New Horizons & Old Beginnings

Brisbane-via-Rockhampton country rockers Halfway are preparing to undertake an exercise that gives them the perfect opportunity to take stock of their 15-plus-year career to date - playing their first and fifth albums in their entirety on the same night.

To celebrate the impending release of new single Three In & Nothing But The Stars - the latest offering from their recent album The Golden Halfway Record - the band are going to play that latest effort in full, alongside their acclaimed 2004 debut Farewell To The Fainthearted. Looking back at the decision, frontman and chief songwriter John Busby struggles to even recall the rationale behind holding up these bookend albums alongside each other, knowing only that he's looking forward to the experience.

"I guess we haven't played a lot of those songs [from Farewell To The Fainthearted] for a while - we only play one or two songs from it these days - so it's probably the album we play least, and it's a bit of nostalgia," he shrugs. "It's cool to revisit the songs, and we thought that maybe people would want to hear it. That's all it was really - it's probably just nostalgia, but we would have been happy to do any of them. It's 12 years now I guess and 'older' makes it a bit more interesting.

"We've been working on [rehearsing] them for a few weeks solidly, and the songs hold up okay. I think we used to bludgeon them a bit, and we still want to do that with the rock songs, but with the ballads on it we're letting them open up a bit and playing them like we play now. It's a totally different beast - the new record is in all different keys, but that record's all in G: the people's key. It's just straight down the barrel, and that's quite fun. But it's got a very clear centre to it.

"We'd come from playing a lot of indie-rock: Chris [Dale - guitar/vocals] and I and Elwin [Hawtin - drums] had been in St Jude, and the record we'd done before was this EP that we'd done with Wayne Connolly [1999's The POLaR EP], and it was really angular and had all of these different pieces and was drop-tuned and it was tricky to play. I think [Farewell To The Fainthearted] was just a reaction to that, and everything's in G and straightforward and straight down the barrel. It's fun. There's little codas on everything, and I think that's a hangover from indie-rock and bands like Archers Of Loaf to have a melodic line that completely changes for the last few bars, and having it there just for the sake of having it there."

When they made the change to Halfway from Brisbane indie-rockers St Jude - all four members, including guitarist Chris Hess, were briefly reuniting in the new project - did they take time to articulate what this change in aesthetic would entail or did they just dive in?

"Not really," Busby reflects. "I think there was a general idea to make it more of a Dylan thing, because we'd always loved things like Dylan and Steve Earle all along, so there was definitely an idea to go towards a rootsier path. And then also we listened to The Band a lot and they had a big expansive sound with a lot of members, and Mercury Rev and The Flaming Lips and Sparklehorse, so we just wanted to take the same pop sense and make it a big awkward band.

"That was always the idea, have a big fucking band but keep the songs simpler. Keep the songs straighter but have more people to fill it out, with less indie-rock. We were dabbling with the idea of how much country or roots music we could play - and how well we could play it anyway - and we sort of explored that as we went along. The first record certainly had a feel to it, and the songs are enjoyable to play."

"It's a totally different beast - the new record is in all different keys, but that record's all in G: the people's key."

After it settled down the original Halfway line-up comprised two distinct groups, the members of St Jude joined by four newcomers - including brothers Noel and Liam Fitzpatrick - who were all close friends from school, but it didn't take long to form one cohesive entity.

"We weren't in a rush to make a record, I remember that - we started in 2000 or thereabouts and we didn't make the record until 2004," Busby continues. "We were just playing around Brisbane. It was quite fun, I remember playing some shows and we were playing rootsy stuff at indie-rock places like The Healer and The Chelsea, and people would be, like, 'Oh fuck, these guys are playing country music!' That was kinda fun for a while, because it seemed like something that no one had had a go at, at least not in a serious way - people like Dave McCormack had done it in a pisstake-y way - but we were doing it with no punchline."

Halfway's recorded career certainly hit the ground running, with Farewell To The Fainthearted getting great reviews and it's catchy lead single Patience Back even scoring strong airplay on triple j.

"Yeah, Patience Back got some j-love," Busby chuckles. "We took the record down to Sydney because [Oz rock stalwart] Stuart Coupe told me he liked it and [You Am I drummer] Rusty Hopkinson told me he liked it, so straight away it was, like, 'Oh fuck, this is pretty good, meeting You Am I people!' So we signed to both of their labels - Laughing Outlaw and Reverberation - in a 50/50 deal that was a bit weird, and I guess in the end it didn't really work out, but it was fun.

"But it went really well, the single went really well and it was the only time we really had that radio support in a big way from triple j. That made it easier to tour for a while, people would know that song - we could play anywhere at that time and people would know it. Once the record came out it seemed like anything was possible. Of course it wasn't."

Can Busby remember his mindset back then when Halfway was starting out?

"Yeah, it was pretty much just the same as now - we were trying to be the best band we could be," he offers. "Chris [Dale] was writing more then and singing a lot more, and we loved it. It's the same as now really, it's still pretty exciting touring and doing all that stuff, but in 2004 it was pretty great. Even by the time the album came out we'd been around a while - most bands only last a couple of years, so by the time we put out that first record we were already four or five years into it.

"The band was always a long-term proposition, I remember that from the start. Everyone who got in on it knew that we were going to make a fucking stack of records, and that it was just going to go on and on and on. I guess in 2000 I was already 30 or whatever so I was really ready to fucking look a long game, and set up something we could really build on. Chris and the others are all a bit younger than me. Benny [Johnson - bass] joined the band at 19 or 20, it was his first band and he was straight in, it's amazing he's stuck around so long really.

"We just wanted to take the same pop sense and make it a big awkward band."

"But I just remember it being a long game and never being satisfied - we just wanted to do the usual things that bands do and just make the next record be better than the last. Plus half the band had already toured and done a lot of stuff in St Jude so there was a lot of experience there, everything wasn't new for everybody. In St Jude we'd been on Rubber Records and toured with bands like the Underground Lovers and done a little bit of stuff, so we were able to enjoy it but not get too excited by it all. Everyone knew that maybe with the next record - and it's how it turned out - that no one would play it. We made Remember The River [2006] and no one fucking played it. I love the thing, I was so proud of it, but these things just come and go. If you're in a band that wants to ride through that you can't focus on just being popular or doing well - you can't make the highs too high or the lows would be fucking crushing."

Looking back from five albums into the Halfway catalogue, has the band's musical evolution been how Busby would have envisaged it at the outset?

"I'm pretty happy with it really," he proffers. "I think doing the last record with [producer/Lambchop member Mark] Nevers [in Nashville] was a goal we'd set ourselves when we first heard Lambchop all those years ago, so a lot of it is just as we'd planned. If you'd have said in 2005 or 2006 that we'd go to the States and record with Mark Nevers, we would have all gone, 'Fucking yes! That's exactly how we should be!'

"But as for the music side of it, I think it's gotten a little bit more back to indie-rock, but I don't think that would have been much of a surprise to us back then either. We've sort of explored country - or our version of country - a fair bit, although that's not to say we wouldn't do it again. We tried some different things that we liked, but we were just dabbling in [country] really. On [2014 album] Any Old Love we tried some proper country shapes and chords and structure, like Sunlight On The Sills - I probably wouldn't have thought in 2004 that we'd be able to write or play a song like that. It's written like a George Jones thing and it's got all of these little tags, because everyone in the band is capable of being thoughtful and delicate. I guess with Any Old Love we looked for those country tags and things, especially with Sunlight On The Sills - whenever I think of us being a good country band I think of that song."

And despite the intervening years Busby doesn't feel that Halfway as an entity has changed all that much.

"The band itself is still a band I want to be in. We're just a bit more discerning I think. Ben learned to play in the band and Noel learned to play pedal steel in the band, so there's a difference in the way they play for sure - there's much more finesse, for better or worse. The people are all the same though, even though everyone's married now and stuff like that," he laughs. "We don't get out and drink as much after rehearsal - everyone kicks around for a while, a couple of us will drink for a bit, but everybody has their own thing. Mostly it's the same: just a little bit more finesse in the playing, but it's the same dream.

"We've got a few new songs as well, which fuels everything. Without that it wouldn't work. We've been working on the old stuff, working on the new songs and then there's that little project that we're doing with [Indigenous musician and elder] Bobby Weatherall next year, so there's heaps to do at rehearsal. It's busy.

"The only thing I notice is when I look at the old pictures are the eyes of the young guys, they look like the eyes of the fucking Stooges or something, like, 'The world's big and we're going to fucking take it!' Now it's more, like, 'Yeah, whatever'. But everything's fucking the same and that's the best thing about it - it's been such a solid beast. Even with the new people and whatnot it's the same."

In recent years the Halfway line-up has been strengthened by the addition of multi-instrumentalist Luke Peacock and Brisbane mainstay John Willsteed - a veteran of Xero and The Go-Betweens - on guitar, the latter of whom brought a wealth of experience and knowledge to the ranks.

"It's been good, we've learned a lot from him," Busby enthuses. "And I think he's learned from us too. Because the band's a commitment, it's not just a wing it thing and he's a wing it kinda guy because he's a great fucking player - he may need to rehearse technically less than some people or myself. But we were really keen - obviously we really love a lot of the records he was on, and we looked at it as a challenge. But we've learned from each other - he's a big personality, and we've already got plenty of those. Like anything it takes a while for everyone to get where everyone else is coming from, but it's been great."

And Willsteed isn't Halfway's only connection to Brisbane's favourite sons (and daughters) The Go-Betweens: founding member Robert Forster produced 2009's An Outpost Of Promise as well as Any Old Love, and the Busby/Dale songwriting partnership were awarded the prestigious Grant McLennan Fellowship back in 2008.

"It's been really cool doing those records with Robert - with John and Robert - it's all about learning from our end," Busby continues. "With Robert in the studio it was learning, with Willsteed I'm always learning, and I've been learning from Chris Dale since the day I picked up a guitar when we were 16 in Rocky. And it was exactly the same with Mark Nevers - we all went over there and we wanted to be better when we finished. He's made all these great records - George Jones has recorded there in his studio, and heaps of other bands like Calexico or whatever - and we just wanted to leave a better band than when we started, and we did I think.

"We just needed to soak it up, and that's the beauty of music - it's so fucking big. I've said it a million times but it's like when we I was in Rocky and [Bob] Dylan made Oh Mercy in 1989, I thought he'd never make another great record and then he put that out and I was just, like, 'Oh fuck, you can be well into your 50s and still getting better'. That's the beauty of it, it's an endless chase to try and keep learning. It's like any art or craft I guess, but some are just so deep and that's the best thing about music. We knew when we started that it was about all of us learning together and trying to get better at it - that's been the goal from the start."

But for now Halfway are returning to The Triffid to revisit their first and most recent albums, fittingly a venue that's welcomed them with open arms in recent times (to the point where tickets to the show include a digital live recording of a set Halfway played in the room prior to launching The Golden Halfway Record there earlier this year).

"The live album is actually taken from the show before the launch when we played with The Gin Club, which was about four months earlier," Busby tells. "So it has just like our regular set with just one or two songs from The Golden Halfway Record, and those are alternate versions with different structures - we were just working it out. Branko [Cosic - engineer] just happened to be there that night and asked us if he could record it for 4ZZZ - there was no plan to do that at all, it was completely winged. But both of those shows at The Triffid were really good, and hopefully this next one will be as good or better."