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The Audreys
 2006/07 has been nothing short of awe-inspiring for The Audreys. The release of their exceptional debut album 'Between Us And Last Night' has seen the band progress from local back bar stages to national headline tours and nearly every major festival in the country, along with numerous such spots throughout the UK, Europe, the US and Canada and an ever increasing number of television appearances.
Not forgetting them winning a few trophies along the way, including the much coveted 'Best Blues & Roots Album' award at last year's ARIA's. Not bad for a band that a few short months earlier were still playing to intimate crowds at The Wheatsheaf Hotel, where, with the added bonus of a warm cosy fire, I mutually agreed to meet up with vocalist Taasha Coates.
"Last tour we did twenty-seven shows whereas this time there's only seventeen," enthuses Coates, "and five of them are in the same venue. We originally got booked for three shows but because they sold out so quickly we had to put on another two," she says excitedly. "With that, we had Triple J sponsor our last tour and it was also on the back of a high rotation single so I think a lot of people came to our shows out of curiosity," she avers, inadvertently underplaying their popularity. "So I think we'll have a bit more of a fan-based audience this time, as in people will come because they've got the album. We've also played a lot of festivals, and some of them have been rock festivals like The Falls and the Big Day Out so we were like the token folk or roots act," she informs me, with a slight tone of bewilderment in her voice. "That's also a big step away from doing our own club shows where people have paid just to see you," she states.
"Get this," Coates leans forward to continue, "after the Big Day Out we actually got some emails from fans saying that they really wanted to come see us but we were on the same time as Tool. I mean, what kind of person likes The Audreys and Tool?" she muses. "And at The Falls Festival we were on the main stage after Little Birdy, so that was really scary. Then, at the Southbound Festival (WA) we had to fill in on the main stage for Modest Mouse because they had to reschedule their spot, so when the stage manager announced us heaps of people were like, 'Who?' Heaps of people walked away, but with those who stayed you could see they were like, 'You're fucking kidding me!'. Because we pulled out our banjos and things, they just looked horrified but I think we slowly won some of them over."
Reiterating upon how quickly their profile has risen, there must've been moments within the camp during this transition where they had doubts about becoming a serious touring proposition. "Yeah, well," she ponders, before affirming, "Lyndon [Gray] our bass player, and Toby [Lang] our drummer have both been full-time musicians for a while now. And Tristan [Goodall] and I," she sheepishly adds, "I hate to admit, were both on the dole. Mikey [G] our violin player was the only one who actually had a day job. Then came that point where he realised that he couldn't do both and he had to choose one over the other, so to his great credit he really took a big chance. Which was great, but I didn't envy him having to make that choice."
So was there a contingency plan? "There wasn't one," came the immediate reply. "But I found that once we really started to get stuck into it there wasn't any time for anything else. It really became a full-time commitment. Firstly, there was writing for the album and then it took us a month to make it, so it's really been full on for about two years now."
Which now brings us to that conjectured difficult second album. "Honestly, I probably wouldn't be thinking about that too much if people weren't constantly asking me that question," she momentarily recoils, before philosophically adding, "But I actually do think that it's a privileged position that we're in because we know that lots of people have heard our first album, which would probably mean that most of those people will be interested in hearing our second one. And for a musician, that's a good thing because you know you're going to make something people are going to hear, whereas with our first album we didn't know if anyone was going to hear it, you know? We knew our fans at the Wheaty and our friends and families would, but we never thought that people all around Australia and internationally would. Maybe this is just me convincing myself, but I'm trying to go into the next one thinking that because we're making something that we know people will hear, let's make something we're really proud of."
Just like 'Between Us And Last Night' and the pointy prize upon the band's mantel? "I have no idea what happened," Coates recalls of the ARIA announcement. "I still have little moments where I remember back to that night or when I look at the statue and go, 'Fucking hell!'. I was never one of those to jump around my bedroom with a hairbrush and pretend I was a superstar; I just had a really deep love for music and that's all I wanted to do. Whatever it took, I just wanted to be a musician so for something like this to happen was just..." she stalls for words. "I don't know? It's still amazing and I still can't quite believe it. I'm really proud of [the award] but not in a cheesy, 'American hand on my heart' kind of way. But it's kind of like being let in by your peers and have them saying, 'Yeah, you're okay and we like what you do'. It's just a really special thing."
Steve Jones
The Audreys play The Gov on Saturday 16 June.
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