So guys tell us a little about yourself as a band? Who are you members, what do they play? How long have you been playing? What bands/artists have you played with in the past?
We are an independent folk duo from Byron Bay. Dale and I both write our material and we both sing and back each other up vocally. Dale has recently been adding some new instruments to our show, using a kick drum and snare while playing guitar and singing. I’m on electric guitar and have just purchased a very exciting loop pedal which I am introducing to our set. We opened for a lot of artists last year, Sarah McLeod, James Reyne, Benjalu and have played The Sydney Blues & Roots Festival, The Caloundra Music Festival and Dale has performed at The Byron Bay Bluesfest & Woodford Folk Fest.
How did you get involved in music?
We’ve both been performing since we were young as solo singer/songwriters. We met in Queensland, started backing one another up on each others songs and have since been doing everything by trial and error – which is the best way to learn as indie artists – and we have a lot of friends who we can call on for advice as we go. I couldn’t imagine not being involved in music now, I don’t know what we’d do.
How would you describe your sound?
We like to call our music indie folk, there’s a lot of acoustic guitars, electric guitars, finger pickin’ and we use some pretty folky instruments like mandolin, banjo-mandolin and double bass on our recordings – we like to layer – layer guitars, layer vocals, lots of harmonies…. We are really embracing the Australian multi instrumentalist culture and have been describe as somewhere between Xavier Rudd and Angus and Julia Stone
Who are your influences?
I love a lot of folk artists, Fleet Foxes, Jenny Lewis & Rilo Kiley, Bright Eyes.
Dale has a more rock influence, Kanye West, Counting Crows, Gorillaz… We both share a love for Crosby Stills Nash & Young, Elvis Costello, Fleetwood Mac, Tom Petty, Bowie…
Are you exited or nervous about your upcoming tour?
So excited. We’ve had such a good response so far to our set and have been introducing new song which we can’t wait to show people.
If you could share a stage with any band/artist in the world who would you choose?
I would love to share the stage with Jenny Lewis, maybe we could sing Acid Tongue together. Dale’s dream musical date is Jon Cleary from New Orleans.
What are your career highlights so far?
Touring Canada was an incredible experience and definitely a highlight for us. We performed on morning television over there and had a great response which was exciting. Another highlight was having our song ‘Sun And Moon’ as the most ordered song for community radio over three weeks on AirIt. It was unexpected and gave us this great boost of confidence for our original music and songwriting.
If a crowd comes to see The Firetree perform live what will they go away remembering?
Great music, great vibes, great people and hopefully they will be humming one of the hooks from ours songs.
Maybe they’ll have had a dance and be remembering one of our extremely good looking fans busting a move : ) or have a cheeky, unexpected cover song spinning around there head.
What do you enjoy about touring with each other? What don’t you like?
The best thing is being able to share all these experiences with someone you love, a lot of people say touring is lonely but that’s not the case for us. Also meeting amazing people on the road, everyone is in holiday mode over summer and up for a good time. The worst thing is the confined space of the car. It’s pretty cramped with all our gear packed in and such a pain when you can’t find something when you really need it.
You’re about to release a new EP titled ‘The Morning EP’ what can you tell us about it? What can people expect to hear on it? Tell us a little about the process of putting it together.
We had performed most of the songs on The Morning EP while touring throughout 2011 and we were really trying to capture what do live. So over seven days we recorded and fine-tuned our favorite new songs. Everything was recorded and produced by Dale and every track performed by him or myself – with the exception of double bass by Jesse Stanley. The whole process was an experiment, we would work on each song until it felt right and then send it to be mixed. There were a few all nighters, a few computer crashes and tears though in the end we couldn’t be happier with how it sounds. This recording really reflects where we are at at the moment as artists and songwriters.
Where do you hope you end up in 2012? What are you short term goals? What are your long term goals?
We hope that the tour is a success and we are always trying to improve our live show and create bigger sounds between the two of us. We’re already talking about recording another EP, so we’re writing as much as we can and trying to get the very best of our new songs ready. Our goal is always to keep moving on to bigger things. Longer term we are hoping to get back to tour Canada as a duo and take our new material and album over there.
Aside from your tour is there anywhere The Firetree plays regularly so people can come and see you?
You can always check out our facebook www.facebook.com/thefiretree to see where we are playing – we travel so often we don’t really have a home base at the moment!
So we should always be playing at a town near you
Is there anything else you would like people to know about you and your music?
We have a free download of the first track ‘Muskets And Tears’ from The Morning EP available online from our website and facebook. We’d love for you to check it out.
Do you have a website people can check out?
Yes! www.thefiretree.com and www.facebook.com/thefiretree are the best places to find us on the web.