Interview – We Are Augustines
As an interview location there could be no better place than the Victorian charms of Kings Heath’s Hare and Hounds to inspire and provide We Are Augustines with a true sense of English hospitality. Nevertheless, this is England and the sun’s trying to shine; I go to the public benches outside where I’m introduced to Billy McCarthy. I’ve seen WAA before when they last appeared in the city supporting ‘The Boxer Rebellion’; Billy struck me as a big bear of a man. Flannel shirt, gruff voice, hairy chest. In reality, he’s slightly smaller than I expected, but he has a big handshake, a perfect smile and a voice that matches the honey colour of his skin perfectly. Whilst the rest of WAA are fast asleep in the tour bus, it’s up to Billy to answer some questions and decide where the conversation goes. Those of you who know WAA will undoubtedly know of the heartache, the struggles involved in getting the album to press, being lead down unwanted avenues by costly music producers trying to push them in different directions. You may already know this so why would you want to read about it all again? I wanted this to be fresh; I wanted Billy to talk about life away from music. Ultimately, I wanted Billy to feel free chat and just feel comfortable.
Brum Live: So how are you feeling right now?
Billy: Grimy! We’re in a bus on this tour and I never knew this but you don’t get to shower on the bus, you shower at the venues so you wake up feeling all grimy needing a shower. It’s funny but you forget how restorative and rejuvenating a shower can be. We’ve been on the bus for a week now and another week to go now. It’s actually my first bus tour ever. It’s different, the big thing is rest, you can actually sleep which is why they’re doing it this way. When you’re in a van everything’s loud, when people are sound checking you have to be awake, there’s a lot of fatigue. Finally, we can get our bearings. We’ve been touring since January having played 40 days straight with one day off, then another four days off after that. We then came to the UK and we’re heading to Berlin when we’re done here. Europe’s just starting to get on board with us too; this’ll be our first headline tour there. Actually, I started playing music in Europe busking, this was where I started my music journey. There weren’t any musicians from where I’m from, so busking just seemed easier to get the show on the road immediately. It just seemed easier to take a guitar and just stand there. I played all over, from Ireland, England to Italy. It was a good journey, I did it for many years and it was great. They were my folk years. Grow some hairs on my chest.
BL: How is America treating you?
Billy: Great! We just finished our second TV show there (Last Call with Carson Daly). We’ve just played the main stage at Coachella. Coachella was great; everyone was there you would ever want to see. My favourites were the Buzzcocks, we spent some time with them, they were awesome, it was unbelievable.
BL: Anyone who knows of WAA will undoubtedly be aware of the history, the collision of professional hardship and personal tragedy, and undoubtedly every journalistic is bound to have asked the same questions repeatedly. However, what I want to know, what would have happened if ‘Rise Ye Sunken Ships’ never saw the light of day, where would you be now?
Billy: I was working for a shipping company driving a truck; I had about an hour commute to Queens, New York. It was hard, I worked for really wealthy people, I had to work in their homes. I’ve seen so many sides of New York that are so hard for me to digest. One of those was how people are treated, how labourers are treated. I guess it’s the way the world works but… Actually we were just sound checking, a friend of mine was sitting in on drums and he was like “you have such a strange brain you know”. Moreover, I was like “Thank god for music”. Having to do things where you don’t get to use that part of your brain seems like torture. Trying to pretend you care about customer service when you really just want to be creating. It’s excruciating for me.
BL: This is one big part of being English, We’re privileged to be born here for the most part, we generally have what we need and yet we’re miserable as sin. I’ve visited countries where the people have nothing but they still smile. Does having everything you need make you happy? Not at all.
Billy: I’ve been thinking about that recently. I got really lucky, Martin Guitars has given us an endorsement, they’ve given us acoustic guitars which are dream guitars. When I got them it seemed a little surreal to me. Now I’ve had them I don’t want to sound too simple but what else do I need? I’m performing, I don’t have to buy this instrument because they’ve been so kind to loan and give things to me. I don’t know, I’m content. I think freedom, having personal freedom… I’ve been trying to explore what happiness is all about this whole year. It was my New Year’s resolution. What is happiness? What is it now? What was it then?
BL: I was talking to an American friend recently about happiness and asked what three things do you need in life? I said “Happiness, Health and Money, without the first two, what’s the point in having the third?” Her answer was number one, money, because in America unless you have money you can’t be healthy.
Billy: America’s such a funny experiment isn’t it? It’s a capitalist society, I’ve been railing against marketing lately. I had a couple of interviews and I was thinking about how much I’d like to live in a world where everyone had the option, if they wanted to sit in the cab and see the screen, giving you commercials, or where you should go to see a movie, all the commercial billboards on the hillsides. Wouldn’t it be nice to have that option to turn it off? However, we don’t. The thing is, like any insanity, it isn’t questioned. You sound like some thick, freakish bohemian even to question something like that. A lot of this year for me has been spent thinking “what is happiness”? I’m still trying to work it out. I do know that money doesn’t have much to do with it, it never has. A part of getting the record moving was going through some really scary times. I looked up, I was in my early 30’s, I had bar tending experience and I could drive. I’m not putting the bar very high in life am I? Nothing against barmen there; it’s not an easy job. I was supporting myself because I had a driver’s license and because I’ve travelled all over the world, that’s sad but that’s what I’m worth in that society.
BL: But what do you want out of life? Henry Rollins did a stand up tour a couple of years back titled ‘Knowledge without Mileage equals Bullshi’ If you want to learn, you need to get out and see.
Billy: I like that very much, it sounds like good old Henry. Yeah, it’s true man. It’s funny we were talking about that, our guitar tech has just dropped out of university, he’s a bright boy and his mother is supporting him. He’s already been all over Europe, the UK and North America and Canada in the past couple of months. He’s being bold and brave. Isn’t there a saying “be bold and the universe will come to your aid”? Anyway, he’s doing that and I’m pleased that his mother understands that and I’m pleased that I get to stand side by side with him.
Brief rest whilst one the punters troubles Billy for a light.
BL: You mentioned the deal with Martin earlier, are you finding as you become more successful that you start getting more free stuff thrown at you.
Billy: You know, someone told me once that the gifts you see at the Academy Awards, the outfits, its all stuff that’s loaned to those guys. It really knocked me out. One day I was reading Rolling Stone and someone explained to me how Publicists angle for these stories. I actually thought it was this all-knowing music publication seeking all this stuff out. I had no idea there was this business behind it all. I think you’ll find that’s the business of not just music but entertainment in general, you’ll find smart people, I found it very smart. At my first SXSW there was this shoe company giving away shoes, I was very poor so I was happy to wear them but I realised wait a second. They dropped their product into the densest population of tastemakers in all the land. Wow! How smart is that? It’s funny now, we’ll be inside of a venue and people will come over to us and say, “Can I get you something? Do you need anything? Are you comfortable?” In addition, fans are like “can I buy you a beer”. Then the next night we’ll be on the road at a gas station or something and none of this is happening, it’s such a funny juxtaposition. But it’s funny saying this, when you’re travelling with another band, a tour manager and crew and stuff they really do become your world, you’re in a little bit of a bubble, they’re your family. We don’t even notice like sometimes we’ll walk through festivals and you’ll see people kind of turn and they’re pointing at you and your band. I’ve definitely driven up to venues and I was like what’s going on, I wonder what’s happened, why are all these people here? In addition, they’re actually queuing up for the show. You forget it all the time.
BL: What type of venue do you prefer to play? Do you prefer smaller venues?
Billy: I Looove it! When I was a kid, I wasn’t old enough to get into venues but I would still go down and listen to the gig from outside. I imagine it would be the same feeling for a kid in Brazil who plays football and they come to their first big grass stadium, the smell of the grass and that excitement. I still have that. So when we walked up today I saw the UB40 plaque, I was thinking of that era in the 70’s when bands like Joy Division must have played the strange drinking halls and the pubs. I love those old Led Zeppelin pictures where they’ve clearly made their own banner and they’re playing in. I don’t know what they’re called. We call them VFW halls they’re veteran halls. “Working man’s clubs”. I love that stuff, honestly and I don’t want to sound like I’m unthankful but sometimes when the pressures on and you’re playing big cosmopolitan places, the nature of those environments is commerce right. You have these strange conversations that could only happen in the cities. Then you come here and it’s more normal. ”It’s more about the music”.Yeah exactly, you don’t have to change channels of who you usually are.
BL: I don’t like big venues, you lose that intimacy.
Billy: I’ve been searching my mind for bands that do it well. Bob Marley did it well Bruce Springstein does it well. Elbow do it well. Elbow, I’ve met Guy. I’ve a great story about Guy Garvey, he stormed into our trailer at a festival and he was like “what are you doing here?” In addition, we were “what are YOU doing here?” I didn’t know who he was; I didn’t know him from Adam “what are you doing here?” In addition, he’s like this is my trailer and I’m “no it’s not”. Our drummer Rob’s English, they just got on real well and hung out all night. It was a comedy of errors, it was hysterical, and Guy’s a big teddy bear. He looks sharp too; he had his little blazer on.
BL: Where does the name ‘Rise Ye Sunken Ships’ come from?
Billy: I made it up. Yeah, I think it just sounded somewhat profound to me but the weirdest thing is that I came up with that before any of the songs. I don’t know if that makes it a concept record, it was the main artery right and everything went back to that title so. I didn’t even realise I was doing that, I just realised that my career would be over if we didn’t deliver a good record. It was ambitious, an ambitious record. I appreciate you saying that you’ve read the blog; it’s nice that there’s multiple stories’s going on. The main story is that all of this happened not even two years ago, two and a half years in total. Waking up one day thinking ‘oh my god, I’m driving a truck’. All the guys I work with, they’re from Trinidad, I’m scared, I’m really scared. Our friend Wilson who’s along on this tour with us. He works in a nuclear power plant, I was asking him for a job, and he tells me “you don’t have any education, I can’t”. I was like ‘fuck!’ I’d trusted music with every fibre in my being, for my whole life and I was like why have you forsaken me? I’ve given you everything, I’ve given all my energy to this. In New York City people were sort of “Well, you know just like any old band that was over, that’s that get over it”. I think the real uplifting side of this whole story is that the music actually, after investing everything into this thing, after reaching absolute breaking points it started taking off.
BL: You certainly hear that when you listen to the album, there’s a sense of absolute honesty which is rare in recorded music these days.
Billy: Yeah… I’m still digesting it myself. I mean to use the metaphor; it was like building a vessel, a ship. Working on it for years of your life, then no one wanted it. Then when you jump in it, you think well actually this thing sails pretty good, we built this thing pretty well.
BL: Do you think you’re riding the crest of the wave now?
Billy: There’s a story of a young band coming up the ladder and an old band at the top of the bill. In the middle of the afternoon the old band talks to the young band and can see they’re dying to headline and they say “oh yeah, you’re keen to headline, you’re in that period, ok no problem, you take it”. And the kids say, “You don’t want to headline?” “Nah, we’re happy where we’re at”. That story hit me years ago, unless you enjoy every stage, every entity has a season. Every performer has their season; if you can’t be ok with that, you shouldn’t really be there.
BL: I guess you never really know when you reach the top of the crest.
Billy: That’s what’s so fascinating about this story; by way of everything being dilapidated and not functioning, we had to ask ourselves what do we want? We wanted to go on only one tour. One tour. One last tour! That was the goal? Yeah! One tour. We put so much time into the record; we worked in the band for a year without even playing an instrument because there was so much going on, so much corrective thinking. Something had to happen to allow us to trust this environment again. Whether it was the drink, the bad record deals, the management or whatever. All these things were just happenstance, it happens, but we decided if we went forward and tried it again, we’d never ever let it get away from us again and if we weren’t being good people then it wasn’t a good project. In a way it’s beautiful, there’s no wine, no woman, no amount of money is really going to change that. I’ve been wearing this same flannel shirt for 10 years, the arms coming out of it, I’ve been wearing this jacket every show. I don’t need anything.
BL: It’s a good outlook you have. I love the fact you goal was to only do one tour. How does it feel knowing you failed that goal?
Billy: It gets into a spiritual place really… It’s funny when I go back to New York I see my friends that are struggling with their projects and so on. Sometimes when you’re desperate, you have strange bedfellows. There’s a Nietzsche quote “If you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss also gazes into you”. The moment we said we didn’t care anymore, we truly only cared about being good guys and doing good work, we didn’t care how professional we got any longer. That was the moment in which it started going. I’m not kidding you. I played with INXS in 2001. We tried, we tried so hard. We played with Sonic Youth, The Flaming Lips, and Feist. We were like this tremendous heartfelt band but the moment when we just let go of it was when it all came together. I don’t know how to explain this to a young musician but it’s essential.
BL: I think if you’re desperate and it shows it’s not always a positive. You must have reached a point where you just gave up and left it to fate.
Billy: It’s like purgatory, your dream isn’t happening you’re stuck in it, you’ve invested in it and you can’t get out of it, you have the tattoos and you are it! It’s not going well it’s really hard. I look back on a lot of those things that happened to us and the things that happen to young musicians. I think that sometimes there’s no rhyme or reason that’s the pecking order of the food chain. It’s like a jungle. In the wild there’re Crickets, Marsupials, there’s Lions. There’s this pecking order. One of the harder things about the whole experience coming up in New York City which is such an upwardly city, It’s the most expensive city in America. There were aspects of the music experience that wasn’t really about the music. There were class situations where… I have nothing against class, what was that Henry Rollins quote? “Knowledge with Mileage equals Bullshit”. In New York, you have many Ivy League schools, Columbia, Yale in Connecticut. Then there’s NY University there’s all these Ivy League kids who start bands. It’s really weird, I was a barman, I’m repairing my guitar in the back of the van in preparation for the show, then these kids who sat down with their parents and said look “I need this much money, this will give us publicity”. You see these guys with these strange very transparent projects that have no business getting all that press, but they get it. Then there you are, down in the trenches.
BL: I was talking earlier about a local band that seemed to have everything thrown at them, nice Mercedes van paid for by the parents, tours all paid for. Don’t get me wrong they made good poppy music, but there was no substance, there was heart but not enough.
Billy: This is one of the nice things about being a little bit older now, there were guys before us, Ian MacKaye of Fugazi, and many of the older American underground bands were really big on music first. Those guys were on the tail end of the punk stuff, they were taught by those guys and back into the past. When I look at guys like that, I think wow, maybe you haven’t even tapped into it, you’re still trying to find the vain and you’re missing.
BL: Is this kind of what you’re doing with ‘My Goodness’ (Tour support band), I’ve read some of their interviews and they seem to have singled out WAA and gave thanks for setting interviews up etc. Have you taken them under you wing so to speak?
Billy: I don’t know that I’ve ever singled out anyone to support. It’s as with our guitar tech, we’re thrilled to have him, it’s reciprocal, and it’s reciprocal with these guys. I know that the older I get when everything fell apart there was an artist in Chicago that I admire greatly that did our album art, he’s in MoMA (Museum of Modern Art) he’s quite a successful artist, he’s also Irish-American and when I managed to get hold of him I was saying let’s drink whiskey, let’s talk. And he said “let’s not drink whiskey, let’s act like fucking grownups. You need to wipe the sleep from your eyes. The streets of the world are littered with talent that didn’t go anywhere”. When someone who’s in MoMA tells you that after they’ve granted you 15 minutes of their time, its pretty life altering.
BL: You’re pretty much being told to pick yourself up by your bootstraps and sort yourself out.
Billy: Do you remember earlier that we were talking about marketing? I was watching some footage of ‘The Woo Tang Clan’ on YouTube recently, all this rage, all this peacocking with the big down jackets and all that shit. I was like wow! Goosebumps! I was in the suburbs and was thinking ‘yeah! That’s it! I wanna get a jacket like that, I wanna be mad, let’s go break a window’. I don’t think people are completely aware of the effects of the power they have on their audience.
BL: I recently read an article about a secret record industry meeting in the early 90’s. Where it was suggested labels should promote Gangsta Rap as a means to help fill private American jails. The investors of the labels just so happened to also have a vested interest in filling the jails. Create gang bangers through our music, fill our prisons and we win on both counts (the article can be read here http://hangout.altsounds.com/features/146911-abstrakt-secret-meeting-changed-rap-music.html )
Billy: Well I think every aspect of culture has a soundtrack, there always has been whether it’s Frank Sinatra and girls wearing poodle skirts and all that when the soldiers were away in the 60’s. Or like a very lost 1990’s period. It’s a part of the soundtrack to what’s going on. There’s a fellow I won’t say his name, he’s a very antagonistic hip-hop bully in the UK, I’ve been watching him climb in his career. He goes after other singers, likes to diss them and attack them. He’s the baddest on the block, he’s tough, and he’s witty. I just look at that and think ‘mother fucker!’ You don’t even get it man you just don’t get it. You’re going to age; you’re going to live with this. Life always sends you the bill.
BL: Definitely! Without shadow of a doubt that would have been an awesome comment to finish on, but I have just one more question. You put the record out, you royally fucked up your one tour goal. What comes next?
Billy: I’m like a chicken man; I’m sitting on all these little eggs waiting for them to hatch. Keeping them warm. I’m working right now on the live show quite a bit. I can’t announce it just yet but we’ll be touring America with a pretty large band (Counting Crows on the 2nd leg of the Outlaw Tour) in the summer. We’ll be doing 8,000 — 10,000 seat rooms. I’m happy. I’m totally happy to play the Hare and Hounds and I’m also happy to play large amphitheatres. I just think a lot of music is going to happen and more relationships with normal people, people that appreciate good music and just keep going.
Lee Hathaway
Interview by Lee Hathaway.
Photograph by Steve Gerrard.