It’s not very often that one can interview a band so recently after breaking up, especially a band so close to home. In Fiction was a band that dominated both the Adelaide and Australian music scene soon after their formation in 2005, being rated as one of Triple J’s up and coming artists. Their Ghost EP debuted at No. 14 in the Aria charts, earning the band spots on the 2007 Boomtown Showdown Tour, as Well as the 2008 Adelaide Soundwave Festival and the 2008 Push Over Festival. I caught up with vocalist and front man Brad Gilbertson to discuss the highs and lows of inspiration, band-life and venues in Newcastle.
TC: Okay, a big interest of mine because I’ve followed you for a fair while, where did the name come from?
Brad: Before we were called In Fiction, three of us were playing in a band called Short Term Gain, and it was going alright, but one night Darren Thompson, our manager at the time pulled us aside and said ‘Look, there’s no easy way to say this, but [your] name sucks, you need to change it.’ The next day we wrote down a list of words and fiction was on it, so we thought, how about chucking an 'in' on the front and just be In Fiction… It works well, as a lot of our songs are written almost as short stories. It was a necessity to change the name because it was terrible, so we just picked it out of random words.
TC: You wrote all of the lyrics didn’t you? Where does the inspiration come from?
Brad: Some of them were from personal experience, not necessarily the scenarios, but feelings you have about different things, you know what I mean? And as I said before, I’m always trying to tell a story through the song, so The Illusion [The Forecast (Album)] kind of talks about life as a band… 1945 [The Forecast (Album)] is a song that’s very important to me personally, as it’s actually talking about my Granddad, who served in the Second World War, so it’s almost a love letter, talking about how he’s gotten married then gone straight to war, and then come home again to try and start anew.
TC: What’s the best venue you’ve played at, and why?
Brad: That is a tough one. There are so many good venues… Particularly the larger, 1500 person stages, the atmosphere is intense. Fowler’s Live though, has the best backstage I have ever seen. I could list off the bad ones though.
TC: Alright, tell me about the bad ones.
Brad: Well, I don’t exactly remember names… But anywhere around Newcastle is bad. They’ve got places like, I don’t know, The Three Legged Dog. Actually that might actually be a place. But the music scene there needs a serious revamp… Once when we were playing a show in Newcastle, a guy was murdered on the stairs of the venue, the night before we were playing.
TC: Tell me about some of the crazy things you guys have done.
Brad: On our first tour, the Boomtown tour, we had played about 3 shows, then had a few days off, and we just went to the casino every night… Then all of a sudden our days off were gone and we had 8 shows left to play, I had completely lost my voice and we had to pull out of most of the next shows. We didn’t get offered any tours for a while.
Another time, we were doing a show in Melbourne and went out afterward… No joke at 3am we showed up at a place called the Honkey Tonk – surprisingly enough it wasn’t a gay bar – and there was this guy barbecuing shrimp. It was the only time I have ever seen an Aussie live up to that stereotype.
TC: The art you guys use - particularly the album art - is pretty fantastic, where did the inspiration come for that?
Brad: The Forecast was an interesting album, mainly because it was entirely written on tour. It was fairly unrealistic to produce an album in the time we did, but somehow we managed it. And the name was interesting, "to forecast" is to predict something with a certain degree of certainty. I spoke to our manager and suggested 'The Forecast' and he thought it was crap, but when I talked to the guys they all liked it. Originally we contacted a Brazilian art company, and they sent back these pictures of chicks in bikinis… Not really what we were after, so we got in touch with a Melbourne company called Robot Academy, what you see is what they gave us.
TC: What does the album art signify? Obviously it’s related to the assign of time, as everything is exploding out of a clock.
Brad: If you look at the whole picture, the closer to the clock is the more recent time, so at the other end, the start, there’s all the earthy type things, water, mountains and forests, then it becomes more industrialized, before moving to a gun and missiles, then eventually skulls. It’s designed as a circle, so the earthy nature things at the start eventually come around and kill off the development, and ready everything for a new beginning. It’s not intended to be religious at all.
TC: You’re now onto your 2nd bassist and 3rd drummer, was it difficult rotating through band members?
Brad: The hardest thing in Alistair’s [Bassist] case was that he had moved from Melbourne pretty much just to play in the band, so he had the whole relocation thing, and it was a huge leap of faith on his part. But, he’s liked it in Adelaide and actually met his lovely wife Courtney here, so that’s good. Drums were a little difficult because we actually switched drummers on tour; we ended up having Brodie [Her Latest Flame] play a lot of shows, which made the transition a lot easier for Tom [Drummer], although originally Tom signed on just for the album, but after recording that, he asked to stay on and we were stoked!
TC: So apart from replacing band members, what was the biggest challenge?
Brad: We were 5 individual people with 5 individual lives. It’s really, really hard to keep all that running smoothly. Everyone has their own ways of doing things, some people like this food, some people don’t, some people want to play at certain venues and not at others, some people have a big night out and rock up feeling crap, whilst others take an early one to be ready for the show. And the thing is, none of this can be shown on stage. There were times where Paul [Guitarist] and I wouldn’t have spoken for days, we’d go out on stage and play and be ‘normal’, then we’d go backstage and there would be this angry stand-off. I think we did a pretty good job of hiding that.
TC: What is the best memory you have from the band?
Brad: Probably how everything was when we first started, it’s was the type of thing that doesn’t really pay much but is so fun to do, like Steve [ex-drummer] and I grew up listening to Bodyjar, then all of a sudden we were playing on tour with them. Just the excitement of everything starting to come together. And then other things, like, touring all over the country and hearing the crowd sing along to Calendar Notes.
TC: Would you say Calendar Notes is your defining song?
Brad: As a band, I think so. It’s amazing, it was on our first EP [The Four Letter Failure], got no air-time at all, locally or nationally, and yet in every show we play, everyone somehow knows the words… We actually almost didn’t put it on the EP. It was written a couple of years before we recorded [The Four Letter Failure], and is a much more raw song than any of the other ones. Although, When The Camera’s Off [Ghost EP] is probably my favorite song to play, it’s just so much fun, there’s a real kick step to it and you can really get into it.
TC: Any last words?
Brad: The support we got was amazing, we are all so grateful for the support that everyone showed us throughout the time with In Fiction. On the breakup… It’s hard to explain that type of thing, because for us In Fiction had run its course, it wasn’t like the start anymore, but it’s really difficult because very few people see what’s going on internally. And we’re all still involved in music projects, so it’s not like we’re giving that up, it’s just more of a side project.
In Fiction are still maintaining their MySpace account, www.myspace.com/infictionband. Their music is also available for purchase via the iTunes Store.
TC: Okay, a big interest of mine because I’ve followed you for a fair while, where did the name come from?
Brad: Before we were called In Fiction, three of us were playing in a band called Short Term Gain, and it was going alright, but one night Darren Thompson, our manager at the time pulled us aside and said ‘Look, there’s no easy way to say this, but [your] name sucks, you need to change it.’ The next day we wrote down a list of words and fiction was on it, so we thought, how about chucking an 'in' on the front and just be In Fiction… It works well, as a lot of our songs are written almost as short stories. It was a necessity to change the name because it was terrible, so we just picked it out of random words.
TC: You wrote all of the lyrics didn’t you? Where does the inspiration come from?
Brad: Some of them were from personal experience, not necessarily the scenarios, but feelings you have about different things, you know what I mean? And as I said before, I’m always trying to tell a story through the song, so The Illusion [The Forecast (Album)] kind of talks about life as a band… 1945 [The Forecast (Album)] is a song that’s very important to me personally, as it’s actually talking about my Granddad, who served in the Second World War, so it’s almost a love letter, talking about how he’s gotten married then gone straight to war, and then come home again to try and start anew.
TC: What’s the best venue you’ve played at, and why?
Brad: That is a tough one. There are so many good venues… Particularly the larger, 1500 person stages, the atmosphere is intense. Fowler’s Live though, has the best backstage I have ever seen. I could list off the bad ones though.
TC: Alright, tell me about the bad ones.
Brad: Well, I don’t exactly remember names… But anywhere around Newcastle is bad. They’ve got places like, I don’t know, The Three Legged Dog. Actually that might actually be a place. But the music scene there needs a serious revamp… Once when we were playing a show in Newcastle, a guy was murdered on the stairs of the venue, the night before we were playing.
TC: Tell me about some of the crazy things you guys have done.
Brad: On our first tour, the Boomtown tour, we had played about 3 shows, then had a few days off, and we just went to the casino every night… Then all of a sudden our days off were gone and we had 8 shows left to play, I had completely lost my voice and we had to pull out of most of the next shows. We didn’t get offered any tours for a while.
Another time, we were doing a show in Melbourne and went out afterward… No joke at 3am we showed up at a place called the Honkey Tonk – surprisingly enough it wasn’t a gay bar – and there was this guy barbecuing shrimp. It was the only time I have ever seen an Aussie live up to that stereotype.
TC: The art you guys use - particularly the album art - is pretty fantastic, where did the inspiration come for that?
Brad: The Forecast was an interesting album, mainly because it was entirely written on tour. It was fairly unrealistic to produce an album in the time we did, but somehow we managed it. And the name was interesting, "to forecast" is to predict something with a certain degree of certainty. I spoke to our manager and suggested 'The Forecast' and he thought it was crap, but when I talked to the guys they all liked it. Originally we contacted a Brazilian art company, and they sent back these pictures of chicks in bikinis… Not really what we were after, so we got in touch with a Melbourne company called Robot Academy, what you see is what they gave us.
TC: What does the album art signify? Obviously it’s related to the assign of time, as everything is exploding out of a clock.
Brad: If you look at the whole picture, the closer to the clock is the more recent time, so at the other end, the start, there’s all the earthy type things, water, mountains and forests, then it becomes more industrialized, before moving to a gun and missiles, then eventually skulls. It’s designed as a circle, so the earthy nature things at the start eventually come around and kill off the development, and ready everything for a new beginning. It’s not intended to be religious at all.
TC: You’re now onto your 2nd bassist and 3rd drummer, was it difficult rotating through band members?
Brad: The hardest thing in Alistair’s [Bassist] case was that he had moved from Melbourne pretty much just to play in the band, so he had the whole relocation thing, and it was a huge leap of faith on his part. But, he’s liked it in Adelaide and actually met his lovely wife Courtney here, so that’s good. Drums were a little difficult because we actually switched drummers on tour; we ended up having Brodie [Her Latest Flame] play a lot of shows, which made the transition a lot easier for Tom [Drummer], although originally Tom signed on just for the album, but after recording that, he asked to stay on and we were stoked!
TC: So apart from replacing band members, what was the biggest challenge?
Brad: We were 5 individual people with 5 individual lives. It’s really, really hard to keep all that running smoothly. Everyone has their own ways of doing things, some people like this food, some people don’t, some people want to play at certain venues and not at others, some people have a big night out and rock up feeling crap, whilst others take an early one to be ready for the show. And the thing is, none of this can be shown on stage. There were times where Paul [Guitarist] and I wouldn’t have spoken for days, we’d go out on stage and play and be ‘normal’, then we’d go backstage and there would be this angry stand-off. I think we did a pretty good job of hiding that.
TC: What is the best memory you have from the band?
Brad: Probably how everything was when we first started, it’s was the type of thing that doesn’t really pay much but is so fun to do, like Steve [ex-drummer] and I grew up listening to Bodyjar, then all of a sudden we were playing on tour with them. Just the excitement of everything starting to come together. And then other things, like, touring all over the country and hearing the crowd sing along to Calendar Notes.
TC: Would you say Calendar Notes is your defining song?
Brad: As a band, I think so. It’s amazing, it was on our first EP [The Four Letter Failure], got no air-time at all, locally or nationally, and yet in every show we play, everyone somehow knows the words… We actually almost didn’t put it on the EP. It was written a couple of years before we recorded [The Four Letter Failure], and is a much more raw song than any of the other ones. Although, When The Camera’s Off [Ghost EP] is probably my favorite song to play, it’s just so much fun, there’s a real kick step to it and you can really get into it.
TC: Any last words?
Brad: The support we got was amazing, we are all so grateful for the support that everyone showed us throughout the time with In Fiction. On the breakup… It’s hard to explain that type of thing, because for us In Fiction had run its course, it wasn’t like the start anymore, but it’s really difficult because very few people see what’s going on internally. And we’re all still involved in music projects, so it’s not like we’re giving that up, it’s just more of a side project.
In Fiction are still maintaining their MySpace account, www.myspace.com/infictionband. Their music is also available for purchase via the iTunes Store.
