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We Caught up with Pat Davern from Grinspoon to talk about the weather, Bernard Fanning. The Grinners new album and Their upcoming show at Brothers Cairns in October...

NDK
Where are we talking to you today?

Pat
I’m down at Byron bay

NDK
Beautiful what's the weather like down there?

Pat

Beautiful what's the weather like up there?

NDK
Finally after six months it just stopped raining.

Pat
Same here..This is the first week we've had on a stretch that has rained every day.

NDK
Crazy, what's going on? It's like this so blue sky and it's nice that it was cold this morning…22 c

Pat
Good one. Thanks, Queenslander.

NDK
And really up far north, so we're headed into the good time of year.

Pat
Yeah, well, I can't wait to get there. It's going to be probably warming up by October the 12th.

NDK
It will be warm. At brothers

Pat
Back at Brothers Man, the scene of some of our greatest triumphs.

NDK
Yes, so like when I got the email from your press person… I'm like what an old school venue this is gonna go off…

Yeah old school band, old school venue. It was a perfect combination. I think we played the first time there. Oh no. When we used to go to Cairns, we used to play and we supported The Screaming Jets up there at a first time, we went and we played at a place that's now a strip club.
Down by the docks, I can't remember what it was called. But yeah and then we've done Brothers ever since then, ever since we've been going on our own. It's been Brothers.

NDK
But you did play the jack in 2017 because I was there.
Pat
oh yeah yeah, yeah we did too that's right i don't know why we didn't play brothers that's weird because we've definitely played brothers a few times

NDK
Yeah, it's a weird venue, The Jack, because the stage is so high and the crowd's kind of all around you.

Pat
That’s right…The stage is super high and it's long and wide, like really wide, yeah that's right.

Pat
It was a really small, high stage and I remember it well. I remember the stairs up to it, I remember that.

NDK
But you did play brothers, but it's been a while, and that gig at The Jack was 2017.

Pat
Yeah, that was on the Guide to better living tour

NDK
Yeah, so that's been about eight years since you've been to Cairns, except I did notice that you might have been playing guitar with Bernard Fanning at Red Hot Summer last year.

Pat
Yeah, I'll get around with the Fanning man. He's my boss. I call him my boss in my real job.

NDK
Yeah, and what was that like being on the road with Bernard Fanning for that, Because it's basically eight months when you do those Red Hot Summer Tour

Pat
Yeah, it was a long run. I mean it’s  great. It's a great band. I've been in that band for a while. It was super fun. I really enjoyed it. There's a great bunch of musicians in that band. Bernie's great, great, great boss.
It's obviously quite bizarre that once were warriors, Powderfinger and Grinspoon, and now it's kind of melded into some weird supplement. I don't know what you'd call it, but it's good. They used to call us Diet Pantera, but we used to call them the Australian Eagle Show.
But I tell you, he lives in Byron now. I was taking my youngest daughter to school two years ago when she first started school, and his sons are in the same class. I'm looking across the schoolyard and there's B .F.
and he's looking at me. I'm like, what the fuck are you doing here? He's like, what the fuck are you doing here? And then after a certain amount of time, we realized we had a lot more in common than we did otherwise. And then, yeah, then he needed a guitar player and he asked me to join his band, which is great because I really enjoyed playing his music and its fun.

NDK
So Grinspoon, you've been touring and playing festivals and it's been a little while since a new album, 12 years. So what was it like heading back in the studio to make new music?
Because Phil lives in Port Macquarie and you live in Byron so what was the pressure? Why did you record it? Where did you record it?

Pat
I'll tell you what happened. So in 2020, just before the pandemic, I think it was January 2020, we did the Adelaide 500 car racing and a corporate thing down there. And we've been talking amongst ourselves about, it had been three years since we've been back on the road after our break, it's been a five year break.

We thought, why don't we go to a studio after the gig and just see what happens. So we went, we booked into Ghost Note, which is a great studio down there for five days. After the gig, I think we recorded four or five rough demos.

And then, Unknown Pretenders is actually one of those songs. I don't think any of the other ones made the album. But then bang pandemic, couldn't see each other for the next couple of years.

But over that time, we kind of got to talking and thinking, well, you know, there's going to be a bit of time now. So what about we try and put together a full length? So as you say, pandemic plus living in all different places, we've got a Dropbox folder together.
And then everybody, the three writers in the band, myself, Phil and Joe started putting ideas into the Dropbox. And then very diplomatically, we came up the idea, right? Okay, everyone, between the three songwriters, let's choose four songs that we really like and we want to record.

And then let's work on those. And then we've got 12 songs and we can do an album. And then that got us to around July last year, we went down and we set up at Bakehouse Studios with Oscar Dawson, who produced the record.

He's also the guitar player in Holy Holy. We did the production at Bakehouse, moved down to Rye, which is down in the mornington peninsula. There's a studio down there. And then set up there for three weeks and tracked the album.

So it happened pretty organically. I mean, we've been doing pretty well activating our back catalog, as they say in the business. You know what I mean? Playing all our old albums and doing 20th anniversary tours and it was, you know, and doing package tours like spring loaded and stuff.

All very good for the bank balance, I guess. You know what I mean? But not offering us anything creatively new. So we kind of figured the time was right for us. You know what I mean? No one was pressuring us to do any other album.

Universal didn't care. You know what I mean? They were happy to help us and support us in our original music ventures, as they always have been. They've been absolutely awesome through this whole process.

And yeah, it all just made sense. Everyone was happy to do it. Everyone wanted to do it. And we just felt like no time like now.

NDK
So you talk about activating your back catalogue when you when you go and play these Shows or it's a 10th anniversary or 20th anniversary You know do you really look at that work, and you have any thoughts on gee that was great.

NDK
That could have been better
Pat
Oh, yeah,  

Pat
Oh, definitely.
That's what inspired us to do more music probably, you know what I mean? like getting together and playing those old songs and kind of reigniting that, you know, remembering the passion that you had for the band and the material and all that kind of stuff back then.

Because obviously as you get older, you know, things change, you know, families come into it, all these kinds of things, you know what I mean? But, you know, as a musician, as a guitar player in Grinspoon, I have this incredible opportunity for every couple of years that I get to go and relive my youth, you know?

Not many people get to do it, but I've been lucky enough to be able to do that. And so that was really a catalyst for the new music because we couldn't fake it, you know what I mean? We couldn't just put something out because, you know, we were just doing it for the sake of it.

We all really had to be into it, into the material and wanting to do something we thought was good.

NDK
So Grinspoon started in the 90s and as also a person of the 90s in my late 40s with 50 approaching, you look back on your whole work and that time, what are your thoughts about Grinspoon and how they've developed and how have your friendships within that band changed and developed over time?

Pat
Oh, well there's not so much fighting any more, I mean there's still a fair bit of, you know, knives out occasionally, but you know, we're all good mates. I think we've been through so much together, you know, referred to your original first part of your question, we've been through so much together.

Stuff like, you know, what you see when you stick a band on stage and stuff, it's all good, they're playing their old songs and stuff, but the amount of shit that we kicked, you know what I mean, from touring overseas, trying to break America to, you know, obvious, you know, stuff that happened in the press, you know, that concerned the band, you know, all that kind of stuff, was just, , a lot of it was hard going, a lot of it was really rewarding, , but there's, you know, it's been peaks and valleys in our whole career, we've come to a point now where there's more peaks than there are valleys, we're playing a lot better, I mean, I used to describe us as a two out of three ain’t bad band, you know what I mean, we'd do two gigs and then we'd do one that was fucking diabolically bad.

Which was kind of, was good about that in a way, but we were going through the motions,, but now we're, no one's drunk, everyone's reasonably happy, you know, families are older, not so much pressure to be at home all the time, all those kind of things, and we enjoy each other's company because we've been through all this stuff together.

NDK
Yeah, maybe some of the wives are like hey, you know what you guys should do go on tour for three months

Pat
I'm going to argue with you, Isome of the wives may be you’re not going to do that. Some of the others may be quite happy.

NDK
Alright well thanks for talking to me today Pat and I will definitely see you at that Cairns show at Brothers.

Pat
Well hopefully Cans will come out in full force to catch the show, it'll be worth it because it'll be a great kind of almost homecoming to get back to Cairns and to play Brothers again we are really looking forward to it no BS.

Grinspoon Play Brothers leagues Clun on the 12th of October, Tix available HERE