From Stealing Beers From Their Guitarist's Dad To Sharing Spliffs With The Rolling Stones' Sound Guy

Settling into a booth inside Union Hotel, Brunswick with one half of British India — frontman Declan Melia and bass player Will Drummond — it immediately becomes apparent that the band is enamoured of Oscar Dawson, who produced their latest and sixth album Forgetting The Future. "We were kind of like a junkie couple," Melia posits, "we were just enabling each other, kinda like, you say, 'Should we have another line?' You know the other person wants one… So we doubled the guitar part. 'Should we triple it?'/'I think you know you wanna!'…" Drummond continues: "He amplified our ideas that we had for songs, which was helpful."

"With all the records with Liberation, they tried to set us up with a different producer and every time it's just fuckin' failed… Great producers all, but it just didn't work out; it wasn't the meeting of the minds that they wanted it to be," Melia laments. "So, before Oscar, I mean, like, we didn't wanna know. We were like, 'Fuck, this again!' We were like, 'Some plonker's gonna come in and tell us…' So the first song we did was My Love and I was just like looking at Nic [Wilson, guitarist], like, 'Am I crazy or is this fuckin' kickin' arse?' I couldn't believe that it was fuckin' working."

"We came into the studio with Oscar with a month left in that studio, and we had to be out in a month, and we had a lot of the album written, but some of it was sketchy and some of it was full songs. And then having that kind of influence of, 'Hey, no, that song's really good, guys'… Just a different voice that you hadn't heard before was such a great spark, which we definitely needed."

British India formed when they were teenagers and we're curious to hear how far they thought music would take them. "If you pick up a guitar, you have a dream of being on a stage and playing in front of people," Drummond shares, "and I think your imagination runs wild with that. But the whole reason we wanted to play in a band together was 'cause we were friends and it was fun and it got us out of doing homework, and it was a reason to steal VBs from Nic's dad's fridge." Melia spots something and gestures excitedly. "It's there!" Drummond looks around. "What is?" Melia beams, "That's him! That's the poster from next to Nic's dad's fridge!" Drummond spots the antique Carlton Draught poster Melia is referring to. "It is too! That's hilarious!" Melia reads out the text: "'I allus has wan at 11'… That was above the fridge at Nic's house when we used to steal the beers. So that's a weird bit of serendipity." 

"It is, yeah," Drummond agrees. "But, so, when you're jamming in a room you're just, like, all you wanna do is like, 'Let's get this version of an Oasis song down,' and then you're like, 'Well, let's get this song down that we wrote,' and then it's like, 'Oh, it'd be awesome to play a gig. It'd be so good'. And then when you play a gig it's like, 'That's great!' And then with each step you just want it to be bigger and bigger; your plans and your dreams just keep getting bigger and bigger."

"Are your dreams still getting bigger and bigger?" Melia inquires. Drummond contemplates, "Um, I think my dreams now are to just write better songs and to just keep playing."

"Sometimes journalists ask, like, 'Why have you guys been together for so long?' And I think a contributing factor is, like, obviously we're incredible, but…" Drummond bursts out laughing then Melia continues, "We've never headlined festivals and we've never played massive venues and we've never had a number one record, and so I think we still wanna do those things." 

One thing British India can certainly brag about is having supported The Rolling Stones at Hope Estate Winery in The Hunter Valley back in 2014. "It was amazing, but I don't put it down as a career highlight, it was just, like, a personal highlight," Melia stresses.

"It's like when you go to Duty Free and you go, 'Oh, I'll buy this new perfume,' and they're like, 'Hey, would you like some really expensive hand moisturiser,' and you're like, 'YES! Of course I would!'" Drummond explains. Melia laughs, "I completely agree! Supporting The Rolling Stones was like expensive hand wash."

"You couldn't get the smile off any of our faces," Drummond remembers of the experience. "It was insane. And everyone on the tour was so nice; the whole crew were so nice. I was walking backstage afterwards and the sound guy was like [adopts an American accent], 'Hey bass player, you don't walk past me without smokin' a joint with me,' and then so, like, I smoked a joint with him and talked to him for ages. And then the other day Keith Richards put a photo up he's like, 'Happy Birthday to my good man blah-blah-blah,' and I was like, 'Oh my god, that him!' [laughs]. Like, he's mixed everyone, like, Tina Turner and some massive bands. And obviously The Stones sounded really good, funnily enough."