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We caught up with Felix Riebl front man for The Cat Empire at his studio in Melbourne where he was doing some work with Ollie Macgill

Nathan
I saw you play solo at the basement with Ollie McGill in 2011 supporting your first solo album and Ollie owes me a CD because he had a bit of a guess of the song, and I guessed the song, but I couldn't stick around to grab the CD after the show.

Felix
Old CDs. I miss CDs, personally. I feel like the soul of the house isn't the same streaming as it was with CDs.

Nathan
Well, I have a record player, so I gave all my CDs to my children and they can't use their phone in Queensland for anything when they're on their P’s driving so they're listening to all the CDs in the car, then my son bought a CD player from Lifeline or St Vinnie's or something. So I reckon there could be a resurgence and I kind of like it myself.

Felix
I reckon there's going to be resurgence for sure. At least in my house, because the streaming gets all messed around with. I've got an 8-year-old, soon to be 9-year-old daughter who is on my streaming platform, so whether she plays something, it interrupts my playlist. And it's just all a bit of a mess sometimes.  With a CD player, it's so nice. I feel like the sound quality is... Anyway, sorry, don't get me started on that.

Nathan
That's right. The sound quality is better, but the problem for many young people is listening to a whole album of one person.

Felix
it's attention span totally it's just like I love the patience that it brought as well and then the fact that you listen to an artist and got to know them properly i mean i feel like that's a big part of sort of where we've come from is that sort of career where people get to know you by listening to albums as opposed to the way where you can barely listen to one song let alone a whole body of work at that time

Nathan
Well, you're kind of leading into where I'm going. So you released  Into The Rain in 2011. And that was an amazing album. And we've just been talking about how, you know, just listening to one song is not the same as listening to an album that an artist has curated and put into a sequence.  And that album just flows. It's so beautiful and  I don't think you ever really toured that too much because I had to go to Sydney to see that show.

Felix
I love the solo work so much, and I'm really proud of the body of work that's there. But I'm very much, myself and Ollie, I'm very much in the Cat Empire cycle at the moment, and being extremely prolific in that space, and enjoying that a lot, but it's a really nice space to be doing a show at the Tanks in Cairns as a trio.

With the trio we get to lean into like some really fantastic Cat Empire material that doesn't usually make the biggest shows.  And likewise, solo material that's been on my solo albums, as well as an incredibly virtuosic joy in Ollie and Richard, who have incredible recorded music as well.
So it's a way of being able to sort of dip into all of the worlds with a really sophisticated show, but I wish there were more hours and months in the year, so that I could perform more, you know, it's just one of those things.

So we're arranging the show in light of people who have listened to our music, and playing something that's very dynamic and alive. So people who like coming to a Cat Empire show are really gonna get that kind of uplift as well. But it does let us lean into some less played material, which is really exciting for us.

Nathan
and it's a great venue for that.

Felix
It’s  fantastic. I remember seeing Keb Mo there, and it was just such a great vibe hearing him on his own in that room there. And I love the community in Cairns. I've had so much, so much time up there with Spinifex Gum and Marliya, you know, recordings and adventures, and also with the Cat Empire over the years. So I feel like I have a lot of friends in Cairns and it's a really receptive, fantastic music community as well.

Nathan
Yeah so I looked at your tour schedule for the year when I was putting my notes together and you are busy and you are only playing this show in Melbourne and Cairns at the Tanks.

Felix
Yeah, we played the Chapel off Chapel show in Melbourne. That was wonderful.  I mean, we're actually going to take this over to to Canada as well for a few shows, it's something we'd really like to be able to tour internationally. And then look, it's just a piano, a guitar, and three singers, and just incredible musicians that, like I said, really allows us to do these very intimate but very fiery and alive shows.  And it's so different because when we tour with the Cat Empire, it's, you know, there must be 16 people on the road or something like that.

I'm used to being in a very, very crowded double-decker tour bus for months of the year with a big band, and so these trio shows are just so nice to be able to travel a lot and really focus on pure music-making, but try and capture something that is in its own way extremely musical dynamic and sophisticated, but gives people a chance to come and hear some of those stories and be part of that life that we've been living.

Nathan
You have recorded three solo albums now, Inro The Rain, 2011, Paper Doors in 2016, Every Day Amen in 2022. Where do you get the time to do that amongst all the other things you're doing?

Felix
it's funny because people often say you should take a break and when I try to take a break from songwriting, I'm not talking about from other things, but from songwriting then I feel myself get a bit anxious or something like that and so I guess it's such a motivating force and the benefit of having experience and having lived longer in this life of music is that it gets better that songwriting and being creative and being perpetually curious is something that doesn't diminish as you have a career like this.

It gets more and more alive from my perspective and Ollie's perspective especially and so when I'm not writing or performing, I feel as if I'm not having as much fun with my life, I mean obviously I love doing life as well, I've had the moments of single parenting, two kids for months in between doing shows and I really love that side of life as well, I love my garden, all those sorts of things but ultimately I feel like music just doesn't have a ceiling on it and the benefit of the projects that I've been involved in, The Cat Empire, Spinefix and my solo albums, they've been such diverse and creative projects that I feel like I don't have a particular sound that I have to always focus on, I feel like we could be really really creative musicians, genuinely creative musicians stylistically as well, it is sort of the intent of the shows and the setting of the show, so we're really busy but I feel like it's a privilege to be in this life of music and it's kind of sustaining, you know, at the beginning it's an ambition, after a while it becomes just a means of survival and that's one of the most beautiful things about music.

Nathan
I was listening to some of your songs the other night, wasting time with Katie Steele, which I absolutely love and a video clip of that, but also In Your Arms with Martha Wainwright.  So I got kind of double barrel question. It's three blokes singing at tanks. Who's singing the female parts?

Felix
Well, The Tank’s show, to give people a perspective, it's going to have, like, a lot of the material that we've played, the most recent from Bird in Paradise, has these really fantastic arrangements that I wrote with Ollie and RichardBut so we're playing some great material from that album. I'm playing material from my three albums. Ollie's got an extraordinary solo album. So there's that sort of really beautiful introspective, but virtuosic piano aspect. And Richard is an absolutely sublime guitar. So there perhaps won't be the female vocal parts, which are gorgeous on my solo albums, but there will be a really fantastic night where people can sort of go into our various musical worlds.

Nathan
Hey, let me ask, how did you get Martha Wainwright involved in that song?

Felix
I lived in New York in 2009 for close to a year and was very close with Martha and Brad, her husband, and the whole Wainwright family really. I performed at Kate, their mother's sort of send off concert and Rufus was very much part of that as well. So Martha was kind of part of the neighborhood I was living in and we became quite good friends then.  I haven't seen the video for a long time but I really love that family and they have their place in this sort of New York royalty in terms of what they brought to the songwriting sphere. So Martha's family is very close.

Nathan
And had you written that song with her in mind, I like to ask songwriters where did the songs come from? So did you write that with her in mind or did you write it and just go, hey, you would be great on this.

Felix
No, I wrote it and then thought she'd be great on this. Yeah, that song was one of those, I remember lyrically, very natural, quite a free-flowing write. You know, sometimes you're lucky enough to get that, not always.  And I really envisaged from the beginning of writing, you know, those words that it would be great to have a very close harmony, singing, the male and female part on that one. It’s really quite rhythmic and pretty whimsical. So, I'd recorded that album and it was back in New York and we did it in a day, it was more like, hey, I've got this song in mind. And I was like, hey, let's go to the studio around the corner and we recorded it pretty easily. And she's such a natural, she's such a natural performer, you know, just pure song, that woman. So it really wasn't very hard to pull together.

Nathan
Yeah. So thanks so much for your time today, Felix. I really appreciate it. I'm coming to the show with my two kids. I've even bought tickets. Well, cause I thought it might sell out. I took their mother to, um, to that show at the basement, which was amazing. So I thought I wanted to share that experience, with my kids. And, hey, if you can play wide open rivers, just sort that out for me. I'd really appreciate it.

Felix
I'll see how I go with what I can really explore, definitely, I'll definitely try to play something from that album.

Nathan
I always wonder, just totally off the topic, when I listen to that album, it sounds like it was written about somebody very specifically.
Felix
It was. I believe you're entitled one genuine break up album in your life, you know, I think if you make a habit of it, it becomes a bit of a pattern.  But that album was what we're talking about in New York before in Martha. It was the relationship I was in in New York, it was a huge, was a huge part of what that album was for me. It was a really, really difficult, really difficult breakup. But, you know, as soon as it goes to music, it can turn into wonderful thing.

Nathan
Music. Yeah you've got a beautiful album out of it. I love it. Very nice, well thanks for the interview and I'll see you at Tanks. Have a great day and enjoy recording with Ollie.

Riebl Tedesco McGill play The Tanks Arts Centre on Friday May 15th tix HERE