Following the release of their debut EP Limbo, Sydney indie rock band Bad Pony have been busy touring the country showing off what has taken years of hard work and dedication. Taking some time out of their busy schedule, guitarist / kick drummer Sam Thomlinson chats the band’s journey and how they split drumming duties between members.
HAPPY: So the debut EP is finally here! What has the journey been like to get to this point in your career?
SAM: In a word, the journey has been amazing. Playing music has to be one of the most rewarding experiences. We have been lucky enough to travel all around Australia, meet amazing people and play with some amazing bands. Releasing an EP can be expensive and time consuming, especially as we do nearly everything themselves, but in the end it’s totally worth it. Some of the friendships we’ve formed will last us a life time and we get to go on tour (holiday) a few times a year.
HAPPY: That being said, a ‘career’ in music can be a fickle thing in terms of time, chemistry and money. Has any of these presented themselves as a hindrance?
SAM: Chemistry is probably the most important thing when it comes to playing in a band. You learn so much about each other through travelling too. I think we were lucky, as most of us had played together in the past at some stage, so the chemistry was already there for us. I think with money, we all work so that we are able to do the thing we love; play and write original music. It would be amazing to one day live off a ‘career’ in music. However, I think we’d all be doing this if we were broke and living on our parents’ couch.
HAPPY: It’s been a bit of a slow burn since you released Sucker way back when in 2013, was it just a matter of taking your time when it came to the EP?
SAM: I guess it could seem like a slow burn. But to be honest, I think we were just trying to find ourselves and our sound. In the two years since we started there have been quite a few changes and shifts in our performance style and even our song writing. I think we are finally at a point where we know where we want to go with our music, and I think that’s why we settled on this EP. The songs show moments of where we’ve come from as well as moments of where we are going, which is what I love about it. The biggest thing for us now is to just continue to put out music that we love, and what we think represents us. Our influences are also quite diverse which makes every new song exciting when we bring it to the rehearsal space.
HAPPY: You say those first two years was about forming a solid sound, so what kind of sounds were you guys going through to arrive where you are with Limbo?
SAM: Our start was pretty unique. Mostly in the sense that, yes, we’d played music together for years, but Jaz (Jarred) had never really sang a note in front of anyone, let alone a crowd. So the start of the band was very experimental. We were finding out things about ourselves as we wrote songs together. It was a lot to do with the instrumental set up. Originally it was just Jaz and I sitting in a room writing acoustic tunes, hitting various objects, stomping and clapping to make drums. That evolved pretty quickly into a six piece band. It’s probably only in the last year since we started playing as a five piece that we really know what we want to do and we know our roles in the band really well. There’s always room for evolution, but it’s good to have a strong foundation.
HAPPY: Cron and yourself produced Limbo in your home studios, what did this offer in terms of freedom? On the other hand did it put any restrictions on what you could do?
SAM: Having free reign when recording is amazing. Not having time constraints or worries about cost allows you to spend time getting sounds and ideas out naturally. Some songs we re-recorded a couple of times to make sure we got what we really wanted from the track. I think we have a really strong idea about what we want sonically, which makes the mixing process a lot easier. I’d really love to work with some producers that I admire to gain an outsider’s perspective of our music, however that’s something we will think about in the future. At the moment, we have a bunch of songs written that really represent us and we have a solid idea of how we want them to sound. Now that we’ve laid some foundations, I think its time to hit the ground running, and get even more music out there!
HAPPY: Let’s talk gear! What kind of stuff are you using to record the EP with?
SAM: Cron and I run completely different set ups. I’m running everything through Logic and Cron uses Cubase. A few of the songs we tracked at my studio and were sent to Cron to mix and master whilst others we recorded entirely at Cron’s. It’s pretty handy to have two people who are available to track. If Cron was busy, I’d track parts and vice versa. Most of the gear I use I’ve acquired over years of recording and producing different bands.
HAPPY: As you mentioned adding in your own percussion in the early days came naturally, but now you guys did drums without having an actual drummer. How did things end up getting divided among the band? It sounds pretty solid!
SAM: The drum thing was a complete accident, but really it makes sense. Jaz and I actually met when I joined a band, in which he played drums. The splitting of the kit came about when our drummer, who was doing a lot of session work, had to leave the band. We really just didn’t want to stop writing music and didn’t want to stop rehearsing on our regular Tuesday nights. So to keep everyone in sync, I started playing the kick drum and from there, everyone started to accumulate more percussion depending on what each song needed. It started with a tribal beat where Jaz started using a floor tom, and from there it just grew into what we have now. The best thing about this set up as it restricts us in a way, which in turn forces us to come up with creative ways of approaching arrangement.
HAPPY: Cool! Well it’s time to warp things up. We always like to write about things that make us happy, so what makes you happy?
SAM: Music, family, friends, touring, beers.
