'It's Fuckin' Stressful As, It's Shit'

Sharing a jug of beer with the three consistent members of Immigrant Union — Brent DeBoer, Bob Harrow and Peter Lubulwa — is guaranteed to exercise your funny bone. DeBoer's larger than life energy is contagious and, once he's finished up his shepherd's pie, the band members discuss fun times spent in New Jersey playing in a thrift shop after the owner's spontaneous invitation. Then Lubulwa says that inside this guy's store, "Everything was, like, two dollars, five dollars or whatever". But then there was one specialty garment "hanging up on the piano on a coat hanger": "a hotel bathrobe". (DeBoer and Harrow crack up laughing in recollection.) "So apparently it was worn by The Boss," Lubulwa continues. "It was five grand!" DeBoer laughs, "And it's not under glass or anything, he was like, 'Here, try it on!'" Harrow recalls, "He had his contact book that looked like he's had it since 1965, and he's got ladies' names in there and they're people from Springsteen songs [laughs]! He's trying to ring them — 'cause Springsteen was in town at the time — so he spent about an hour trying to get Bruce..."

"Down to the shop!" DeBoer remembers before Harrow enthuses, "Well there was a chance!" DeBoer concurs, "I wasn't going to stop it."

Immigrant Union "made up a whole song just from one five-note riff" in the store that day, according to DeBoer, and Harrow praises, "It's a sick song, I fuckin' LOVE it!... We've recorded it now. It's gonna be on the next record."

Three former members of Immigrant Union — Courtney Barnett, Bones Sloan and Dave Mudie — recorded album number two, Anyway, but are now otherwise engaged thanks to Barnett's worldwide success. "We kinda settled on a gang," DeBoer explains. "There was the six of us, yeah, and then Courtney got real busy and we had to shift it up again."

"It's fuckin' stressful as, it's shit. When that Courtney stuff happened I was stressed as fuck, like, just to be honest, it was shit. It was terrible — I had to find a new band 'cause everything happened at once. Whereas now, like, if Ben [Street, bassist] broke his arm, well, you can find someone — we had to find three! Well, we didn't replace Courtney because Brent's started playing a lot more fiddly stuff on his guitar and he's sorta taken over Courtney's role and kept his own role, which has been awesome. There's so much more space in our sound now, but when Bones and Dave left [to tour in Barnett's band] that was drummer and bass player in the one hit! Like, 'Oh, fuck!'"

"'Cause it takes a long time for a drummer and a bass player to get to know each other, and to groove together really well, and we were just hitting our stride in a really big way," DeBoer offers. "So it set us back a little bit, but it wasn't such a big deal. I mean, especially since we got so lucky finding two of the coolest musicians ever in Ben and Patty [McGrath-Lester]." Although DeBoer admits that "you miss Courtney's guitar here and there" during Immigrant Union gigs these days, he concludes, "It's been really good for us, actually. We're all much better for it."

"Totally," Harrow seconds. "Way better. Especially me, I think; I feel like I've gotten a tonne better at guitar." DeBoer jumps in, "Yeah, I was forced to."