Tim Rogers & Paul Dempsey On Wanting To Fuck Shit Up & Their Theatre Crowds

"I'm never one to complain about weather but that's maddening," puffs You Am I frontman Tim Rogers once he's safely inside the cafe and has shared a quick hug with Something For Kate's Paul Dempsey. "Do you know the Mistral wind in the South of France?" We can't say we're familiar. "If the Mistral is blowing for more than nine days in a row, ah, I'm not sure how contemporary this law is, but a murder charge can be demoted to manslaughter."

"Similar thing, the Santa Ana wind in southern California, when that's blowing the murder rate goes up," shares Dempsey. "Sort of charged emotion. But it's a significant statistic because of the fucking wind."

It's not all ill winds though, far from it. Dempsey has only recently wrapped a national tour for his second solo album, Strange Loop, and You Am I spent last month in Europe with Porridge & Hotsauce. Rogers' plate is also full of "writing books and theatre things", as well as being the go-to guy of the "tribute phenomenon". "I got asked once by this older gentleman in Wollongong, he said, 'Don't you think rather than try and be a ah, a dilettante, trying your hand at lots of things, couldn't you be a master of one?' And it was a reasonable question. And I'd love to — to concentrate on one thing — but for employment reasons you kind of can't."

"I got asked once by this older gentleman in Wollongong, he said, 'Don't you think rather than try and be a ah, a dilettante, trying your hand at lots of things, couldn't you be a master of one?'"

Things won't be moving any slower in November, when their two outfits will tour Australia's wineries for A Day On The Green alongside the classic line-up of Jebediah, Spiderbait and The Meanies ("Were you at Homebake '08?" quips Dempsey).

"We both played with Hunters & Collectors a couple of years ago when they did their sort of re-formation tour as a bunch of Day On The Green shows and You Am I and Something For Kate were both on those," says Dempsey. "It's great... it's just such a cruisy tour. It's so well run and all the people are great... everything's taken care of. It's actually dangerously - that's the thing about it - it's so well run, it's so cruisey that it's hard to keep it together." ("There's a temptation to fuck it up," grins Rogers.) "And you're at a fucking winery and you know... you've got to keep it together 'til you go on stage, at least, to some degree," finishes Dempsey.

They look quite dapper, Dempsey in a neat blue button-up and Rogers in a dashing cream suit coat. But even with no prior knowledge of the pair it wouldn't be a stretch to imagine them causing mischief together.

"That temptation is strong as well when you're not the headliner and it's not necessarily 'your crowd', as was the case when we were playing with Hunners. There's the temptation to, you know, unsettle things a little bit," confirms Dempsey. "And there's always those people down the front who've paid more to sit in a white plastic chair," he adds. "So you can see there's people sort of a few rows back... with their picnic blankets and they're, you know, pissing on and having a great time. And then there's the sort of, zone of privilege between them and the stage and you kind of want to throw yourself over that."

"I remember the first time I actually played in front of a sitting crowd was in Florida," says Rogers, "and we were playing with Soundgarden, we were playing this big sort of lecture theatre... but people would come in with things of popcorn [there's a chuckle from Dempsey]. It kinda made sense, I mean you feel like a bit of a zoo or an experiment."

By Dempsey's own admission Something For Kate are pretty used to the feeling of being gawked at, even after 20 years. "We've got a running joke in Something For Kate that our audience is a theatre crowd, 'cause they just stand there... Even when we started as a kind of young three-piece, very noisy, abrasive sort of screamo band," he tells. "They just stand dead still, eyes to the stage, mouths kind of..."

Rogers helps: "Trying to catch up."

"We used to worry that they were bored or, I dunno," shrugs Dempsey. "But it's just going to be funny, you know, 'cause obviously [with] these shows the audience is coming to see all the bands — like, all the different bands; all their fans are sort of coming and stuff like that. So we're kinda like, 'I wonder how the Something For Kate theatre crowd is going to mix in amongst a Spiderbait crowd, a You Am I crowd?'"

"The You Am I crowd is quite a theatre crowd," assures Rogers. "We were just in Europe, last month, and I thought by the time we hit Spain there would be less of a theatre crowd, but no, we're definitely theatre."

"That's good, that'll work well," Dempsey acknowledges.

"It's a good thing I've got a character actor's face."