Ghost Country

"I never thought that I could incorporate the rock stuff with the country stuff as much as I could.” As it turns out John Cesar could and has with We The Ghosts, the Brisbane four-piece as open to a riff as they are a melody. Formed at a vegan cafe in West End, not for the menu but simply for the fact that it was the only place open, Cesar had seen Keith Urban and Lady Antebellum play the Brisbane Entertainment Centre the previous night, and with the concert came a light bulb moment – follow your tastes and play the style of music you're actively passionate about.

In friend and future bandmate Alex Tomlins he found a kindred spirit, and when the founding pair called on the talents of Tomlins' brothers Jake and Nic they discovered the rhythm section to bring the pot to boil.

“It's the first band that I've played in where it just works so naturally,” Cesar smiles. “We didn't start it trying to get the sound that we've got now; we went into it thinking we could just do country, pop sorta stuff – more country-influenced stuff. And what we got was completely different and we haven't tried to change it. Because that says something – if we're trying to do something and we get something else then that's probably the right direction to go.”

The Brisbane-via-Burpengary quartet have just got off the road after scoring local support duties for Oz rock legends Icehouse, but with a new EP to launch there's no time to reflect on such memorable experiences. Speaking with Cesar it's clear that this is a forward-focused band, one that's not afraid to aim for the stars. The guys have just put together a three-track release designed to get progressively heavier as it works though: ballad to pop country to climatic largeness that takes on board Alex's influences of Queen and arena rock.

“I think there's a time and a place for those sort of songs,” the frontman reasons. “[But] we're never going to only do songs like that. Without being too eclectic, without straying from our sound too much, we'd like to keep it different and keep it pop at the same time. Sneaky pop influences.”

Tracks are developed from concepts pitched by Cesar, with a base foundation put together before the instrumentation is worked out by the band. “Sometimes it's not even clear where [the songs] come from, and then months later we'll go, 'Oh, that lyric totally related to something that happened in Jake, the drummer's life'. It just happens like that,” he says. “I'll just sit down and mumble out lyrics and try and get a coherent story happening, and then the meaning sometimes comes afterwards. Sometimes I'll start with a hook, and I know what that means, but you can't get a full story just from a hook.”

What you can get a story from, though, is experiences, and currently We The Ghosts tale is being penned through theirs. A prior fruitful songwriting trip to Nashville has pushed the band to venture back to the musical hotbed later this year, and with musicians like Travis Toy from Rascal Flatts in their corner [he played pedal steel on their recording], the band are poised to dig their feet into the most fertile country soil on the planet.

“We feel that's the place that we have to work on really hard,” Cesar states. “They're not looking for the same old bands anymore [over there]; they're looking for something new. Hopefully we can give that to them.”

We The Ghosts will be playing the following dates:

Saturday 9 March - The Zoo, Brisbane QLD