2024 has been an incredibly busy year for Tim Rogers. Appearances at the Big Red Bash & Mundi Mundi as well as a national tour with the Rolling Stones Revue featuring the likes of Tex Perkins, Phil Jamieson and Sarah McLeod, a 40th anniversary album and subsequent tour with The Hard-Ons both here in Australia and across Europe, country-wide shows with You Am I and also giving his time to young musicians with unseen disabilities on ABC’s six-part documentary Headliners, which also features Elly May Barnes & Ella Hooper.
And if that wasn’t enough Tim has now released a wonderful disco-infused album with Lance Ferguson (The Bamboos) under the guise The Ferguson Rogers Process. We managed to get the ever-busy Tim to sit still for twenty minutes to give us enough time to grab a little insight to his chocker block year.
Sean: Hey Tim, Thank you for your time. How are you?
Tim: I’m okay, thank you.
Sean: It’s fantastic to finally get to talk to you about this wonderful album, ‘Style And Or Substance’. We caught up briefly at Mundi Mundi and when I mentioned I had been loving the tracks I had heard so far your eyes lit up like a kid in a candy store. Has it been a fun project to work on?
Tim: Yeah, yeah. It was an easy process, I think. I like the way that Lance operates, the way he runs a band, the way he runs a studio. And he sent me the songs that were pretty much complete this time, as opposed to the previous Bamboos record that we did together. And so writing lyrics and melodies and harmonies and little melodic bits, that’s a real joy and then going to the studio and presenting it to him because he doesn’t demand demos and we don’t spend times in front of a computer and working out what’s going to work. It’s pretty instinctive. I’m lucky enough to be in three or four bands that operate that way and I think it’s very much my raison d’être at the moment and working with John Castle our producer, as well co-produced with Lance. So yeah it doesn’t surprise me that I was like a kid in a candy store so to speak because, you know, it’s like the coach has given you the best position on a footy pitch or given you a new ball to open the bowling. I’m still very shocked when people I love and admire give me a job to do. It’s very complimentary.
Sean: It’s great that it’s finally out. It’s an album that just has such a feel-good vibe with some fantastic tracks. It really just captures that sort of essence of almost 70s disco in places with that funky sound – something so different to the year you’ve had because you’ve probably been one of the busiest musicians in Australia with so many differing projects across a variety of genres.
Tim: Yeah it’s a wonder with all that work why I’m completely broke but it’s the reality of being in the arts community and unfortunately soon to be in the arts therapy community with the recent perspective changes. And I’ve sort of been working with that recently. Yeah, I guess when we spoke, it had been such a big weekend with the Headliners TV show wrapping and being asked to do a bunch of different songs that I wasn’t necessarily prepared for, but to try and match that with excitement. But the template of 70s disco and then Lance brought up 80s pop music where maybe some bands that were kind of new wave-ish where Altered Images or Talking Heads or Tom Tom Club, The Slits were using for lack of a better term, global music, global rhythms and incorporating them into pop songs that was pretty much the raison d’etre of what Lance proposed to me. And I don’t know whether you could say it’s in my wheelhouse, but I was really drawn to it because I love dancing and I like dance music that has lots of space that allows a dancer or a singer to jump in. It’s not just this wall of endless information and blip, blip, blip, blip, blop, blop, blop. That’s definitely the kind of music that’s definitely has got its place. And I know Lance is a big fan of electronic dance music when it’s done really well, but we wanted to use organic instrumentation and voices and create this record. Yeah, it’s really fun. It was really fun to write. The studio was intense because we had two and a half days to do all the vocals and instrumental little flourishes. But again, if you’ve got a good boss like Lance, he gives you enough room for you to really experiment. So if it sounds fun, it’s because it definitely was.
Sean: And, of course, you’re going to get to play at New Year’s Eve a live show at Footscray Park, which is going to be something to look forward to, not just for yourselves, but for the crowds that will be gathering.
Tim: Yeah, I like that it’s a community festival too. It’s not necessarily just a music festival. So playing this material to folks who, hopefully folks from the community. You know, Footscray is a beautifully multicultural part of the country and I love going there.
I shot some TV there early in the year and it was fun and vibrant. So doing that will be great. And then we’re touring in the first quarter of next year. We were going to a month ago, but some personal stuff that we had to sort out first within our own lives. And the live show, we’ve done a few already, and, yeah, they’re frogs in socks [laughs]. They’re really wild, and we stretch things out or play and do some old Bamboos songs and some covers, and it’s a big night out. It’s almost like the night never ends, you know.
Sean: And it’s a great way to end the year and start the new one because we touched on how busy you’ve been throughout 2024 with so many various projects through the year; The Hard Ons celebrated their 40th Anniversary with an album, and I know you really enjoy doing that and of course not only did you play some Australian shows but you got to take it to Europe too.
Tim: Yeah, we did we did a Hard-On’s European tour about a month ago and that was wild. The Hard-Ons have got a lot of plans next year, some of which include me and some don’t. We just talked about it tonight, Blackie and I. It’s really the fact that they need to keep moving. And if I’m doing other projects, they can shapeshift, whether as a three-piece or with Jerry A. from Poison Idea, who’s going to be singing with them on a tour next year, as well as everyone’s got day jobs. It’s the same with You Am I and with The Temperance Union and with The Bamboos and The Ferguson Rogers Process as well, it’s kind of the way you’ve got to do it, you know, I’m preaching to the converted I guess but yeah that’s the way, if you want to keep making music, that’s what you’ve got to do. I don’t go looking for jobs necessarily… I like them when they come along but sitting here in the studio and writing is actually what I love doing most. You know, touring, the shows are great, but I still haven’t yet found a way to do touring where it’s healthy. I still do it like I’m 20. And, yeah, I’ll try and change that. I read something where the lads from Lime Cordial were talking about their ice baths and meditation things, which is all really, really great stuff. But I guess the bands I play in, we’re kind of in vans driving for 12 hours between shows, whether in Europe or Japan or the States and here. So one day we’ll get to ice baths and good food. Just probably not this century [laughs].
Sean: We touched on Mundi Mundi and it was a star studded weekend with some incredible performances but one of the highlights for me was the night before the start of it all with Headliners. We had the privilege of being a part of that really special project and we got to see that before it was released on the TV. Everyone was told keep quiet, we had to leave it out of our review of the festival but what an absolutely magical event that was. Both bands were just incredible. And do you know what? There was just the emotion out in that magical landscape and backdrop, watching those guys & girls perform. It was extremely emotional.
Tim: I’m really glad you enjoyed it. Thank you. It was a really overwhelming show to be involved in. I didn’t know what I could give. I thought actually when I got asked that they were going to go into my mental health paradigm or whatever it is. I still haven’t worked it out. But I think that they liked the contrast between the way I work and the way Ella (Hooper) does, the way that Elly-May does, and bringing in Ben (Gilles) and Delta (Goodrem). So I really was, when I just met all the musicians, was just so charmed. Very, very charming people. And their stories were so difficult to listen to because when by the time stories were coming out I’d grown to really love them and what’s been wonderful is that since the show’s wrapped up we’re all in contact, everyone’s releasing new music, writing new music, playing and we’re just trying to find ways because everyone lives around the country, that we can get together socially, musically, whatever it is and so hopefully even with a You Am I tour we’re doing next year, I hope, and getting some of my friends to collaborate with us, whether in the studio or on stage.
And it’s definitely changed the way I see the world particularly with unseen disabilities and working within the sort of large paradigm of the NDIS with art therapy subsequent to the program and hearing what’s gone on with the funding for that has been extremely disappointing. So myself and other people who work in that kind of community, we’re just trying to figure out what to do at the moment because when you get met with the big shortened hand, I’m sure it’s not just down to that representative, but to work out what you’re doing. And I’ve never been in a governmental situation or really even necessarily a bureaucracy and so to voice your concerns in an intelligent way rather than just jumping up and down but definitely that show was such an education and I’m kind of still reeling from it. But also I feel very enlightened, particularly with unseen disabilities and also being in clubs and events and realising what happens if you have to access a venue with a wheelchair or if you need assistance and how to get it. Venues have just got it so hard these days with everything, you know, and the insurance costs and we’re trying to find I guess practical easy affordable ways where we can make stages more accessible for musicians who have a disability.
Sean: It was one thing to see them all perform but then to see their faces light up with 10,000 people giving them all such an incredible reception afterwards was something that will always stay with me.
Tim: It was really done without a safety net too – they’re were contingency plans like what if this happens, what if that happens and we had to invent some what happens if our friends get stage fright to the point where it’s debilitating or what happens if someone gets sick and then their enthusiasm completely got them through all of that. Ella, Elly-May and I have talked about it. It makes us feel in a way ashamed that every performance isn’t, we don’t just get on our knees and pray to whichever god or goddess or whatever spiritual being we believe in or not. So yeah, it was really overwhelming. It was difficult to keep emotion in check. I’m just so happy for our friends, you know. The day after it was done, I had to fly to Texas to work with my partner on a ballet project over there. And so coming back to Australia and the show debuted and watching it, and it just all came back and it was tremendously emotional and very joyous. I really hope people can get to see the end of the program. It’s a thing of rare beauty.
Sean: From the light of something so celebratory to something of a more darker nature, I have to briefly talk to you about the Tommy album you did with You Am I and Sarah McLeod and Hayley Mary last year. I saw it at the Astor Theatre in Perth and forgot just how dark an album it was in places. It was a breath-taking show.
Tim: I’m glad you enjoyed it. It’s a really dark record [laughs] and yeah we had to go to some pretty odd places and it’s a difficult record to represent but I like within You Am I and whatever we continue to do, that we’ll take on those challenges because we want to challenge ourselves and also I hope that we’re not condescending to audiences who are there when we’re playing and we’ll present something like that rather than say oh let’s just do a great set to this band. Or ironically enough, you know, the tour we do next year
is going to be You Am I songs, but the ones that people like [laughs]. So for once, we’re playing for an audience more than ourselves. We’re lucky that we still have the opportunity to try out things like that. But it was a flippant, difficult show. And thank fuck Hayley and Sarah were there to help us, you know, brilliant, brilliant singers.
Sean: I noticed that where everyone was dressed in white, Hayley represented in a more colourful variety of costumes. Was that to counteract the darker songs she had to tackle, because she had some terribly dark topics to cover in her segments?
Tim: Yeah, she wanted to go there and they were her choices. We put it open to Hayley and said that if they didn’t want to do the creep songs that I’d do them because I look like more of a creep [laughs]. But they’re just such dexterous vocalists and powerful and they want to go out there and it really pushed us along you know, it highlighted what I’ve been saying for years; that You Am I would be an enormously better band with a great singer. And so we’ve talked subsequently about that. You know, we’ve been friends of Sarah’s in particular for around 30 years. You know, we’ll explore doing future product projects because we’ve been mates for almost three decades. And, you know, we’re not going to be around forever.
Sean: One of our photographers got a great photo of you the other day at the Froth and Fury Festival down in Adelaide and it was one of these photos that he took from the back of the crowd looking at the stage and right at the back of the crowd is your silhouette with your hat and straight away I knew exactly who it was.
Tim:[laughs] Really? It’s one of the best festivals I’ve ever been to. It’s a hard rock metal, you know, on the hard edge and to be there with the Hard-Ons was awesome because we had a lot of friends there and so many people there and just reiterated all the cliches about genres of music and how wrong they are because that metal community, hard rock community, is just the friendliest bunch ever. People are very devoted to that band and have very strong opinions and they let you know, they let us know and there are going to be people who hate what I do with the Hard-Ons and they let me know and you kind of occasionally get a can in the face or a bottle in the face and that day there was very little of that and just joy. Yeah it’s one of those festivals that I wish I was just there for longer so I could see more but you know I get to places, I get all excitable and then realize I’m kind of out in the mental netherworld and so you know, I disappear and lock myself in a hotel room. It’s just safer for everybody.
Sean: Tim, it’s been incredible to catch up and just touch on a few of the highlights of your 2024.
Tim: I’m a very lucky man and lucky to do it and I’m very thankful that you give us a chance to talk and get our music out there, you know it’s certainly not disregarded, so I really appreciate it. It’s lovely to see you again.
Sean: Thanks Tim.
Tim: Bye Bye.
