Bluejuice
"You know, It seems like everything has moved to a different level in terms of being backstage and your treatment and the kinds of artists who you're playing with," begins Bluejuice co-front man Stav Yiannoukas. "I mean, I think it's getting pretty big when you get to play table tennis with Pepa from Salt-N-Pepa," he laughs. Yiannoukas maintains a sarcastically modest tone for the remainder of our chat and he seems pretty surprised at how well the band has been travelling. Sets at the Big Day Out, Splendour In The Grass and Good Vibrations have put the band in good stead over the summer, ahead of a national tour which will soon have taken the Bluejuice show to every State and Territory in Australia. "We're in the van now, just leaving for Armidale," he explains, as the band begin their voyage down the coast before thoroughly exploring the rest of the country in their Bluejuice-mobile. "Usually everyone is off in their own little world during these long drives. If you sat in the van with us as we drive around it'd probably be the most boring experience of your life. The only thing more boring would be after a show when we're just sitting back at our hotel room watching Question Time or something equally dull to most people, but somehow ever so slightly interesting to us." The band has over twenty more stops to make and downtime is already a high priority for Yiannoukas. Still, seeing Bluejuice suited up and jumping around a stage would suggest they're anything but a dull band. "Yeah, I guess it leads to the misconception that we're these really exciting party animals but that's just not true. Running around on stage gets us pretty fit, I guess, but other than that we're all reasonably lazy. Except for our drummer James who likes to get up at 6:30 in the morning in Alice Springs and go for an eight kilometre run. Because he's a freak," Yiannoukas laughs. "Alice Springs was just amazing. Absolutely beautiful," he insists, having made the trip as part of Triple J's One Night Stand. "Apparently there's a lot of bullshit that gets said in the media about white fellas and black fellas not getting along in the area, but I didn't see or experience anything like that. It seemed to be incredibly harmonious on that front." "In terms of the gig, we kind of went in with this game plan which was: let's perform less to the audience there and perform more for the radio audience who are listening around the country. In other words: let's be a little bit more stationary and focus on the sound of things rather than the visual aspect of things," he explains. "But once we were on stage, Jake [Stone, vocals] totally abandoned that plan after about two songs. So I'm there feeling like a douchebag and listening closely to absolutely everything while he's just going fucking bananas, which he often does." Stone and Yiannoukas generally share the load of a typical front man on stage and he maintains that aside from a small hiccup, the pair is pretty cohesive. "In retrospect, it's pretty unnatural for us to tone down a Bluejuice show, so by the end of it I think the performance was in full swing." "At the moment we're trying to finish a bunch of new songs that will eventually be on the third album. Normally we'll play them live and some bits work and some bits don't, so we'll change everything accordingly," he explains. As a result, fans at upcoming Bluejuice shows have a great deal of power in deciding which songs are working and which can be scrapped. While the band are still travelling around to promote their second album 'Head Of The Hawk', Yiannoukas is adamant that the band is constantly writing and perfecting their art. "If you taped all the Bluejuice shows in the lead-up to the third album you'd see how the songs are continuously changing. You'd also be totally bored unless you were an obsessive lead vocalist in a band and all you like to do is get stoned and stay up for six hours a night listening to the band demo constantly and worrying like a crazed old mother about these little babies; the songs." Bluejuice play at The Gov on Wednesday 5 May 'Head Of The Hawk' is out now through Dew Process  |
Issue 492
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