New Perth power trio Triple Engine, is a band born out of lock-down and isolation, but it’s music with a mission! With Chris Gibbs on guitar/vocals, Craig Skelton on bass/vocals and Dan Skelton on drums/vocals their debut single ‘Love Thing’ is a track that lyrically recalls a certain Dire Straits song, with talk of work to do and heavy lifting, but musically is Riff Rock of the highest order. We caught up with Craig and Chris to see how it all started and where it’s all headed! Roll out the boiler suits and crank up the volume it’s time for some Triple engine…
Mark: Before we get to the boiler suits, how long have you guys been cooking up this new three-piece Triple Engine?
Chris: I think Craig and I started talking about it in March or April, the first week the pubs started closing in W.A.?
Craig: That would have been Monday 23rd March!
Mark: It’s nice to be precise!
Chris: (laughs) Craig had mentioned the concept of a ‘power trio’ a little bit before then, but it was always on the ‘Maybe one day’ pile I guess.
Craig: And then the 23rd March happened and we were effectively shut down for all current business at the time as far as how we make our livings.
Chris: It then suddenly became a conversation that was a lot more real. But Craig will tell you what happened next because I just took it and ran with it.
Craig: (laughs impressively three different ways) that’s putting it mildly! We were having a conversation long distance because Chris is in York and I’m in Byford and never the twain shall meet in lock-down and whilst we were enjoying not being in the same room together we were missing playing together
Chris: (laughs)
Craig: And I can’t remember exactly how the phrase came into the conversation but Chris mentioned something about ‘the fog of confusion’ and I quipped back, “that would be a great name for the power trio idea that I had” and Chris was like “Power trio?”
Mark: (laughs)
Craig: Since I’ve non Chris I’ve known that was his preferred format in a band . I think that was in the morning then a couple of hours later we had a phone call which probably lasted the better part of an hour where we kicked the idea around and decided on the parameters to work within and basically it was born the next day, by then I had ideas for the name of the band, logo ideas and three new songs sitting in my inbox!
Mark: Now thats fast!
Chris: I basically slammed him with 50 band names (laughs) then once we had agreement on the title I had the logo ready to roll about two hours after that!
Mark: So I take it all the rush was that you were anticipating the pandemic was going to end at round about tea time on March 25th?
Chris and Craig: (Laughing)
Chris: I think what we were thinking was things were just so uncertain that I think there were two things going on there Mark. I think the first thing was even though we were trying to be quite relaxed and level headed about what was going on there was no doubt that when you put a few decades into something and then all of a sudden you can’t do it anymore there’s a bit of panic involved there and a lot of uncertainty. So I think we wanted to grab tight onto something that would keep us busy. But I think the second thing was realising “Hey, if it does all end this week and gets back to normal fast is this just going to be a project that we nearly did?” I don’t think anyone wanted that to happen. There was this real organized combined attack on the whole project to make sure that we got it over the line just in case things snapped back to normal.
Mark: Makes sense to me, there are a lot of musicians out there being creative right now. I guess we’re lucky in a way over here in that Western Australia seems to have avoided a real lock-down like most other places.
Chris: We are in a very unique situation – we gave a radio show the single to play on the East Coast and the DJ put up a post asking what people were doing now that they were not doing gigs and it made me realise how lucky we are in the West – there are so many places that don’t get to do what we will at our debut gig on Saturday – we’re actually starting to work again, and across the globe that’s a really unique situation to be in because most people are nowhere near that yet.
Mark: Talking of the show I guess the obvious question is how did you rehearse?
Craig: (laughs) well you say ‘rehearse’…
Chris: (laughs) what happened was, I do a little contract work at Leederville TAFE (A college in Perth) and that went into online mode for the last part of semester one and then there was an extended break and we got to head back in at about week three of semester two. So we had a situation where Craig and I did quite a few video calls where we were playing the riffs and melodies to each other, and I guess a lot of ‘rehearsal’ was that I would demo the song in a certain way and sent it to Craig and Dan. They would listen to it and make their changes and send back an adjusted demo. So it as like a lag time rehearsal where we were actually rehearsing to each other but not with each other! And I think that grew the songs in a very interesting way. But then of course we did have a three week window before the show so we started rehearsing the band ‘live’ at the start of August. But the first time we pretended to play the songs together was when we made the video in July but that was just miming to the track rater than actually jamming together..
Mark: What’s the reaction been like so far to the video?
Craig: Everyone loves the video. The video was really interesting because it did exactly what we were hoping for, and yet it just somehow didn’t require a lot of planning.
Chris: We had the location, we knew we had a couple of things that might be funny, but none of that was scripted it was just talked about on the day of the shoot. The team we really good and we just threw all the ideas down and it became this narrative about trying to get this car going. It was all just loosely based around the concept of the lyrics I guess.
Mark: So what’s the plan? What’s the next step in this locked-down world?
Craig: I think the next step is to record another song, one of those that we’ve written and played. We’ll do it in the same way, recording the drums and bass and our vocals at my home and then Chris will do his guitar and vocals at his, then we’ll send it out to get mixed. And at the same time of course another video because that really is the medium of the now. So that’s the immediate future. We’ll continue to write too, but the challenge for us is to keep the pedal to the metal and keep pushing ourselves. We were fortunate that these crazy times allowed us to put the band together, if Covid hadn’t happened this band wouldn’t exist, well maybe one day. I think also having and offer of a show pushed us when we just had two and a half songs! By the show e had six! But the key is to try and keep ourselves motivated and keep writing and then all the usual band stuff, promoting, playing, writing.
Chris: as someone pointed out even though this time we don’t have to work in the same way with the next song it was actually a mode of work that really worked for us. So I think we will record the next single and the one after that potentially as if we were still in the same situation because its a way that we can work fast and efficiently and get great results. So now we have a template for doing things that was kind of forced upon us, but which has turned out to be perfect for us.
Craig: And it’s also quite economical in that the only studio time we are paying for is to have the songs mixed and mastered. Over the years Chris and I have had enough experience of recording to produce good ‘signals to tape’ as they say.It also gives us a time freedom, we can do multiple takes and its not costing us money. All those factors come into it, it’s a really stripped down, raw way of doing things that is I guess a way of capturing the way bands would have done this back in the day. How did Cream record? How did Van Halen record? There’s no guitar overdubs,and I’m deliberately using a Fender Jazz bass guitar that only has four strings and 20 frets.
Chris: I actually remember Mark, when we started talking about the band back in March there were actually some guidelines that we wrote together which were that it should be done in a way that there was a limited amount of overdubbing. It should also sound that of course the band is using the tools of the trade in the studio but also doing it in such a way that it could be replicated live because there were not too many overlapping parts. We kind of had this rule book if you will – we thought of band like Van Halen and ZZ Top, and there was this set of goalposts that we set up fairly early and we were trying to stay true to that and I think that make us work faster and more efficiently because you know what you’re not going to do. Sometimes if you go in with the attitude of throwing the rule book out of the window it can lead to more creativity but it also might take a lot longer to hit upon what you need.But knowing what we wanted this band to sound like and staying within those goalposts has been so far working really well.
Craig: For me those parameters gave us the freedom to play, I knew that everything i wanted to say I needed to say on one instrument in one take. That’s the vibe. And I think we also have a great creative freedom between the three of us, all the ideas get put on the table and everything gets tried. I think Chris and myself in particular trust our musical instincts, you know, we know what we like.
Chris: And as you will know Mark Craig and I have been involved in projects now since 2012 but this is the first time we’d actually written together. We’d never tried composing together before. It’s really the start of a new relationship within the relationship.
Mark: Well let’s take it back even further then, can you remember when you guys met for the first time?
Craig: I can (laughs)
Chris: I’m not sure I’d spoken to Craig before the ‘Living for the Sunshine’ album launch (The Stone Circle album, of which Craig was part of the band). We were asked to play that show and that was before we were called Graphic Fiction Heroes (Chris previous band) we were still called the Chris Gibbs Trio then. I reckon I probably met Craig that night and then we started doing gigs together at places like The Paddo and places like that and we got to know each other better. And I remember that we got Craig to play piano on one of the Graphic Fiction Heroes songs at the launch in 2012 and it wasn’t long after that, and it wasn’t long after that that Craig ended up working with me on another Project and I reckon that was 2013.
Craig: Yeah that’s when I think we started gigging together regularly doing covers with Jimmy, or whoever the drummer was at the time.
Mark: Do you think that you are two people who compliment each other musically or are you two people who think quite similarly and so reinforce each other?
Craig: Musically yeah, but we never compliment each other! (laughs)
Chris: (Laughs)
Craig: We actually make a point of not complimenting each other!
Chris: I think that one thing that’s really helped with the song-writing aspect of this group is because we’ve done hundreds and hundreds of shows together over a variety of projects over the last seven years or so that when it came down to this we could put egos aside and as a result the writing process has been so easy because everyone is going – “How do we make it better? How do we make it better” constantly. And it’s all happening fast and efficiently and no one gets bent out of shape because we’ve done the hard yards over a lot of hours over a lot of shows that we have a working relationship that has transferred very very effectively to songwriting and composition.
Craig: And I think that as ‘educated musicians’ we speak the same language and I think that this is probably one of the first original projects I’ve been in, certainly I can say for me, apart from the Skelton Collective, and they’re my family… Well the first time I’m playing with a guitarist who speaks the same language I do.
Chris: I think that really helps that we can communicate at that level.
Craig: So there’s a huge amount of trust musically. I trust Chris’ instincts, he’s a great player I think musically we intrinsically compliment each other. We know when too go for it and we know when to ease back, it works! And in some ways it’s crazy that its taken us so long to get creative together but on the plus side I think it’s just the right time for us to be doing this.
Chris: I think all of this (Coronavirus) had to happen for this to happen.
Mark: And now for a hard question. Sum up the sound of the band in as few words as you can?
Silence… (laughs)
Mark: I’m challenging you!
Chris: I’ve got one for you “Big, Smart, Rock.”
Craig: Yeah. Um… “Power Trio Pop.” I mean it is Rock but it has that element, one second thoughts I like what Chris said! (laughs)
Mark: Thank you both for your time guys, see you at the next show!
Chris and Craig: Cheers!
You can hear more from Chris and Craig and Triple Engine who pick their ‘Albums for Isolation’ on our November Podcast.
