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Little Bastard On Getting Good And Tough Conversations With Band Members

How to fit 12 into 7

There's something growing in Sydney's inner west at the moment and punk country outfit Little Bastard are in the middle of it.

The seven-piece Newtown outfit, who share members (and ex-members) with the likes of DMA's and a host of other incestuous line-ups, are set to release their debut self-titled album tomorrow (Friday 9 May). Finally, they tell theMusic.com.au, they've locked in a line-up.

“When we first started and the band was growing, it was getting a little out of hand,” says Johhny Took. “It was getting to be about a 12 piece. Financially there's only so many people you can get on the road, and there's only so many egos you can have in a band [laughs]. And there's only so many harmonies you can do, you can't have 12 people doubling-up on harmonies.”

So how do you tell people that they're not in the band anymore? Or that they can't all be frontmen? Hard conversations.

“Yeah we did [have them], some very tough conversations. [There's] so many songwriters in the band. But I honestly believe that if we had another eight days in the studio we have enough songs that we could do another album.”

The band recorded their album with Lachlan Mitchell\ and looked to capture a 'live' sound that they've honed over two years of pretty solid gigging.

“We're pretty lucky, our drummer's pretty good… I've been in the studio a fair few times with him and he's saved our asses a lot of times. They spend two hours setting up his drums and he gets his take done in about 30 minutes, and then it leaves heaps of times for the pricks to do all their overdubs and shit. So many overdubs man, with seven people.”

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The band's Ross Tipper adds, “Well, if we'd just been touring together for two and a half years and we couldn't play together well then we shouldn't be making records… but we did and now we can.”

Little Bastard will tour throughout June to launch the record and given their Newtown roots we got three of the boys to take a look at Newtown Social Club's brand new band room, where they'll play their Sydney show, earlier this week.