One Dollar Short play the Surfers Paradise Beergarden May 24, the Gabba Hotel May 25, the Sands Tavern, Maroochydore May 26 and Splendour In The Grass at the Belongil Fields, Byron Bay on July 22. Eight Days Away is in stores now.
One Dollar Short frontman Scott sounds tired.
“We just got back from WA yesterday on the red eye flight,” The Sydney based muso explains. “We got home at quarter past seven because the plane was delayed and didn’t leave until 1.15am.”
It takes more than sleep deprivation to slow the band. The frantic melodic punks have been around the block more than a couple of times in the last few months, both for their own shows and as part of the recent Vans Warped Tour, and up here in sunny Brisbane there’s only a two week break until we catch them again. But of course, we’re overlooking the release of their excellent debut album, Eight Days Away.
“We’re kind of nervous,” he explains. “The album’s a lot different to what a lot of people are going to expect from us. It’s not totally left field, but it has veered away from where we were on our past recordings. It’s a bit more diverse, and a bit more creative. We’ve been trying different ideas, and we’re hoping people are going to look at things the way we did.”
“If people are expecting an album full of Board Games or Satellite they’re not going to get that.”
Indeed, Satellite seems an odd track on the album, very different from a lot of the other material.
“Totally. I guess there’s a lot more emotion on the album. That’s where I tend to see it, anyway. When we first started it was like totally pop punk. I was into bands like The Descendents, that stuff about coffee and fast food and singing about girls and growing up. All that sort of thing.”
As he explains, the band in a different frame of mind when the album was recorded to some of the work they had put together in the past.
“I think the lyrics are a little more personal on this one. This time I played some guitar on the album; did some piano over the top of things as well. I think maybe that made a bit of a difference as well.”
“It wasn’t a conscious decision to write an album like this. It just kind of came out like that. I just wanted to fool around a bit. There was a lot of hard work, and we were busy during recording, which made it even harder. We’ve been super super busy, and we should have probably stepped back for the recording, but we just kind of kept going. It’s good and bad. You need to play, but we’ve learned that you need time off.”
“We would take a week in a couple of different studios and then I had some time to do vocals, but we had shows right through all of it. We had some shows before we went in that made pre-production kind of difficult. I think we could have planned a little better,” he muses. “Doing a recording is really a learning curve. Next time down it’s going to be heads down and focus on the album. We did six shows while I recording the vocals, so you can imagine how easy that made it for me.”
Despite their hectic schedule, the band managed to keep the flame burning and keep motivated for their studio time. The secret to a quick recover?
“Probably Perfect Dark on Nintendo. Seriously, that’s it. You’d get up, have about a million cups of coffee to get going and then play Perfect Dark until I woke up. When you’re really tired from playing shows it’s like a defrosting process. You have to sit somewhere sunny and drink coffee to wake up a little.”
But lets face it, it can’t be too hard to stay enthused while you’re touring with some of your childhood heroes, as One Dollar Short got the opportunity to do at Easter on Vans Warped.
“It was kind of weird,” Scott explains. “Last time the tour was here we were in front of the stage watching and going, ‘hey, that’s so and so from Pennywise’, or something. This time it’s like having dinner with them and travelling with them. It was kind of surreal. It was really weird.”
“By then end of the tour you know everyone. You just kind of think, ‘My God, look who I was just having dinner with’. In a million years I never thought something like that would ever happen. It was really really cool. The people were the biggest highlight for me. Just getting to meet people and hanging out and talking to people. Just people that you tend to forget are just normal guys. They’re rock stars or something, and to sit down and have a conversation with them was really cool.”
