When we last spoke to Screaming Jets frontman Dave Gleeson the band had a fairly defined path laid out for 2020, with plans to write & record a new album but like it has been for so many bands, the global pandemic put paid to that. Not one to be put off by lockdowns & the suspension of live shows, The Screaming Jets decided to catch up for weekly band meetings using the latest technology of Zoom and after a few cold ones came up with the idea for their latest EP ‘Bitter Pill’, which was released on Friday 9 October through Dinner for Wolves. After years of playing to packed houses & festivals, the band decided to revisit five well-loved tracks and re-record them while in lockdown in the various states they found themselves in and the results are quite wonderful. Revamped, rearranged & produced by long-time friend Steve James, songs like ‘October Grey’, ‘Helping Hand’ & a fantastic version of ‘Friend of Mine’, on which Paul Woseen gets to show off his vocal talents, have shown that with technology recording & releasing new music can be achieved without being tied to a studio.
The Rockpit always looks forward to catching up with ‘Gleeso’ for a chat and this time was again no different as the laughter began even before the interview had started, when we disturbed Dave while mowing his lawn at his Adelaide home. What followed was a brief insight into one of the happiest & nicest guys in Australian rock music, as we discussed the new EP and how it came together, Dave’s successful ‘Streaming Not Screaming’ shows and some exciting news about some new music soon to see the light of day.
Sean: Hi Dave…
Dave: [coughing] Pardon me. Sorry about that [laughs]
Sean: [laughs] How are you doing?
Dave: I’ve just been mowing and got grass up my nose [laughs]
Sean: I don’t quite know what to say to that [laughs]
Dave: [laughs] Anyway, I’m very well thank you mate. How are you doing?
Sean: Pretty good thanks. It’s a lovely sunny day, summer is on its way and I’ve had your wonderful new EP ‘Bitter Pill’ on all afternoon.
Dave: Ah excellent, excellent.
Sean: You’re probably one of the rare musicians who hasn’t had five minutes to sit still during all this Covid. You’ve just been non-stop and here’s something else that’s come out. It’s wonderful.
Dave: Yeah, it’s been fantastic. I’ve actually had a few releases. There’s been The Angels ‘Recharged – Darkroom’ album and the ‘Under the Stone’ EP and then now The Jets EP has come out recently and I’ve also been doing the streaming shows and writing songs with another bloke so I’ve actually had plenty on. It’s been really good to pass the time that way.
Sean: Yes, you’ve been writing a bit with Gwyn Ashton I believe?
Dave: Gwyn Ashton is an absolute legend and very fortunate to have written about fifteen songs with him and we only just last week started knocking them into a bit of shape apart from just recording them on the phone so yeah it’s been very productive.
Sean: I got to meet Gwyn when I was over in Melbourne earlier this year. I went over to see The (London) Quireboys and we caught up at the gig after bumping into each other outside a pizza joint in St. Kilda, swapped numbers and spoken a couple of times since then.
Dave: It’s been fantastic actually – really organic. He’s come over to my joint a few times and we’ve just banged them out. It’s been really good.
Sean: It keeps him busy while he stuck here [laughs]
Dave: Yeah, exactly. I mean he would have had something like fifty or sixty dates on his World Tour, which he was a third of the way through and he’s been trapped here ever since.
Sean: Let’s talk about this wonderful EP because I remember speaking to you last time just before the ‘Dirty Thirty’ album and back then I said that must be a nightmare trying to put a greatest hits and a set list together with so many songs to choose from and now you’ve had to try and pick five for an EP.
Dave: Yeah, well it came about because we were zooming each other, which is a foreign concept to most bands, I think. Band meetings used to be the bane of my existence and now I look forward to them every Thursday, you know. We sit there on the zoom and crack a tin with each other, have a yarn and it was born out of that. We’d seen a lot of other bands and artists use the technology before. There’s nothing kind of ground-breaking so we thought we’d see how we went with it because we are supposed to be working on the new album, I’m sure I told you last time we spoke. So, we decided to pick some songs we knew intimately and the good thing about them is that they’ve changed over the years when we play them live. They’re not exactly the same as the album tracks and they maybe different lengths or a different lead break here & there so there was something new & fresh about them anyway so that kind of really inspired us to do something with them. We sent them off to Steve James and they came back sounding brilliantly.
Sean: Steve’s worked with you for so long now. He’s been there from the start, hasn’t he?
Dave: Right from the start. From before the start! [laughs] When we first met Steve he was working with a few other bands and we just kind of hit it off almost instantly and became lifelong friends thirty years ago, yeah.
Sean: There are so many good songs on there but one that’s really stuck out for me, and it was always a kind of a favourite, but it now really sits up for me is ‘October Grey’.
Dave: Yeah and that’s one of the ones that really benefited I guess from all the years of playing it live. There’s a certain kind of toughness that goes along with the sweetness now that maybe we didn’t catch on the record because it’s a sweet song… well a sweet but sad song. But yeah, there’s a real kind of… the live sphere has really given it a kind of an extra kick along so yeah, that one came out really well. I have to say ‘Friend of Mine’ which Paul (Woseen) wrote all those years ago and I did the lead vocals for on the original recording, his vocal on that is mad. And that came from live again, I guess. He used to start the encore with ‘Friend of Mine’ and go out on his own and the crowd just loved that. Pauly kind of under estimates his song writing ability sometimes but we all certainly know how brilliant it is so it was great not only to have a song written by him but to get him to do the lead vocal as well.
Sean: So, I know you said it just started as just a tinny or two & a Thursday band meeting but technically how was it to put together? The video to ‘Helping Hand’ had you singing in the garden which was just classic.
Dave: Well that was the first one we did. I think that was around the second or third stream that we’d done from the yard and Crafty just said he’d leave the stuff set up and then I could do it outside so that actual video take is me doing the actual vocal take in the yard. And here we are thirty years down the track and that’s the first time I’ve recorded a vocal track like that, so you’ve got to find the little positives and bright notes in this dark time.
Sean: Have you done videos for all five tracks?
Dave: Yeah, Scotty Kingman is a brilliant visuals guy. He does some fantastic photography and has done some really great video stuff. It just gives them a kind of freshness and new kind of approach. We didn’t want to sound like we were just going through the motions.
Sean: And I love the fact the visuals bring home that you are all very much apart.
Dave: Yeah and if this thing goes on for as long as we think then we are probably going to start recording ‘All For One’… we’re re-recording ‘All For One’ for the thirtieth anniversary for next year which once again I think is a worthwhile process because it’s a different band and a different era. It’s a great milestone and it doesn’t take long because you know all the songs. We don’t want to go in and reinvent the wheel, we just want to get in there and smash them out, you know. So, we will be doing that kind of remotely for the foreseeable future so its been nice to get a handle on the technology.
Sean: You mentioned line-up changes so it’s fitting to wish Cam (McGlinchey) a happy birthday.
Dave: Yeah, fifty years old for our Cam. He’s the good looking one [laughs]
Sean: He spent some of his forty-ninth birthday with us at The Evelyn last year for The Rockpit’s tenth anniversary.
Dave: He’s a lovely bloke. A real asset to the band and a great guy to hang around with. He’s worked with some big names and knows what it takes to produce the goods night in, night out so he’s fantastic to have on board.
Sean: Such an incredible drummer to watch too. So much energy. He was playing with Tim (Henwood) and the boys for Palace of the King last year at our birthday show.
Dave: Ah yeah. We’ve known Cam since Maeder, when they supported The Jets around 2000 or something like that and then came across him playing with Jonny Stevens and all the big names… and it’s no wonder he’s so sort after because he’s such a great drummer.
Sean: I got a great quote of Tim Henwood when we caught up for some audio for our podcast a few months back and I’ll try my best to do a Tim voice. He said, “They bloody nicked him from us, the bastards!”
Dave: [laughs] After all that time we just plucked him! The worst part is we give them great raps because they are just such a hard-working bunch of guys and then we go and rip him [laughs]
Sean: You mentioned just now about the new album that had been in the pipeline before the year descended into chaos. Are you going to be able to find time to carry on with it, what with the re-recording of the debut album, the streaming shows and zoom meetings?
Dave: Well, Paul’s been writing, he’s broken ice and written the first track and we’ve actually already recorded it. So, we are going to include it on the vinyl release of the ‘Bitter Pill’ EP, which I may or may not be allowed to say but I’m saying it anyway… and it’s a cracker! He hummed & hawed about it for quite a while and he was labouring over the words and then he sent it out to us, and we recorded it in three days from three different states. Its just a really great song and I love the vocal… I changed “wank” to “Paul” [laughs] which was a little more appropriate in the context of the song, but we are absolutely stoked with it. We can’t wait for it to be a nice little add-on when it goes to vinyl.
Sean: I’ll look forward to hearing that. Touching on your ‘Streaming Not screaming’ gigs you have been putting on each and every Sunday, I have to say on behalf of the majority of the Rock fraternity here in Australia, its been such an important thing to quite a few people and not just yours & Crafty’s sanity but the numbers of viewers in the early shows were fourteen, fifteen hundred people at times. Fantastic numbers.
Dave: Yeah it was, and we’ve been able to maintain around the six or seven hundred viewers each week. You know, I don’t want to let people down but by the time we do our last two shows over the next two weeks we will have done thirty-one Sundays in a row. I’ve done that and I’ve dragged the family along too and they’ve had a great time and we’ve had a great time doing it but its probably time now, with things easing up a little bit, and I’ve got a few more gigs on and things are opening up a bit more to wind it up. I wanted to finish at thirty, but we had some unfinished business so its going to round out at thirty-one.
Sean: I loved the fact in the early shows we just weren’t quite sure where you were streaming from each week. Was it under the tree or in the shed? [laughs]
Dave: [laughs] Yeah it got a bit normalised like a real gig when we went to The Gov and it was a blessing that they gave us the space and that but the excitement definitely came from us scoping the yard to decide where we were going to do it each week and setting it up and bringing the drums and stuff out into the yard. Obviously, it grew, and we’ve got a great band now but even though it was only ten or fifteen weeks ago we look back on them as simpler times [laughs]
(The interview is interrupted by muffled voices as Dave is told off by his father-in-law for not putting things away. The life of a Rockstar isn’t that much different in some respects)
Dave: That’s my father-in-law who cracks the whip around the joint. Sorry about that! [laughs]
Sean: [laughs] All good. There were also subliminal messages in the streams as I now find I need to come to Adelaide to sample the delights of Swell Brewing & Anderson Hill Winery, who were fantastic supporters of your shows.
Dave: Excellent. Thank you. That was another thing that was great for the people getting involved in it. Friends & acquaintances and for them to stick around for the whole time was unreal. I’m actually doing Benny Anderson’s… Benny Anderson, I’ve only just thought of that – he’s from ABBA [laughs]… I’m doing his fiftieth birthday at Anderson Hill Winery at the end of October, so it’s just great to have friends & accomplices helping out.
Sean: There was one really poignant moment I really need to talk about, and it was on the ANZAC Day episode. That version you did of ‘And the Band Played Waltzing Matilda’ was… well, as an Englishman who has made this amazing country my home, it really struck me and I remember Crafty looking across at you to check you were ok… it was an incredibly symbolic moment, Dave.
Dave: Yeah, its actually strange because I had a few of those moments. There was that one that I found very emotional and difficult to sing and mate, I’ve heard ‘Evie’ ten thousand times over the years, maybe more but when I was learning the words and it gets to the end, mate I was in tears… I was like, “It is absolutely heart breaking, this song.” It’s a gut-wrenching journey about what many people have been through over the years so that really touched me. The other one was ‘The Living Years’ which I sung on Father’s day. That’s always been a special song as well. Its funny that they are songs I have heard countless times but when I go to perform them, the gravity of the song hits you. Its heavy.
Sean: It’s funny you mentioned ‘Evie’ because when we last caught up at The Astor at The Angels gig I spoke to you about a song you sung on a few years back with a Perth singer songwriter called Chris Murphy, who appeared on Australian Idol back in 2006. His version of ‘Evie’ was one of the songs he was remembered for on the show but you recorded a track with him which never got released called ‘Run and Don’t Look Back’ and he has kindly offered to let me play it on our November podcast, with your permission also of course.
Dave: Now, I’m trying to think where we recorded that?
Sean: Chris said it was in Sydney and he told me a bit of the back story with you flying up from Adelaide for the day but it’s never seen the light of day publicly I believe and we are going to play it next month if all good with you.
Dave: Wow, absolutely. That’s great! I love hearing obscure stuff like that. I’m not like Jimmy Page but I have done a few sessions in my time [laughs] where I’ve gone in and gone out but now you’ve said it, I do remember it. Wow, I can’t put my finger on when that was… maybe around 2008?
Sean: I’m not sure of the exact year but he recorded a heap of tracks with other top artists for an album that was going to be called ‘Duets’ but I believe the record company pulled it at the last minute.
Dave: That would be about right. Back then was when record labels lost all interest in all Australian music. The last label we were on was BMG and they started cutting bands like You Am I and The Cruel Sea and I was like, “Oh well, we’re gone! If their gone, we’re gone!” [laughs] It was a sad time.
Sean: The EP is released through Dinner For Wolves I see.
Dave: Yeah, Dinner for Wolves have been really good to us.
Sean: I know you have more interviews lined up so thank you so much for the chat as always Dave. It’s always highly entertaining and we love what you and the guys do, mate.
Dave: No wukkas, thanks for your time man. Unreal. Thanks again.
Sean: Cheers Dave.
https://thescreamingjets.com.au
