It’s been five long years since the release of ‘Terra Casanova’ but Melbourne’s power rock trio The Casanovas are now ready to unleash their fourth studio album ‘Reptilian Overlord’, which is out on August 28 through Rubber Records. The band have already taken three singles from this new body of work, with the album opener ‘Hollywood Riot’ released back in 2019, followed by ‘Red Hot’ and most recently ‘Lost and Lonely Road’. Front man & guitarist Tommy Boyce and longtime bassist Damo Campbell are now joined by Brett “Wolfie” Wolfenden on drums as the band gear up for the next chapter in their so far twenty-one year history and the guys have certainly upped the stakes with iconic Australian rock producer Mark Opitz jumping behind the desk to produce the album.
The Rockpit spoke with an excited Tommy and tried to help provide some light relief while he was frustratingly locked down in Melbourne to discuss how the band continue to create some of their best work yet, just how many songs they will still have in the locker after the release of ‘Reptilian Overlord’ and just why ‘St. Kilda is Fucked’.
Sean: Hi Tommy, how are you?
TB: Good mate. How are you?
Sean: I’m very well thanks. I’ve got to start by saying what a wonderful album this is. I’ve had a listen to ‘Reptilian Overlord’ over the last three or four days now and it’s fantastic.
TB: Thanks, so much Sean. That’s really nice to hear because we’ve not really put it out there for everyone, so I haven’t had any feedback as yet. So, you’re the first person to tell me that, so that’s great. Thank you.
Sean: How does it finally feel to get another album out after five years?
TB: It’s a big relief. It’s like giving birth [laughs]. It’s certainly a big weight off your mind. Everything happens so slowly because we recorded it in April last year (2019) so the whole process of getting it out takes so long. So, really stoked to finally have it ready. Obviously, it’s a bummer we can’t tour on it right now. We were due to be going to Europe real soon but that’s going to have to happen next year now.
Sean: It’s an excuse for everyone in the crowd to learn the lyrics [laughs]
TB: [laughs] Yeah, indeed.
Sean: The album opener ‘Hollywood Riot’ is such a great track to kick things off with but as I keep listening, different tracks jump out at me. ‘Bulletproof’ has really grown on me too.
TB: Ah, cool.
Sean: Some of the tracks feel quite different. The last single ‘Lost and Lonely Dreams’ is an example of that.
TB: When I wrote that one I was going to team up with another guy on a separate project and I wrote a bunch of songs for that project. That thing didn’t eventuate and I thought a few of them could be Casanova songs so we tried it and ‘Lost and Lonely Dreams’ was one of those. That’s why it sounds more like an 80’s movie soundtrack. The cool thing about doing that though was that it’s kind of made me realize that I enjoy writing more melodic stuff and that’s not to say I want to start writing pop music. I really love rock n’ roll with good melody like KISS or Cheap Trick. There’s a lot of hooky melody in there but then we don’t want to get stuck into that rut of trying to replicate AC/DC or something like that. You know what I mean?
Sean: Yeah, very much keeping your own vibe & feel to it.
TB: Exactly. If you go down that path you tend to get stuck in a corner. I don’t want to get stuck in that rut of writing AC/DC style riffs… don’t get me wrong I love AC/DC, but I just feel that did all they could do in that vein.
Sean: You mention AC/DC which is a nice link to the fact you have brought Mark Obitz in to do the production on this album too. What a legend of Australian rock music!
TB: Yeah for sure. Mark had engineered on ‘Let There Be Rock’ and ‘Powerage’ which is amazing.
Sean: Rock history right there.
TB: Yeah exactly. It was a great honor to work with Mark and to have that experience behind the desk. He was so good at capturing the energy of the band as it tracked live. We’ve worked with producers in the past that wanted to use click tracks but with Mark he wanted it to be raw and I think the band really benefited for doing it like that.
Sean: So, how did you get Mark involved?
TB: Just money I guess [laughs] I had met Mark years and years ago. For a couple of years, I played guitar for Jimmy Barnes on the road, so I met Mark through that, but I don’t even think he remembered me though when we came to record [laughs]
Sean: [laughs] He should remember you now with this album.
TB: That’s very kind of you Sean.
Sean: Something that has been a constant for The Casanovas is Rubber Records, who once again you are releasing this album through. You have had a fantastic relationship with them.
TB: Yeah, we have & still do. We are really lucky actually. They have stood by us the whole way. I’m eternally grateful because had we signed to a bigger record label; we may have had a bigger profile back then but may have not had a record label at all by now. So, that’s been a big part of keeping the bad together if anything and keeping us enthusiastic enough to keep making music.
Sean: It’s also great to see an Independent Australian label releasing such strong homegrown material. I love that almost Australian brotherhood kind of thing here in the music industry and this is a prime example with you guys supporting & staying with them and with them keeping on backing & believing in your work.
TB: For sure. It’s David Vodika’s label and he has been so good to us. Without that it would be really difficult because there is just so much work involved in everything around the music. It’s just so much work to get it out there and get it publicized. All the little bits and pieces that go together… and the money of course.
Sean: So, I’ve been to St. Kilda and I thought it was quite a nice place but according to one of the tracks on the new album ‘St. Kilda is Fucked’ [laughs]
TB: [laughs] oh man it was great. I grew up there and it was great back in the day but to me it’s now sold it’s soul. It’s full of upwardly mobile corporate types…
Sean: And The Block has been filmed there… [laughs]
TB: [laughs] Yeah and that’s a symbol of what it’s become. It used to be a really interesting place, exciting, eclectic, weird people musicians & artists. You could go out and meet such strange people… I’ve never come across a place quite like it since and I know nothing is forever, obviously. It’s a sad thing for me because I grew up there and I’ve got a real connection to the place but not the people who are there now. There used to be all these great live venues there but now they are gone and it’s just ridiculously expensive to live there.
Sean: I managed to get to visit the newly refurbished Espy when I was in town back in February. I went down there with a mate of mine and he was telling me stories of the old times with the live bands that played there and how it just went off.
TB: It was such a cool place man. You had The Palace, The Palais, The Venue which closed down a long time ago and there were always other bars… The Prince of Wales, The Espy of course, The Seaview Ballroom up on Fitzroy Street… it was just such an exciting place. I feel like it kind of lost its mojo or its coolness in around 2000, somewhere around there. There was a show that came out called ‘The Secret Life of Us’ which was like a soapy, you know, and it was set in St. Kilda. It exposed the area to the rest of the country, and I felt that was the defining moment because suddenly everyone wanted to live there.
When my family moved there I would have been about twelve years old and I remember all my friends saying, “Why do you want to live there?” It was kind of considered a real dirty, junkie kind of area and it kind of was in one respect but it had all this other great stuff as well. It’s a different world now. It’s so sad if you have these great experiences in these kinds of places and it all changes and you think, “It’s never going to be that way again.” It’s the same with cities like Barcelona. I was there back in 2003 and it was so awesome and now it’s just full of Airbnb’s, you know. No locals even live there anymore [laughs].
Sean: It’s been five years since the release of your last album ‘Terra Casanova’ so in all that time have you constantly has ideas popping in your head that you have to write down or record it in your phone or are you a songwriter who has to sit yourself down and really apply yourself?
TB: Bit of both to be honest. Sometimes I have something more fully formed in my head when I wake up. When you are in that state between asleep & awake you get access to your subconscious and that’s sometimes when the special stuff comes out then. Other times I’ll build it more like when I muck about on the guitar with a riff and I’ll record it and then using logic I’ll put some drums to that and then build on it from there bit by bit, kind of thing. The benefit of using software to listen back is super beneficial because you can get a much better of idea for it… sometimes you have a song idea and you’re thinking it’s going to sound so good but then you record it and realize it’s really not that good after all. Other times you have an idea which you think is just ok, you put something down and develop it and then its like “fuck, that turned out so good and so much better than I expected.” It’s a strange elusive thing.
Sean: So, typically how many tracks would you put need to write for a ten-track album like ‘Reptilian Overlord’?
TB: I think in the end we had about twenty-five in total. Because of this lockdown I’ve been writing for the next one… we’ve already got like thirty for the next one [laughs]. There has been a lot of work and its not just me who’s writing, there’s Damo (Campbell) as well. Another thing was at the time we were doing ‘Reptilian Overlord’ Jaws (Jordan Stanley) was moving to Bali so we had to find a new drummer, so it was a little bit of a strange time. Now we have a new drummer (Brett “Wolfie” Wolfenden) and as much as I love ‘Jaws’, ‘Wolfie’ is more on the same page as me & Damo so that makes writing a lot easier, you know.
Sean: I’m still shocked by the fact you have thirty more songs to pick from [laughs]
TB: Yeah there’s like twenty or so that we’ve just done recently and then maybe ten we can take from the last batch but I do feel that some of the ones I’ve done really recently have eclipsed what I did before because I feel I’ve improved, you know what I mean? There is always that quest to get better & better. We’re not one of those bands like Guns n’ Roses where you do one genius debut and then go downhill. We’re the other way round I think [laughs]. If you look at a band like AC/DC I feel it took them four or five albums to really put out a great record… I mean they are really good records but I feel that ‘Let There Be Rock’ was the first fantastic one then ‘Powerage’ which was just incredible and ‘Highway to Hell’ & ‘Back in Black’ were too.
Sean: With that in mind and knowing that many bands come & go, what do you think the secret is to the fact that twenty-one years later The Casanovas are still releasing what is arguably your best material to date?
TB: Personally, I feel I’ve got better as a songwriter over the years. When I go back and listen to stuff on the first record, I feel like I was so naïve and it was basic & stuff. It’s funny because when we were doing that, that was when we rode the wave commercially so to speak. We had all that kind of attention, but I felt we didn’t really have strong enough material to back it up. Ironically, now our material is better, we are a much better band live and all that sort of stuff but we’re sort of starting again in a way but that’s been good because we’ve had such great feedback. We did a live streaming gig about six weeks or so ago. It’s on our Facebook page and before that I’d never actually seen us live with the exception of two or three minute long mobile phone clips so I was pretty nervous and I was thinking, “Oh shit, I really don’t know how I’m going to sound.” But then watching it back I was really impressed. I was like, “You know what, we are actually a really good band” [laughs]
Sean: I will head on over to your page to check it out. So, who were the bands you were listening to as you were growing up?
TB: When I was really little, like maybe five years old, I was really obsessed with KISS. I remember my mum setting me up with the headphones on, putting on ‘KISS Alive’ and opening up the album and read the letters to the fans that they wrote… I was obsessed. But then I was really influenced by my older brother who was getting into stuff like Sunnyboys and Hoodoo Gurus. Stuff like that… good aussie rock so I picked up that on the way too. Then when I was about nine or ten, he put on ‘If You Want Blood You’ve Got It’ the AC/DC live record and I heard ‘Riff Raff’ and remember just having a total epiphany. I was like, “What the hell is this? This is just the greatest…” and from then I just became a total AC/DC nut [laughs]. From AC/DC I got in to harder & heavier rock like Zeppelin, Sabbath, Van Halen, Aerosmith and all those big-time classic rock bands.
Sean: Some of the greatest bands ever to grace the scene. Huge influences to pick from…
TB: For sure. Incredible.
Sean: So more on your influences, if I booked you into a restaurant for a couple of hours and you could have three guests join you from the music world, dead or alive, who would you invite? And you don’t have to eat in St. Kilda if you don’t want to [laughs]
TB: [laughs] Who would I choose? That’s a tough one. Maybe Keith Richards would be cool to have along. Bon Scott for sure. Oh man… Holy shit that’s such a tough question. I was going to say Chuck Berry, but everyone says he was an arsehole [laughs]. I know, Tony Iommi because he seems cool.
Sean: Tony is certainly a new addition to the table. What was the last album you listened to?
TB: The last album I listened to? I had one on today actually. I was listening to Hoodoo Gurus Live album ‘Bite the Bullet’ from 1998. It’s a good live record. Something I was writing today about Australian iconic rock songs and one of them was a Hoodoo Gurus song and our publicist was telling me about this live record, so I chucked it on today.
Sean: Cool stuff. I’ll check that one out.
TB: It’s not my favorite of the Gurus stuff. I prefer ‘Stoneage Romeos’ and ‘Mars Needs Guitars!’, those two early Gurus records which are pretty cool.
Sean: So finally, if you could be credited with writing any song ever written what song would you choose?
TB: That’s a tough one too… Maybe ‘Foxey Lady’ by Hendrix.
Sean: Nice. I’ve not had that track before. I will add it to the playlist.
TB: ‘Foxey Lady’ man, I just feel it’s one of the sexiest, fuckin’ coolest rock songs ever written. Jimi Hendrix is someone I’d love to add to the dinner table man.
Sean: As everyone needs cheering up during Covid restrictions we’ll pull him up a chair and bring him in [laughs]
TB: [laughs] Yeah for sure. Thanks.
Sean: Tommy, it’s been fantastic to talk to you and we really wish you all the best for the new album because it’s superb… I’m now looking forward to ‘Reptilian Overlord’ Vol. 2 which will be out in three weeks’ time [laughs]
TB: [laughs] I wish. Likewise, Sean, it’s been really great to speak to you. Thanks mate.
