all sort of happened organically. I mentioned the project to my mate Geoff who said he could play mandolin so he was in the band, John knew Colette who said she played trumpet in a school marching band, so she was in the band and so it went on and on. At times we have between 7 and 9 members in the band.
Listening to the album, there seems to be a relaxed and fun feeling to the group
JM: It is. Both of us come from a songwriter mentality, agonising over structure and syllables and that sort of crap, so the songs themselves are still well crafted but I think we realised that you don’t have to mess with those structures and they can be really natural. I mean, if it’s a country hoedown, we all know how that goes.
DG: Once you have those parameters, you can add the colour and put your own stamp on it. From there the song almost writes itself and you start making it sound like a Good Ship song.
JM: I like the whole story telling idea. If you’re writing an indie-pop song or some kind of heartfelt, obscure, intelligent rock song, you’re almost trying to be a bit clever or a bit different whereas, in this kind of space, the idea comes to you for a character or a story and you can just let it happen.
DG: You don’t have to force it; you can let it develop as opposed to wanting to be a bit hipster or a bit cool
JM: Not that we ever did that successfully
A lot of the songs on the album are quite explicit, was that also a natural progression?
DG: Well that’s kind of what brought it all together, the last song I had with my old band was called “A Day in Your Wife” which could quite easily be a Good Ship song and I always had a few of those so, when John played me a couple of his songs, I thought I have a shit load of those kind of songs. That’s how my friends and I talk, that’s what we talk about and that’s the language we use.
As a storytelling songwriter, unless you’re inhabiting a character from 1705, I like to speak how the character speaks and that’s how people talk. I’m not going to put on any pretenses or high fallooting language. I like the honesty, and people relate to that.
JM: It is concerted in a sense. After that night when we realised we had four or five songs that sat together and were a bit dark, you do start to write some in that way and start to push the envelope.
DG: I don’t see us as a joke band, but you don’t want to give people the impression you’re a joke band either so we have a number of songs on the album such as “Cut Off My” and “No Shortage of Company” that are song songs. You can’t be taking the piss all the time.
There is a very distinct maritime/sea shanty feel to the album. Did this come about from the songs or did the name Good Ship push you towards this imagery?
JM: I can’t remember which came first. I remember us coming up with the name fairly early on and there were maybe only one or two sea related songs around that time, but once you have those parameters set, you move in that direction. They’re not really sea shanties, more influenced by sea shanties and old folk tales. There’s only really “Sea Monster” and “Harbour Fair” on that first album that are necessarily sea related, everything else is unrelated but still seem to fits.
DG: Although we do have a few more sea songs that we play now. It gives us a bowl to sit it in almost.
JM: Although that can be a danger too as you don’t want to start disregarding songs because they don’t fit in.
One of the tracks on the album is called “Tavern Song” where are the taverns in Brisbane?
DG: Yeh, there’s probably not many bars in Brisbane you would class as tavernesque. That song came about as I was listening to a lot of Waterboys at the time, hence why the names in the song are Irish.
JM: It’s such a classic structure that song. It ticks all the boxes
Has advances in technology over the last couple of years made this project easier than your previous ones?
JM: It’s always an effort getting anything done in the music business. Having spent many years playing shitty gigs while you’re developing bands and writing songs meant that, when it came to the development stage for Good Ship, we just hit the ground running and didn’t mess about.
DG: It’s really a case of not thinking too much about it either. The concept and the feel of the band means the video can be a bit more ramshackle. For “A Harbour Fair” we hired The Zoo in Fortitude Valley for four hours and it took us two and a half to set up so we only had an hour and a half to film so it was pretty intense.
JM: We’re not some slick label act so I don’t think people expect a slick $20,000 video from us.
DG: We’re just a fun band that occasionally makes you think and we want people to see the video and think “These guys look like a bunch of dickheads, that’s awesome, I’m gonna go see them”
So you obviously like to have fun on stage?
JM: Yeh, we like to arse about quite a bit but you obviously try to play the songs as best you can.
DG: Having so many members in the band brings its own challenges, particularly when you have members like Geoff who are a bit nutty and you don’t know what they are going to do next.
JM: Geoff almost destroyed the bar at The Labour in Vain in Fitzroy. He got up on the bar and started ringing the bell. We were sure we were going to get kicked out.
DG: We’re a fairly tight act so you have that combination of structure and arsing about, just like the album.
JM: There’s nothing worse than seeing a drunk band on stage that just doesn’t care, that’s not what we’re about. But each live show is a specific individual thing that happens and you can’t plan it too much.
DG: I don’t think I could be in a band that rehearsed to the point of planning the dropping of the microphone on the third song. I think the thing I’ve learnt most about this band was that playing in a band can be fun. Playing in The Good Ship, I just piss myself laughing and have a great time.
You released “Avast! Wretched Sea” as a full album and not an EP. Was that simply due to the amount of tracks you had?
JM: There were a couple of reasons. It was partly because we’d been in the music for a while and when this band just coalesced there didn’t seem any point in bringing out an EP. An EP is a taste of what you think you are as a band and then you develop, sort of like a calling card. That’s not what we’re about.
DG: We already know what we are. We already had a shitload of songs and we already knew what our style was. Plus, we had a couple of band members at that time who we knew were leaving so we wanted to grab Good Ship mark one before they left.
JM: This album is basically a record of what we did in our first year.
DG: We’ve got another two albums of material ready for as soon as we can afford to record.
JM: There’s nothing tentative about this band
The Good Ship’s debut album, “Avast! Wretched Sea” is out now on Autumn Recording, you can catch The Good Ship at The Troubadour, Brisbane on Sunday 29th October.
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