No Place Like Home

Since the release of the Band Of Frequencies' album Rise Like The Sun late last year, frontman Shannon Sol Carroll has been a busy beaver. The group embarked on a hugely successful national tour promoting the album, and this year he and drummer Mark Hennan have been helping out an up-and-coming solo artist... Bernard Fanning, on his national Departures tour.

When reflecting on how this supergroup of musicians – Lachlan Doley, Andrew Morris, Matt Engelbrecht, Hennan and himself – was formed for Fanning's tour, Carroll explains, “[Mark and I] are friends with Haugy [Ian Haug] from Powderfinger, who asked our producer Jeff Lovejoy, about who would be appropriate to play on the tour; then Bernard just called us up out of the blue while we were on tour in Western Australia. It was a nice surprise.”

Sharing the stage with such an illustrious figurehead has been a huge compliment and a real feather in the cap for Carroll, who plans to keep this momentum going by involving himself in this year's BIGSOUND festival with Band Of Frequencies. “We've been focusing so much on the Bernard Fanning set for a while, so it will be great to get back on stage with The Freqs and rock our set. We've been looking forward to doing BIGSOUND for a couple of years so it's really great to be on the bill this year and be part of it all.” With BIGSOUND acting as not only a great opportunity to gain exposure for the band, but also to check out other artists on the scene, Carroll reveals, “Of course there are some bands I'm looking forward to seeing, but I'm also looking forward to seeing some bands that I have no idea about. In saying that,” he says with a pause, “I won't actually have a lot of time to gig around, because our first child is due on the 14th of September, which is crazytown! So given that, I might not have as much time as I would normally like to hang out and see other bands, I'll probably just be at home. It would be nice to see some other bands, but I've got more important things on my plate.” Having been so busy on the road recently, Carroll explains it could be a while before the band's next release. “We do have some new material in the pipeline, we just haven't had time to get through it yet. We've got heaps of ideas but we haven't had a lot of time in rehearsal to nut them out; but that's definitely the next phase, and to me it's the most exciting phase – the creation period, the writing phase – finding new grooves and new progression.”

With a baby on the way, Carroll admits there could be an exciting new source of inspiration for the future material. “It's a full life change and it's going to be fantastic. I'll probably have a lot of time up at night thinking about things; I'll probably be awake all hours of the day, really!”