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The Audreys.
 Perhaps it's because I've seen The Audreys live so many times that it really does seem much longer than a mere eighteen months since they formed; or maybe it's the sheer volume of impressive achievements they've racked up in that short period. And The Audreys' star is set to rise even higher with the release of their exceptionally gorgeous debut album, 'Between Last Night And Us'.
"We did our first gig as The Audreys in June 2004," states angelic vocalist Taasha Coates. "We played at The Fad Bar with The Yearlings. Tristan [Goodall] and I were living in Melbourne and we came here and started the band in Adelaide, which is where we're originally from. We actually came back here and wanted to meet The Yearlings because we knew of them and saw them at a festival in Victoria and they were doing what we wanted to do."
"Taasha and I had been writing songs for about twelve months prior to that," says guitarist/banjo player Goodall, "and we then invited Mikey along because he's a friend of ours, so we can't say that we were an entirely new band."
"And Cam is Tristan's brother," continues Coates, referring to their multi-string instrumentalist and original member Cam Goodall, who divides his time between the band and his acting career. This has freed up vocal roles for violinist/mandolin player Mikey G. and newly recruited double bassist Lyndon Gray, "and together we played lots of cafˇ styled folky acoustic cover gigs together in Melbourne."
Regardless, now they've been joined by drummer Rob Eyers, one can't deny The Audreys ever-growing popularity. Much of this has been via the very lucrative national festival circuit; a path well-trodden by the likes of The Waifs, Fruit, Xavier Rudd and The John Butler Trio. "Yeah, and we're the first to recognise that we've had such a really good run," admits Mikey G. "And there's been a lot of good fortune, but we've also worked very hard too to put ourselves in that position to get that exposure."
"Daily we're finding ourselves in positions where we've never been before," Goodall adds. "We're playing in bigger and better festivals so it's been a real hard and fast learning curve for us, but it's not just been the hard work; it's also believing in what we play and surrounding ourselves with the people that we love and respect. We chose a producer that we really wanted to work with, someone that Taasha and I wanted to record with for years. Shane O'Mara produced the last couple of Tim Rogers records, he's also worked with Stephen Cummings and did Lisa Miller's 'Car Tape' CD. We really trusted Shane, so there was a definite sense of going into the project really open-minded."
"His wife is Rebecca Barnard," picks up Coates, "and their band is Rebecca's Empire. This is going to sound a bit cheesy, but we had a bit of a dream where we could combine the things that we love; that's to form a band and travel, and because Shane is someone whose work we really love we'd also thought that maybe one day we'd make an album with him. So it's actually really odd when we look back and think that we've done all that and now we have to think of something new to aim for, so it's all very exciting and a bit scary too."
"It's been really interesting to watch the broad cross section of people who've bought our CDs and come up to us to talk about what we do," marvels Mikey G. "which is kind of surprising for us because we thought what we do is just very much what we want to play. But because tags like country, folk or Celtic, jazz or blues or whatever are all loaded terms and because what we do is a little bit of this and a little bit of that, it ultimately turns out to be our own thing and that might be a hard thing to market. But what the heck we're still going to do it anyway."
From Woodford to WOMADelaide - A Day On The Green to Austin, Texas to showcase at the 2006 International Folk Alliance Conference, it seems people can't get enough of them Audrey folk.
Steve Jones
 | The Audreys launch 'Between Last Night And Us' at the Famous Spiegeltent on Wed 22 Feb. |
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