The Collapse Board interview – Fire Witch
One of my favorite things about Liars are the liner notes — where you guys talk about not being on drugs and how it took forever to get the record out: why are be so honest?
Well, honesty tends to make a lot of people uncomfortable and I like that. And we were never into bullshit or creating an image. An image would have limited us and we didn’t want any limits. Though imposing limits is the best move you can ever make if you wanna sell more records. And we are nerds you know? We love to read stuff on the bands we like. I can’t even remember what I wrote now. I’ve lightened up a lot more now though and am not so opposed to images. I guess they can be fun.
Why did it take five years to get that thing out anyway?
Oh, I wonder if I can give you the short version! … It just happened to turn out to our liking. Being the nerds we are we decided to release them separately as two limited edition EPs. This allowed us to go to town on fancy handmade packaging that we always liked doing.
The idea was as soon as they sold out we would put them together as one album. But by the time that came around we were close to taking our indefinite break and people were buying a lot less CDs and I couldn’t afford to lose money on releasing it. Also in the meantime we did a split CD and tour with Ryokuchi (Japan) and then recorded the Wantage 10-inch whilst on tour in Japan. So it sat on the shelf for a few years until Ben (Bro Fi records) convinced me to co-release it with him. At that point it was like a monkey on my back and I just wanted the fucking thing out! But i’m glad we did it now cos it has renewed some interest in the band. And it gave us an excuse to play some shows again.
Slow, stoner rock has really blown up in the United States — but it’s not necessarily all good. Is this the case in Australia? How do people react to metal/heavy rock there?
Look, I think most music is shit! I’m not a downer or anything, I just generally don’t like genre-appeasing music. And for most people that is exactly what they like. And that’s fine, they can have that, it’s not hurting anyone.
Stoner rock has always been big in our town (as far as i have known), maybe less so in most other cities. And now there is a lot of doom too. Anything metal or stoner is always treated as very daggy and uncool by the hipsters and most of the media but they have their own community who don’t care about that shit and they seem to get on with it with a minimal amount of bullshit.
So the masses aren’t following Fire Witch … ?
No, we have a very small following. But so do most of the bands here that I like. Most people don’t like to be challenged too much and a Fire Witch show tends to do that and also asks a lot of patience of the listener. I feel like more people took notice of us once we came back from Japan (mid 2007) and maybe we had an opportunity then to build on that, but that’s when we took a break. So possibly we have no one to blame more than ourselves. The other two in the band don’t really care though. They really just want to play and if other people enjoy it that’s fine. I respect that greatly in them.
I would like a bigger following purely for the fact it would mean we could afford to tour and record, we don’t need the approval of the masses, we make our music for ourselves. The fact some people like it and come out and support us is amazing. We may not have many people at our shows but the people who come are willing to go wherever we take it, they know they may not hear a single song they know and are cool with that. That is pretty amazing really.
Does your band feel isolated being in Australia? Or in Melbourne?
It’s hard to say. This is a very big country with very few cities you can play in. It’s usually a 10- or 12-hour drive to the next show for us. But this is all I have ever known. It is a long way for us to go if we want to tour to the States or Europe and that is frustrating. I am extremely jealous of countries like yours where there are so many more places to play. If you live in this country and are into music you move to a big city. There are very few exceptions to this. So it makes regional options very scarce.
Melbourne is an absolute glut for bands. I think it’s one of the busiest cities in the world for live music? So it’s less that you feel isolated and more that you feel swallowed up and it’s impossible to get noticed. If you wanna do well here you’re actually much better off being from another city.
People have always said to me we would do much better in Europe or other places and we would be much more appreciated. But I’m reluctant to go down the distant fields are green road. -> -> ->
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