Former INXS bass player & co-founder Garry ‘Gary’ Beers is back with a new project and it’s one that has us pretty excited here at The Rockpit. AshenMoon has smatterings of genres & vibes from yesteryear while still sounding extremely ‘now’ with Beers joined by vocalist Toby Rand (Juke Kartel), guitarist Jimmy Khoury (The Beth Hart Band) & drummer Sebastian Gregory (The Veronicas). The band have already released the double A-Side singles of ‘Dustbowl’ & ‘Mosquito’ to tease fans as to just what this LA based four-piece have in store for when they release the first of two EPs later this year, before finally launching a full length album at the end of 2020.
With Beers very much hands on with the writing, recording & production of AshenMoon’s material, he is excitedly looking forward to seeing the reaction from the army of fans who eagerly await to hear what one of Australia’s beloved musicians has to offer after a few years away from writing & recording original compositions. The Rockpit spoke in depth to a relaxed Beers as he soaked up the sun at his Californian home to discuss how AshenMoon came to be, the early years of INXS as well as his love for English prog rockers Genesis…
Sean: Hi Garry. It’s Sean from The Rockpit here in Perth.
Garry: Sean, how are you?
Sean: Great thank you. So much to talk to you about. Loving the first two singles, ’Mosquito’ and ‘Dustbowl’ from your new project AshenMoon. How did this band come to be?
Garry: We all kind of met at parties at various times really. I met Jimmy at my first industry songwriting party almost fifteen years ago, when I first moved to LA and we’ve been buddies ever since, but we never actually played together. It just never seemed to happen, so when I met Toby around three years ago at another party, we had a jam that night and I asked him if he would be interested to join my then cooperate band that I had at the time called ‘Stadiums’. So, when Jimmy & Toby joined up, we decided we didn’t really want to be a covers band any more as we are all frustrated song writers from our past careers so we started writing original material and spent about a year putting together ideas in my little studio that I have at my house and recorded a full album.
Sean: Plenty of influences and sounds I can hear through the first two tracks. I’m loving ‘Dustbowl’ – It reminds me a bit of a blend of U2, Duran Duran & Muse. ‘Mosquito’ has such a different vibe to it.
Garry: Yeah, your right with ‘Dustbowl’. It was a song that Toby started off by having an idea on his laptop, he brought it over and we just built it from there really. ‘Mosquito’ started off as a bass riff I had and then Toby grabbed an acoustic and we wrote the song on the spot. It’s real old school stuff – we just sit in a room, drink some wine and write music together. It’s great.
Sean: I picked up you saying you have recorded enough for an album. I’m sure with what’s going on around the world right now release dates are up in the air, but have you got an estimated date for the album release?
Garry: We have an interesting problem in that our record company Golden Robot think we have too many good songs on the record. We wrote it as a record, like an old school Zeppelin style record where it is a journey from beginning to end. So, they didn’t want to release it as a full record with songs getting lost in the rush like they do with the way people listen to music these days so they decided to put it out as two five-track EPs with the first EP due for release end of June, along with our second single which is called ‘Future Kings & Queens’ and then the second EP will be around the end of August. Then later in the year we will look to release the full album, which will have around thirteen tracks on it, and you’ll be able to hear everything in it’s full glory as it’s supposed to be heard sequentially. The rest of the album is not defined by ‘Dustbowl’ & ‘Mosquito’, it’s a very diversified album with songs that are almost psychedelic Beatles-ish to Massive Attack to straight up rock n’ roll songs. There’s some real heavy songs and some really beautiful acoustic tracks too – we just had some fun making a record that we wanted to listen to really.
Sean: You still can’t beat having that physical copy in your hands and eventually having to get up to turn the record over.
Garry: Yes, and also we put a call out on our social media to find an artist because bands like YES and bands like that really worked on their album covers back in the vinyl days. You would listen to the record and study the album cover and read every single word and every single image on a vinyl album cover and then by the time you’d finished listening you would start all over again. And that is something that’s missed a lot these days… the visual aspect of an album so we found this artist who reached out us and he’s probably put together one hundred images – and they are amazing images. Dave Loblaw has done the album cover as well as the single covers… he’s just a perfect part of our band now, very much like Roger Dean was a big part of YES. When the vinyl comes out we plan to put out ten different vinyl versions with all the different full-size artwork… we can’t wait to get the album out actually so all this little pissy download stuff isn’t the direction we really want to go – we just want to get the album out there so everyone can see it, as well as hear it.
Sean: You’ll get me in so much trouble with my wife when I start collecting all ten editions [laughs]
Garry: Oh really? [laughs] But that’s the beauty of Golden Robot. They really concentrate on vinyl and that’s one of the reasons we went with them.
Sean: It’s so great to see vinyl make such a resurgence. Even local bands here in Perth have pushed out some wonderful vinyl and it’s always the first to disappear at the merch desk.
Garry: And rightly so. You want something in your hand. I know the whole download thing is the way things are, but I just love holding something physical – even if it’s a CD because they are just so easy. A lot of my vinyl collections have gotten stolen over the years from a lifetime of living in band houses with the rest of the guys. You’d have people come back for a party and wake to find some of your vinyl had disappeared. I’ve lost like four collections over the years so CDs became easier, but I’ve still got a good vinyl collection back in Australia which one day I will have to truck over here to the US.
Sean: Not only did you write & perform the tracks, but you also produced them, with Toby co-producing. Do you find it easy to produce your own work?
Garry: I do. It’s a very collaborative effort – I actually recorded it and engineered it too. I did have two recording studios back in Australia and INXS owned a studio. I had two studios in Sydney and I actually had a label called Override Records as well and I used to record young bands to try to help give them a break. I’m very hands on and always have been. I do love production because you have a vision and you get to work with people who get to work with your vision but also you need to be open minded to hear what their vision is too. With Toby & Jimmy we have the perfect situation where we are all there for the right reasons – Toby was very excited to be in a band where he could write the lyrics he always wanted to write and say what he wanted to say.
Obviously, he’s worked with different song writing partners and producers who have kind of said, “nah” and they’ve made it more about them and not about him, whereas I just wanted him to make it all about him. I’m very lucky to have found such an incredible singer who was at a point in his career that he hadn’t found the right song-writing partner. I did the majority of the production, like the recording and spent endless hours making it all fit together but Toby was a very important part of the vision and so was Jimmy. Jimmy Khoury is absolutely the best guitar player I’ve ever played with… rock guitar player. Whatever we wanted to do we could do and that is the beauty of having my own little studio. No one is watching the clock or record companies talking about deadlines or dates. If we wanted to rewrite a song completely or just drop it and start a new one again, we could because we could do what we wanted.
Sean: You guys must be itching to get out to play this new material on the live stage, especially to tour and eventually to get back down here to Australia once the travel restrictions lift.
Garry: Absolutely. We had dates in March that were cancelled unfortunately. We had a big festival to play for 20,000 people which got cancelled too, which would have been great. We just look to the future because who knows what’s going to happen… we just want everyone to stay safe and to get through it. The world is never going to be the same again, so we are just really lucky to have the record completed and ready to go at a time that I think that music is most needed. Music has always been such a good healer for people and I really hope our music can help people to get through it somehow just as much as anyone else’s music. As far as live work goes, we just love to play live. It’s what we love doing most of all. And most definitely Australia!
I mean, we’ve got three Australian’s in the band. Our fourth member is Sebastian Gregory, who played with The Veronicas and he was a mate of Toby’s and was playing with Toby when I met him. He actually joined the band playing guitar and when our former drummer got busy he jumped over to the drums so it took it back from two guitars with keyboards and drums to being able to do gigs as a Zeppelin line-up with guitar, bass, drums & vocals. We are really enjoying all the different aspects we can bring to the table. It’s something I haven’t experienced… I didn’t experience it with INXS. We are a very open jam band and we just play what we want and I’m really loving that.
Sean: Don’t forget us here in Perth when you come over. We would love AshenMoon to come and see us over here in the west. I know it’s a little bit out of the way, but we’ll make it worth your while.
Garry: As you well know, Perth was a big part of our early days building up to INXS so I’m sure when we get out there, we’ll throw some INXS songs in there too. I’ve not been back to Australia for three of four years now so I would love it if we could come back and do a load of shows. It would be fantastic.
Sean: Having spoken to Andrew (Farriss) a couple of times now he always talks fondly about Perth. Your early years were as The Farriss Brothers, which was the precursor to INXS. What are your memories from back then?
Garry: Basically, we were pretty much straight out of school which I think was around ’76 or ’77 when we moved to Perth. Jon (Farriss) the drummer was too young to leave home so when the Farriss’s parents moved back to Perth from Sydney Jon had to go with them. So, we jumped in our van, drove across the Nullabor and rented a house in Nedlands or Claremont… somewhere round there. We had this house and we set up this big rehearsal room in the dining room and just jammed in there. We just waited for Jon to become old enough to leave home and then jumped back in the van and drove back over to Sydney stating off as the Farriss Brothers before finally becoming INXS.
Sean: I have to ask… who came up with the name Doctor Dolphin [laughs]?
Garry: [laughs] Who knows? It’s an interesting one but I think it was just simply down to too many beers one night [laughs] and it just came up. There was Andrew (Farriss), Michael (Hutchence), me, a hippy drummer called Neil (Sanders) and another mate of ours from high school on guitar so it was very embryonic, as it was back in the day. It was a good name at the time [laughs]. I found some old photos of Doctor Dolphin recently. We played at a Channel Nine Christmas Party to some cast of a TV show back then with our long hair & flairs [laughs]…
Sean: You need to post those up on your social media pages one day…
Garry: …I’m trying to get all the old stuff together actually – all the old video camera stuff & photos. I’m sitting on all of that, but I must get it out there one day. It would be great.
Sean: Something that interested me when I spoke to Andrew was that with his latest genre being very different to what he was doing with INXS, he wrote the initial draft of his single ‘Come Midnight’ back when the iconic ‘Kick’ album was released. As a songwriter for INXS yourself did you ever have any music you felt you couldn’t approach the band with?
Garry: Yes, most definitely. Funnily enough one of them is called ‘GodTank’ and we’ve recorded it with AshenMoon. It was quite a heavy song I wrote… very Zeppeliny. Michael liked it but it was just a bit heavy for everyone else, so it didn’t make the record. The next single we are going to release is called ‘Future Kings & Queens’ and I wrote that for the INXS album ‘Switch’ which ended up with J.D Fortune as the lead singer. We were in the process of recording it but we only had three and a half weeks to record, finalize and deliver the record before we hit the road because it was based on the TV show and the deadlines for the show, so I was actually in the studio when the producer came out and just said, “sorry, it’s just not going to make it”. I already had one song on the record so I was ok there but I would have had two of my songs on the record which was pretty rare in those days of writing songs verses Andrew Farriss & Michael Hutchence, who were the main song writers for INXS for most of my life. I got one song on there, so I was happy and kept the music for ‘Future Kings & Queens’ and then Toby heard it and loved it and now it’s going to be the next single.
Sean: You touched on the songwriting of INXS and having seen these timeless anthems being performed live by various singers, most recently Noisework’s Jon Stevens and it’s incredible to see an audience sing every single word to each song. What is it about the INXS song book that has allowed them to stand the test of time & sound so fresh?
Garry: You look to the future and look to the present really. We are still all listening to bands like INXS, Noiseworks & Led Zeppelin, The Beatles, Queen… bands like Queen will never go away and probably in fifty years’ time we’ll be listening to the same stuff. I don’t want to disrespect what is happening musically now, but a lot of the attention is going to people who are more famous than they are good. I think a lot of bands and artists are suffering because they are sucking all the oxygen out of the industry & the world. They seem to get all the attention because that’s all they want, whereas real artists don’t really want the attention as much as they want the respect and want to be heard.
I think these tough times are going to hopefully produce a whole new way that people will start looking at things and I know that music has helped people through all of the worst times in history… Even though I know how popular the song is I’m still shocked by just how many weddings ‘Never Tear Us Apart’ has been played at and how many funerals too. A good song is gold. I know my legacy with INXS, when I’m toes up whenever that may be, the songs will still be out there being heard and that’s the beauty of a good song.
Sean: And I think these first two singles of AshenMoon’s have that – they have a familiar sound that will last. There’s a vibe & feel to them that’s very much from yesteryear that will help make these timeless.
Garry: Thank you. I totally agree. Everyone that’s heard some of them or even the whole record has all asked why more bands aren’t doing this. I’m happy they aren’t [laughs] but we seemed to have found a hole in what’s going on in music right now and I’m happy we can fill that hole. As I said before, we are kind of being selfish in the respect that we are kind of making music that we want to hear. I know INXS kind of did the same thing at the end of our career. People were saying to us, “why don’t you just do Kick again”. Well, we did that, and we actually felt that ‘Welcome to Wherever You Are’ was our best record because it was us playing live with a full orchestra and we wanted to emulate what inspired us.
A lot of people didn’t get it and a lot of people did but a lot of people get it now and agree that they think is INXS’s best record… Definitely the best since ‘Kick’. ‘Kick’ was our sixth album so you’re lucky to get that these days. Bands with a good sound are the ones to make bold statements and that’s what I think AshenMoon has. We’ve all been there and done that… I should be sitting with my feet up, but I can’t because I love playing, I love writing and I love performing. I don’t think I had made the statement I wanted to make musically yet – I feel with AshenMoon I’ve made my first statement.
Sean: One of my biggest regrets musically was missing the now legendary ‘Live baby Live’ Wembley performance back in 1991. Roll forward two years I was in Perth visiting family and was so lucky to catch you guys play at Metropolis in Fremantle… I’m actually looking at my ticket stub now – $26.50 was the ticket price. Don’t panic Garry, I’m not asking for a refund as it was worth every cent [laughs]
Garry: [laughs]
Sean: I have to say, it is a live show that will stay with me for the rest of my life… it was phenomenal.
Garry: That’s good to hear. I actually do remember that gig. Those shows were really good fun. We wanted to go back to our roots and do the smaller venues but some people thought it was because we weren’t successful anymore… it was something we chose to do because we kind of wanted to get our mojo back. We played clubs all over America sometimes to just three or four hundred people. It was a magnificent time for us, but the pessimists & cynics thought otherwise. We did it for a reason and later on you started to see a lot of other artists doing the same because its an important way to reconnect & get your mojo back. You can only be a stadium band for so long, so you need to reconnect with people again.
Sean: Andrew’s recollection was of the Australian cricket team staying at the same hotel as you guys were that same weekend and sharing breakfast with them.
Garry: It’s funny because when the Australians were touring, we tended to gravitate towards each other. I remember in the UK when the cricketers turned up, and they were sponsored by XXXX at the time, so they would turn up all over England in a bus full of XXXX and we’d be like, “Oh, they’re here again!” [laughs] and they’d carry in their Eskys full of beer with them. I remember the Australian & England cricket teams coming down to a big gig we did in the south in Western Australia somewhere. Occasionally they’d even break curfew… I remember Shane Warne coming to hang with us in London – he wasn’t drinking but he just wanted to sneak out and hang out with some Aussies. I mean, the Waugh brothers… we’d always be having get togethers & dinner with the Waugh brothers. I remember hanging out at the WACA and Allan Border inviting me to walk across the pitch with him. It was an amazing part of our lives. The rugby league team too – we went and saw the Kangaroos when they were playing all over England and they would come to our gigs – it was all pretty amazing. They actually travelled with the Ashes trophy that they won [laughs]… I actually sat on it at one point [laughs].
Sean: Incredible stories to hear. The life of a rock star and the life of a sports star must be very similar, what with staying in hotels, living out of suitcases & travelling to various cities around the world.
Garry: That’s exactly right. I’m the sports guy in INXS and Andrew did a bit of aerial ping-pong football when they were in Perth as kids but I’m the rugby guy – I played rugby league & rugby union and I’m still obsessed with rugby league. I’m so happy it is starting back up again. I used to travel with a road case with a TV and video player in it and I used to get my mate at Channel Nine to send me all the games and I used to watch them all the time backstage. Growing up as a band in Australia, as you know it’s very competitive. When we started playing with bands of the caliber of The Angels, Midnight Oil & Cold Chisel we quickly realized that they were going to blow you off stage so you had to go out there with the mentality of blowing them off stage. Then you start looking at it as a hot sweety show for a couple of hours, so you must stay fit and do your exercises… it becomes more a sports thing. I look at the Wembley concert now and there is not one of us that had a beer. Normally you’d have a beer on stage but not one of us did – That’s how serious we were about treating it like a sports event.
Sean: The stage was huge – cardio must come into play when playing those immense stadium shows.
Garry: Totally and we’d wanted to look good too… I look back and realize I had my shirt tucked in [laughs]. I’ve not had my shirt tucked in for like forty years [laughs]. Now, we all look at going to the gym but back then you just made sure you ate properly & looked after yourself… you can try and do the rock n’ roll thing of walking out there with a bottle of Jack (Daniels) but it’s not going to get you through a gig every night… Even just trying to get through a two hour show without needing a piss, you know. [laughs] There’s nothing worse [laugh] It’s very humbling but I think that’s why a lot of bands have a drum or guitar solo in the set so that everyone can go off and do their thing.
Sean: I never even thought of that [laughs]. I know we’ve over run on time, but I just would love to ask you a couple of my regular questions if I may.
Garry: Yeah, of course.
Sean: If I could book you into a restaurant for a couple of hours and you could be joined by three guests from the world of music, dead or alive, who would you invite?
Garry: That’s a very interesting question. Probably Bob Marley would be one. Jeff Buckley… I met Jeff Buckley and he was a sweetheart and a huge fan of INXS & of Michael. I always regret the time he invited me out to a party… I was like, “I’ve got a brand-new kid – I’d better go home” [laughs] so I would have got to hang out with Jeff Buckley. And three… maybe one of The Beatles. Probably George Harrison. John’s a bit intense and Paul likes to put on a bit of a front… I always thought George to be the natural one as far as he was quite shy but one of the most influential guitar players of all time.
Sean: That’s the first time I’ve had George as a table guest. Plenty have picked John & Paul and I think Ringo has even had a call, but no George.
Garry: I think John would scare me. With Paul, I see he has a real professionally nice persona, but I don’t know if when you talk to Paul to get to meet the real Paul. I feel the same way about Bono too. Bono is magnificently professional when you meet him. Michael knew the real Bono, but I don’t think anyone else is allowed to get in there and I think McCartney is the same, but George always seemed to be just the guy who was there for the music. There were the trials & tribulation that he and Clapton went through together as best mates, he stuck his head up and stuck his tail down and wrote great music and every solo he ever played you can sing. Ironically, he is one of the most underrated guitar players ever. He was in a magnificent band but if he had been in any other band he would have been known more as a legendary guitar player.
Sean: What was the last album you listened to Garry?
Garry: [laughs] I’m terrible. I don’t move on. The last modern record I listened to I really couldn’t tell you. It was probably Management or… I really just keep sticking to the stuff that blew my dress up back in the day.
Sean: There’s certainly nothing wrong with that.
Garry: I know but I just haven’t heard anything since Jeff Buckley’s ‘Grace’ which was the first thing I heard that blew my dress up and it really inspired me but it’s all based on influences I know like Zeppelin. I also didn’t realize at the time that it’s also based on an album that I used to listen to religiously every week. There’s an album by Genesis called ‘The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway’ and it’s the last record they made with Peter Gabriel. It’s a double record, its very trippy and very aesthetic… I used to listen to it at least once a week because it takes me on a journey. I like to escape… I don’t like to be beaten over the head. I just like to use it like the old days and escape. That’s my most listened to record.
It’s weird but when Jeff Buckley passed I was in the middle of mixing a record for a band I was in called Mudhead and I was driving into Melbourne to mix it and I took one CD with me in the car and that was ‘The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway’ and Jeff had just passed and that week they had released his posthumous release ‘Sketches for My Sweetheart the Drunk’ so I stopped at the record store and I bought it. Now I had two CDs so I put it on and the second CD is all his demos and he did a version of a song that is on ‘The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway’ just by himself with a guitar and an echo unit. I was like, “Really? Did that just happen?” He did a version of ‘Back in New York City’ and that’s the first song on the second side of the Genesis record which is also a double album. I just remember looking at those two CDs and thinking “Wow, that had happened for a reason”. So, I haven’t really moved on or heard anything that really inspires me since. I think a lot of music today is purely throwing spaghetti at the wall and see what sticks, you know and it kind of bugs me. I think there is a lot of good music out there being lost because, as I said before, all the air is being sucked out of it.
Sean: I’ll have to put them on for a listen now.
Garry: ‘The Lamb Lies own in Broadway’ was the last album with Peter Gabriel singing and it was the one that broke the band up. It’s Phil Collins finding his drum sound, the keyboards are sublime… just incredible. Such a great record.
Sean: I was lucky to see Genesis at Wembley in ’88, three years prior to you playing there. They were on the Invisible Touch Tour and they were fantastic but obviously no Peter Gabriel.
Garry: Yeah? That’s great. Another album of theirs to listen to is the one afterwards when they couldn’t find a singer, so they just went with Phil. That album is called ‘A Trick of the Tail’. The drums are even better and it’s a really well recorded, well played and well written album and again great artwork – its all hand drawn artwork and it’s my second most played album. I wasn’t that big a fan of Genesis as a kid. I was more into Deep Purple & Zeppelin, but I really discovered them more later on. When I heard ‘The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway’ I was like, “I’m done!” [laughs]
Sean: Well, let’s finish on the easiest of the lot. If you could be credited with writing any song ever written, what song would you choose?
Garry: Hmmm, good question. Probably something off Zeppelin III… ‘Tangerine’ probably. Zeppelin III changed my life and it’s mainly acoustic. That’s one of the things I love about it. As a band, AshenMoon play a version of ‘Immigrant Song’ and Toby is probably one of the only guys on the planet that can sing it. We love playing it but pretty much the rest of the album is all acoustic. It introduced me to acoustic music because its very folky and beautiful. ‘Tangerine’ is just a gorgeous ballad, such a beautiful song.
Sean: I’ll add it to my playlist. What a great answer to end on. Garry, thank you so much for your time.
Garry: Your welcome mate. Grab a bottle of red and stick on Zeppelin III.
Sean: [laughs] I will. We wish you and the rest of the guys all the best with AshenMoon and look forward to hearing more from the band.
Garry: I look forward to getting over there and saying “G’day” personally at some point. I know you’ll be very happy when you hear the EPs, let alone the whole shabang. It’s been lovely to talk to you, take care & stay safe mate.
Sean: You too. Thanks Garry.
