Lust For Live

"It's always been the most important thing to us. The only reason we exist as a band is so that we could make music together and then play it to people. We view making records as a process of documentation and it's fun and we really enjoy that element of it, but our existence is as a live, touring band. If we could play and tour more in this county we would, but unfortunately it's a big country with a small population and if you tour too much, then it's overkill. That's why I moved to America for two years and, you know, played four nights a week for two years – and it was awesome. That is how I would like to be able to live, just night in and night out. That to me is the life of a working musician.”

Something For Kate's Paul Dempsey is a livewire indeed and the secret to his career success to date is now clear. Recording is a game for techies, those who love gadgets and who wanna play in virtual realities. Playing live is for those who really love the immediacy of music; who crave it with a passion that can't be crushed by one too many dodgy servo pies on the road. It's just as well they're doing it all again, then, with national Star-Crossed Cities tour taking the three-piece out of the lounge rooms and onto the stages they love so much. It's a process that will let Dempsey and co just do their base 'working musician' thing and let them give new record Leave Your Soul To Science a good seeing to. “Since the album came out [late last year] we've only played about a dozen shows, so we're really excited to get out and play them live and really break them in. It still only feels like we've just scratched the surface of them and we love just playing songs because inevitably by the end of the tour, we'll be playing them in weird new ways.”

The band's commitment to the stage is not just lip service or a selfish push, but one they have put themselves behind for the good of the community at large. When talk moves to initiatives like SLAM (Save Live Australia's Music), which is centred in Melbourne but is slowly moving national, Dempsey's support is clear. “We went to the first SLAM thing because it was on and because… I mean, when The Tote was briefly closed in Melbourne it was an outrage. The Tote's been there forever, it was one of the first places that we ever played and it's been a breeding ground for bands in Melbourne and they also cater to a heavier, harder kind of music that doesn't get out on everywhere. And the reasoning behind why they were being shut, the sort of bullshit rules about the number of security that you needed on and all that sort of stuff, it was just necessary to get involved with that. And then I guess when we did turn up they asked us to do a bit more, which we were only too happy to do. But it's the same in every city in Australia and I think Brisbane's leading the way in terms of the council there designating 'entertainment zones' and I think that's the way to go. If you want a vibrant city with different cultural niches doing different cultural things, then you have to zone that way, you have to legislate that way to allow those things to grow and flourish.”

The choice to be actively involved in not only making, but also protecting live music, is something Dempsey talks at length about, but with clear energy and respect. Describing it as a “duty” rather than a choice, he is, however, pragmatic about what's required. “[Protecting live music] relies on a long view, which a lot of politicians don't have, so in turn it requires us to force them, or remind them, to have it, to remind them why these things are valuable… A city without live music is a boring city. You go to any city in the world and you can feel it when there's a live music culture and Melbourne in particular has been famous for it. And so that's why 25,000 Melburnians come out in the street when a venue gets shut down.”

As relative elder statesmen in the Australian indie scene, Dempsey's aware that the journey Something For Kate has had is one new kids don't. “I don't think I'm lending any celebrity element to it or anything like that [to live music rallies], but the reason I think I can help is because I've seen so much change. I'm going to make myself sound really old – for the record I'm 36, which isn't that old – but when our first EP came out there wasn't mobile phones or DVD players, internet was not ubiquitous and there was no iTunes or MP3s.” Joking that things may have been different if Something For Kate had started earlier (“If we were ten years older we'd probably be rich, because our record sales would have been real, actual record sales”) and lamenting what may have happened if they started later (“I think five years later and we may never have been able to get established”), he does remain optimistic.

“It's the same old bullshit which is why I say again and again, just get out there and go and play live. Go on tour and play every night of the week. If you want to go and be a musician go and be a musician, if you do it enough and well enough people will notice. I see a lot of bands worrying themselves about a blog or how to make something go viral, or how to exploit the multimedia strategy – and I'm not saying that can't be interesting, but I just think there's no better thing than going out and playing live and letting human word of mouth do its thing. And I like the romance of that too; I like hearing about stuff from my friends.”

The romance of the 'word of mouth' is one that Something For Kate continue to push while they're on the road too. One of the key tools in the musician's kit, the cover version, is something they pull out regularly to show their fandom, get their own live kicks and perhaps also do their own little bit of a 'friend's recommendation'. For this tour, Dempsey is doing a series called Shotgun Karaoke, where he's performing selected covers backstage before the band's shows, with the results being filmed and posted to the band's Facebook. “It's a nod and a homage and yeah, maybe for some portion of the audience you might be turning them on to something they hadn't heard before,” Dempsey says. However he can also see the funny side of when good intentions run away. “It's really funny when you see tweets from people at a U2 concert; people saying, 'Oh my god they just played a Something For Kate song,' because they actually played The Clash's Rock The Casbah, which we covered,” he laughs warmly.

There are some live covers that Something For Kate have absolutely owned though, like Truly, an awesome track that indie kids of a certain age will never be able to associate with anyone else. “That's a band called Hazel and they were around in the mid '90s when we started out,” Dempsey explains. “They made two brilliant records and then ceased to exist. They just recently reformed and started playing some reunion shows, actually. I think they're from Portland and they played some reunion shows and oddly enough the bass player contacted us recently and said, 'If you guys are playing in Australia we'd like to come and play with you', so that would be a weird, you know, full circle kind of thing.” Nothing confirmed, can we sign a petition, start a rumour? A new live alliance? “I don't know, who knows,” he replies with only a hint of sheepishness. Keep your eye on your live listings, just in case.