June 99 (exact date unknown)
Watch This Space
story by Mark Neilsen
Danny Greaves, lead vocalist from Canadian band The Watchmen, is calling from Ontario where he just got off stage about an hour beforehand. Such is the life of a musician. After a gig you'd think a muso would either be resting, travelling to the next gig, or partying, not stuck doing interviews to people halfway across the world. Not that Greaves minds it that much. "It's kind of cool talking to people far away," he says.
The Watchmen's latest album Silent Radar has been out for a while in their home country but not nearly so long around the rest of the world. It must be pretty weird then having to talk about an album a long time after it's been released. Greaves has a bit of a chuckle at this before replying. "Yeah, totally. There's definitely a time warp going on," he says. "It's actually an interesting thing 'cause the answer to some of the same questions are different a year later tan they were right when they came out."
Why are they different? Do you feel the album has evolved over that time?
"Yeah, Absolutely. The meanings of the songs change. Well, hopefully they do and I think
you kind of want that. You want the music to change as you're inside of it and touring it
and playing it. You realise it's kind of a standard thing whenever you put a record out you
end up playing the song a lot better like a year later. You wish you could record them now.
You try and get them as close as you can but there's no way of touring it for that long
before you put it out."
To me it seems your always on the road. Do you work them out then?
"For this record I think we pretty much road tested maybe 80 per cent of the record, which is
a really good thing to do. It's not how we've done all the records but it's definitely
something that's made this one a cohesive record I think because we were used to playing them
on stage and I think that translates."
Before this trip with the Screaming Jets, their previous trips to Australia have been short promotional tours, meaning their stays are a pretty rushed affair, such as with the most recent PCM they attened. "I remember it was, oh God, it was so hectic when we were there," Greaves recalls. "I think we were there for six or seven days and we had probably 10 or 12 days worth of stuff in that, things to do and lots of running around. I didn't see as much of it as I wanted to. It's great travelling. You end up meeting lots of other bands, press folks and record company folks. You go out and realise that it's really far away from where I'm from.
"It was kind of a blur. I never sat still for 15 minutes. When we come back, which will hopefully be in May or June, we'll be there for like three weeks or a month, trying to really see the country. I think the last tour was really for promotional reasons and it was definitely worth it."
As for their single Stereo, which has got a lot of support from Australian radio, Greaves
didn't really care what song got picked as the single, but was more than happy with the record's
company's choice. "We knew when we wrote that tune, and another song Any Day Now, we knew those
songs kind of had that appeal and that's great," Greaves says. "Stereo anyway, it's a very
in your face kind of tune and I think it begs to be heard and I think those are the songs that
you need to start out a record on. Ones that catch people's attention."