lovely little Edmond interview.....


Augie March
by: Sheila Pham - 24th October, 2002



I drink my dad's homebrew wine which packs a punch I can tell you.
He lives out in the sticks and grows his own grapes and all that
sort of stuff. It's good to cook with as well.
- Edmond on his dad's wine


Augie March are an unusual Australian band. They're a bit
more "mature" and are critically acclaimed as well as being widely
popular. They've supported the likes of Mercury Rev and Grant Lee
Buffalo on tour and their first album Sunset Studies was a huge
success.

Their second album, Strange Bird, is set to be released mid-October
and it is a worthy successor to their debut. It's mellow rock with
dreamy overtones and there's even a hint of the wild American west
in one of the album tracks, 'This Train'.

Edmond Ammendola, who plays bass, shared some of his thoughts with
me about the band.

So what's the first single off the album `The Vineyard' about then?

Some kind of rejection of utopia or subversion of it. A place where
you can just go to escape. One of the lines is about people dressed
in white. I just imagine it conjures up images of people not having
to rush or anything. You know, prancing about in the woods and
picking berries and eating them and existing in that way.

What's your relationship like with the other members of the group?

We don't get along. That's the God honest truth. It's just a working
relationship. We've been playing music together for so long we've
grown together. It just keeps moving.

There's a lot going on apart from Augie March. You know, people have
normal lives. They have work, they have kids or whatever else. And
there's just other music to be played as well. That takes up a lot
of time. Kiernan, our new keyboard player, plays with The Blackeyed
Susans. David and I have played with Deborah Conway's rhythm section
for the last three years. And Jono toured with Something for Kate as
their second guitarist. Everyone's just playing with heaps other
people.

So how does Augie March the band fit into these busy lives?

Playing music is a cycle in Augie March. It seems that we record
around the middle of the year then we end up touring around the end
of the year. Then we go into hibernation for winter again. During
that hibernation period there's other music to play.

The main priority is to keep playing music because there's plenty of
it to play and you get a bit bored playing the one instrument in the
one band. I'm playing in a band called Peeping Tom. Big dirty stoner
rock that's really, really loud. It's a lot of fun with the sheer
movement of air, volume-wise. It's so different to Augie March. And
I do other stuff like music for friend's films and spoken word
stuff. But when Augie needs me, I'll play.

What kind of music is Augie March influenced by?

There isn't any one band or any group of bands or even a scene. It's
so incredibly broad, the music that we listen to.

If you guys become bigger than Australia, would you follow the music
overseas to the UK and the USA?

I wouldn't want to live in either of those countries. I wouldn't
even live in Sydney. I need fresh air and good water. I don't know
anywhere else in Australia that has better water than Victoria
(laughs).
As a band, if you make a relocation over to Europe you definitely
have to live there for six months. I don't know if the band will do
that. David the drummer has a son and other people have other
commitments here. If it was gonna happen like that I reckon Glenn
would probably go over to Europe and stay over there and write stuff
and do whatever songwriters do to get things flowing. We might come
over, we might meet him over there and record songs.

Your music doesn't get much airplay on the commercial stations here
in Australia. Why do you think that is?

I don't think they play anything that's over three and a half
minutes and a lot of our songs are fairly long in their eyes. But I
know that Australian radio stations gladly play tunes from overseas
acts that are over six minutes or something. I guess the band that
comes to mind most obviously is Radiohead where they might release a
single that's above the three thirty mark. I don't know. We don't
think about any of those kinds of things.

But Australian radio should be playing a lot more Australian
content. They don't give Australian musicians a go. There are people
doing all sorts of stuff apart from just catchy pop tunes or
whatever. This country allows you the space to develop your ideas
and for them to be strong; you end up having a strong voice. I guess
with Augie March we've got our own strong voice as a band and I
think that this country, the landscape, everything like travelling
twelve hours to the gig—all that contributes to it.

How have your recent gigs been?

We played a gig just after we finished recording at The Annandale
Hotel. That was terrible. It was a really bad gig. We weren't in gig
playing mode, we'd just been recording. It was a bit of a lesson, a
bit of a shock. But it was okay because I think we learned something
from it. We need to get a bit more match-fit before we start
touring. The rhythm section (me and Dave) have gotten a good
flogging—not in a perverse, sexual way (laughs). David and I are
Deborah Conway's rhythm section and we're getting used to that big
sound that you get outside of the studio again. We've been playing
gigs with her around the place for the past three weeks.

Glenn Richards, the band's songwriter talks about the fact that
bands like The Vines and The Strokes have "the young girl market"
cornered. What market have Augie March got cornered?

With Augie it's lots of beards, lots of old men. We're all just old
men. We're best if we're put to bed by ten o'clock. We just play
music and we've been sort of bubbling away for the past six odd
years just doing what we do. I don't know if young girls go for
beards. In the early days there was a bit of a hubbub about all
that, and I was glad it all blew over. The way this band grows,
people seem to really enjoy our music.

The reason they might enjoy it is that it's grown organically. It
doesn't really get fertilisers from anywhere, it doesn't seem to be
a GM crop. We just do what we do, it all happens really slowly.

Like a fine wine?

Possibly, yeah. The soil's gotta be good. You gotta get aerated soil
which means there needs to be space in the music and between band
members. And then plenty of manure as well, plenty of all the dirty
stuff. The stuff that people chuck out of their kitchen after they
cook a meal, all that goes in there. And when the soil's good, the
fruit is good. What you have is a nice glass of red at the end of
it. And I hope everybody enjoys.


For more information about the band go to
http://www.click2music.com.au/artist/AugieMarch
For tour information go to www.augie-march.com


interviewer: Sheila Pham
interviewee: Edmond Ammendola