Fit For The Battle

Often, as acts pop up on bills all over the country, on our screens in video clips or through our brand new (hopefully) community equipped digital radios, it's easy to forget just how difficult it can be to exist as an independent band in this day and age. In fact, the majority of artists you read about in this publication are very much living hand to mouth, trying to make ends meet while relentlessly fighting the good fight in an effort to bring their music and vision to the general public. Melbourne's Jericco are one such band. Ruthlessly independent, the four-piece, led by singer Brent McCormick, peddle their intense brand of Eastern-influenced rock purely for the love of the game. They've made an excellent fist of it too, touring with the likes of Dead Letter Circus and Karnivool among others. The hard work has paid off with the release of their debut album, Beautiful In Danger, in May, the recording process for which had to be meticulously planned.

“Personally, being the singer, I find that practising at home is the key,” says McCormick of his approach to the studio. “Being ready when you first go in there is important because it's a totally different environment to the rehearsal space or at home, you just need to be able to smash it out because it all comes down to dollars in the end. It sucks because you're paying for studio time and engineers and we don't have big budgets because we're unsigned so we have to nail it. We actually mixed the last five songs with a different engineer – which came down to budget. We spent a lot of cash doing it and the album almost never got released. There was a lot of stuff happening within the band and, well, no one's got any money these days and we needed the last six grand or so to finish it with Forrester [Savvell, producer] so we just called our sound guy and asked him if he'd do us a favour. So we went to Sydney for the weekend and just spent 30 hours of non-stop mixing.”

This arduous process, the result of the aforementioned financial struggles associated with independence, is something that McCormick takes very seriously. “It can tear a band apart really,” he laments. “Roy [Amar, guitar] and I talk every day, and all we discuss is where we're going to get the money from. I just got a call from him this afternoon and if we don't make any money from the tour we're going to have to put in [from] our own pockets again. We're constantly putting in for recordings and film clips – we just put in $1,000 each out of our own pockets for publicity, merchandise and we're just hoping we can get people to the show. It's a huge struggle because we all work full-time to try and support families but are also trying to make music our life.”

At the end of the line though, after all the cheques have cleared and all the receipts collected, this sense of togetherness is the very thing that gives bands like Jericco their impetus to keep pushing forward and succeed. “Even though it's a pain in the arse sometimes, when we all lock in together and we're up on stage it's a pretty magic experience. The proudest moment, I think, was when we got back our record which took us a year-and-a-half to do – that was a really big achievement. I was sitting down having dinner and Roy rung me and said, 'We've got the box of CDs' and I just stopped what I was doing, drove to his joint, hugged him and said, 'Dude, we should be so proud because... This is us'.”