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TO BEARD, OR NOT TO BEARD Catching up with singer Johann Beardraven and guitarist Facey McStubblington after The Beards’ heavily populated showcase at The Great Escape in Brighton, UK, Bryget Chrisfield is scolded for plucking stray chin hairs and therefore tampering with a potential beard.
adelaide novelty act The Beards go down swimmingly at The Great Escape in Brighton, UK. When Johann Beardraven, The Beards frontman, introduces songs bearing titles such as You Should Consider Having Sex With A Bearded Man, hearty laughter fills Jubilee Square. Band members make beelines for hirsute spectators in order to stroke their beards, which prompts the following question during our post-set interview in the media hub: Can you describe the feeling of having your beard stroked? Beardraven offers, “I’d probably describe the feeling as outstanding.” When asked to compare said sensation with that of someone playing with the hair on one’s head, Beardraven announces, “I don’t care for the hair on my head. It’s very subsidiary.” Facey McStubblington (guitarist/John Goodman lookalike) goes one louder: “The time spent stroking any other part of my body could be better spent stroking my beard.”
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“Yeah, he had MORE than enough time,” McStubblington agrees. How long did Beardraven give him? “Oh, it would’ve been – what?” He looks to McStubblington
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Both Beardraven and McStubblington confirm that every member of The Beards holds a current passport containing a picture of their bearded self. Did any of them have to apply for new passports? “Ah, a couple of us did, yeah, and burnt the old ones,” Beardraven explains. McStubblington, as he’s prone to, takes this even further: “And every other photo of anyone without a beard.” It’s game-on for Beardraven. “And I burnt my father as well. He had his chance to grow a beard.”
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Considering The Beards are in the middle of their first world tour, how many beards have been looking back at them on foreign soil? “More than we probably anticipated,” Beardraven deduces. “I think maybe a lot of people over here just happen to have beards anyway.” On which country boasts the highest percentage of beardos in the audience, the singer ponders, “I dunno. The Berlin show would’ve been pushin’ 70 to 80 percent, I reckon. It was quite bearded.” McStubblington jokes, “There was only three people there and two of them had beards, so that increases the percentage,” and there’s laughs all ‘round.
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“You don’t understand that we’re all about the beard,” Beardraven emphasises. “Any other thing – whatever! Not interested. Beards, everyone.” Surely the fairer sex is exempt given that we can’t really cultivate chinwarmers. “Well, we don’t really subscribe to that,” Beardraven scolds. “My grandmother has a very good beard.” You’ve gotta pluck out the odd stray. “But that’s exactly the same as shaving,” Beardraven chastises. “Don’t pluck, ladies!” What if it’s just the one? “No!” he insists. “That’s the start [of a beard], you know?”
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for back-up. “At least two hours,” the guitarist giggles and Beardraven continues: “Yeah, he had heaps of time. It’s a poor attitude and we’re here to change attitudes.” McStubblington jumps in with, “And that’s the only way to change an attitude is just to burn it,” before Beardraven adds, “Yeah, to kill a man! Well, we will go to whatever length necessary to make sure that people grow beards.” On whether they have any clean-shavens on the payroll, Beardraven enthuses, “Oh, yeah, absolutely! But that’s because we don’t like to tell a bearded man what to do. If we’ve got a bearded sound guy or a bearded tech working for us, it doesn’t feel right for him to do our bidding so we always like to employ cleanshaven…” McStubblington interrupts: “As underlings.” “Yeah, exactly. So our business is like a structure for how we see our Utopian society eventually becoming: The Beards on top and everything else below it… There’s this certain thing that exists called The Bearded Code and that’s all about lookin’ out for your fellow beard.” McStubblington declares, “Actually now we’re on that, Johann Beardraven, singer for The Beards: Your beard looks awesome. Great job.” “Thanks, man, so does yours. Wow, we really have good beards! Golly!” McStubblington concurs: “Yeah, we really do. You should see them, reader of this article.” Beardraven teases, “We do actually have beards. We’re pro-beard. We like beards. We are for beards not antibeard.” McStubblington stresses: “Don’t make that mistake. We don’t want the message to get confused.” “It keeps me awake at night,” Beardraven proclaims. “Like, after we’ve done a gig, which seemed to go quite well and everyone had beards, I’ll be back in the room and I’ll be lying awake thinking, ‘Did they really understand how pro-beard we were? Would they have maybe walked away not knowing whether we were for or against beards?’” What about if a member of The Beards’ audience decided to grow a beard post-gig, but then shaved out of habit the following morning! “That’s a big concern and that’s why we are on this planet to
make sure that people grow beards.” McStubblington cracks open another can of Red Stripe. Where did that tinnie come from? “Oh, it actually came out of my beard!” He’s on fire. “It’s an excellent cooling mechanism.” Writing lyrics about beards is one thing, but how does one ensure the instrumental accompaniment also stays true to the beard? “Are you kidding? That’s easy,” McStubblington claims and then Beardraven clarifies, “The beard really guides us in that respect.” There’s no release date for a new album as yet. “It’s a work in progress,” Beardraven reveals. “We’re still in the writing phase at the moment and, I gotta tell ya, some of this new material is groundbreaking. Like, there’s one track where we just scream the word ‘beard’ for a good 40 minutes and, you know, it’s the future of music obviously.” So how many songs is it exactly that The Beards have penned, about beards, to date? “Oh, it’s hard to say,” Beardraven contemplates. “When we first started writing songs – we had beards, obviously we had beards, but they weren’t as good as they are now. And because we were new beardos, I guess we just didn’t know as much about beards as we know now, and so I think that comes across in some of the early work. [The songs] show that we like beards but we’re not really living the beard at that point.”
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“And that’s what it’s all about: we’re method musicians,” McStubblington contributes and then Beardraven’s off again: “As our beards have gone on to become longer, our songwriting has in turn become beardier and therefore better.” McStubblington: “Last year we would’ve written upwards of a thousand songs and they’ve all just been awesome.” Beardraven opines, “The public’s not ready for the level of beardiness that we have.” WHO: The Beards WHEN & WHERE: Friday 21 June, The Hi-Fi; Saturday 22, The Northern, Byron Bay
WE ART THE WORLD MOVEMENT IMAGE BY IAN BURNS (AUSTRALIA)
OUT OF THE SHADOWS It’s been a while since songstress Lenka graced either the TVs or radios of Australia, but following her huge international success and with a third album out, that may just change, as Cam Findlay discovers.
espite being a homegrown Australian, the last few years of Lenka Kripac’s career might be a bit of a mystery to home audiences. Before that, she was probably best known as an actor, with roles in everything from ABC drama series GP to hosting Cheez TV. Musically, you may remember her from the two albums she worked on with Decoder Ring. But that all belies the massive success she’s had overseas, with a move to LA in 2007 foreshadowing success in the States and Europe.
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“I started acting when I was 13, and by the time I was in my early 20s I was almost a little bit bored with it,” Lenka explains when asked what made her shift gears from acting to music originally. “Creatively, I wanted to have a little more control, and more involvement in the whole process of putting out something into the world, rather than just being an actor. I sort of grew up with music because my dad’s a jazz musician. I never seriously pursued it at first, but I started to do a bit of singing through acting gigs. So I just sort of discovered that I was enjoying it more than the acting, I guess. I put a little bit more effort into it and eventually chose to focus on it. But it wasn’t until the whole Decoder Ring thing happened that it really made me completely shift gears and make me focus on music entirely. And then it just took over everything.”
This journey has eventually led her into the songwriter’s dream job: writing music for films and television adverts, all the while maintaining her own identity through three albums, the third of which Shadows, has just been released. While many may have been upset about her leaving Decoder Ring, she maintains her time with the band was a formative experience. “I learnt a lot of the democracy of being in a band, and that collaboration kind of thing, and how special it is to create music with other people,” she says. “Which I still do, obviously; I love to collaborate, working with other musicians on my music. And I learnt a lot about the practical ins and outs of being on the road and the way it works with venues, the way it works with labels and stuff like that, just from the experience of doing a couple of records with them. So yeah, it was quite invaluable. “I ended up feeling like it wasn’t satisfying enough for me [though], because it wasn’t a vocally-driven project, and I wanted to do more lyrical stuff, so that’s why I [left]. But it was really an amazing experience for me, and I think it was a great way to start. Particularly from being in such a kind of indie scene, it was great getting out on the road and playing festivals. That, as a way to start, was really healthy for me I think.”
While Decoder Ring’s electronic rock crossover did maintain some indie capacity, Lenka’s solo output has been unapologetically in the pop stream. Her first two albums, Lenka and Two, are full of major-scale ditties and love anthems. With Shadows, she seems to have gained a lot more confidence in both her voice and her composition. While there’s still the tales of love and happiness, there’s a much greater depth to her message. “It was a bit of a weird one, it felt pretty different,” Lenka says of Shadows. “It’s supposed to be an album of nursery rhymes or lullabys, but for adults as well. I love the power of music that is subtle, that you can fall asleep to. And now that I’ve got a child and I’m married, there’s different things that matter now. You care about other people, and I think that really came through in the music.”
Wood, lights, trestle, magnifying glasses, timing system. Part of Burns’ solo exhibition In The Telling Source: ianburns.net
WHO: Lenka WHAT: Shadows (Skipalong) WHEN & WHERE: Thursday 24 October, Black Bear Lodge
For more interviews go to themusic.com.au/interviews • 15