PURE VITALITY Aussie rock legends HOODOO GURUS have proven time and time again that age has not wearied them. As they prepare for another jaunt around the country, frontman DAVE FAULKNER tells DAN CONDON it’s pure passion that keeps them going.
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o far this year they’ve released their ninth studio album Purity Of Essence, embarked on tours of Australia, the USA and Europe and they’re not done yet. For a band that has been kicking around for what is awfully close to 30 years now, Hoodoo Gurus still make a pretty good fist of the touring lifestyle. Dave Faulkner calls from Perth where he has been involved in a songwriting workshop with Lucky Oceans and generally enjoying a miniscule amount of time off the road. “We’ve only had a couple of weeks off to be honest; it has been just a little interruption to what has been a very long year of work,” Faulkner says in his most chipper and relaxed manner. But he’s keen to get out on the road again to finish off the year’s commitments. “We’re playing really well and also I know that the sooner it starts the sooner I can get off the road and relax again. You never really fully let yourself down into relax mode while you’re
in the middle of touring; after Christmas is when I’m going to start letting off steam, but for now I’m always kind of semi-focused.” The band visited the US and Europe earlier in the year and Faulkner was blown away by the response of some of their fans. “We had a lot of great shows,” he tells. “We played places we haven’t done before. Valencia in Spain was a city I had very little idea about but I was blown away, it was an incredible reaction and we had devoted fans there. We enjoyed ourselves immensely and we played great. The thing about doing tours like that is that you get so much into a groove that we’re really taking no prisoners now as far as going on stage, we’re just really tight and tough, battle hardened.” Not that we’d ever expect anything but the best from Hoodoo Gurus in the live arena. Each member of the band is either in or approaching their 50s, but their onstage performances mirror that of the most passionate and dynamic of teenage punks. They do not leave the stage having given any less than their all and Faulkner says they never will. “We pride ourselves on the fact that we do put in,” Faulkner affirms. “That’s just how the music is for us. I mean, I can’t sing in half measures, Mark Kingsmill cannot drum in half measures and Brad [Shepherd – guitar] of course...” Faulkner bursts into laughter, “he just wants to go out there and let loose and Rick [Grossman – bass] is the same. That’s just how we express ourselves and when we can’t do that you won’t be seeing us, but while you’re seeing us you won’t see any half measures from us.” The band want to play as much from their new record as they can. But, as with any act of the Gurus’ prestige, fans itch for older material. Faulkner admits finding the balance between songs the band are most excited about and those that get the crowd going is very difficult.
“We pride ourselves on the fact that we do put in. That’s just how the music is for us.” “It’s quite tough,” he says. “We’ve had to leave out a couple of the more well-known songs from time to time now because we just don’t have the ability to shoehorn them all together into one set. We don’t do the two-and-a-half hour Bruce Springsteen show with one hour of chat. We probably do as many songs as he does but it just takes an hour-and-a-quarter! But it is hard to cover all bases, so we don’t really try to do that, we just hope that the energy and the spirit of what is there is enough to make people realise they saw something real and exciting. There’s always going to be a song that someone was desperate to hear us play and we just didn’t do it. “It was funny, last night I was doing this thing at the Fremantle Arts Centre and someone asked me why we never play Castles In The Air – there’s this sort of rumbling between fans about this song in particular at the moment – but, you know, it’s hard to put that one in because it’s a ballad and there are some other ballads that are almost compulsory performances like Bittersweet and 1000 Miles Away. It’s hard to get everything in there but now and again we’ll chuck them in and hope that we happen to strike the right night when people hear that obscure song that they wanted to hear and it will find its mark.“ Purity Of Essence has been out for over half a year now and Faulkner is still awfully proud of how the record has turned out. “I couldn’t be happier, I think it’s fantastic,” he shoots without thought. “I love everything about it and there’s nothing that I regret at all. Give me a couple of years and I’ll start picking holes in it – you always do – but I’m very happy. I think it’s a great album and one I’m really proud of.” Given the record was the band’s first in six years, one wonders whether going through all the motions that go along with releasing an album becomes more difficult after such an extended period of time since doing so. Faulkner says that the old perils of procrastination and panic were his two biggest enemies.
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“The actual putting out the record wasn’t hard but getting me to that starting gate was the problem,” he says. “I was procrastinating and I was panicked about the fact that I didn’t think I had the material, which I’ve always had with every record, I’ve had that same dilemma. Because of the way I work, I don’t write a song a day and finish them off and have them neatly stored away ready to go, I assemble sketches and fragments of material; it’s sort of random and I lose track of what I’ve got and it’s not until I force myself to sit down to write that I gather all these things and start forensically going through them and classifying them.” The record took a little longer to come out than many fans, and indeed the band themselves, had anticipated. Initially the sound of the record wasn’t up to the standard that the band wanted and as such it required a full remix.
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“The last three albums that I’ve been involved with have unfortunately had to be mixed twice,” Faulkner sighs. “[2004 album] Mach Schau we mixed twice and also the Persian Rugs album. It’s not a habit I’d like to get into, it seems to be one at the moment, but it’s been for different reasons each time, combinations of influences and factors that just conspired to make the remix important. In this particular case it was a lifesaver really, the album was brilliant until we got up to the mix and then it all fell apart; the particular acoustics of the room we were in we just couldn’t come to grips with.”
WHO: Hoodoo Gurus WHERE & WHEN: The Hi-Fi Saturday Dec 11 22