CAROLINE EASTHER: Quiet, But Confident Achiever
An interview by Tim Gruar.
Singer/songwriter/drummer Caroline Easther is something of a stalwart on the New Zealand music scene, having played in a whole heap of bands over the years – notably the Chills, The Verlaines, Hobnail and her own band Let’s Planet – and has usually preferred to work as part of a collective, hanging back behind the drum kit. Until now.
With nine originals and a cover featuring The Warratah’s Barry Saunders she’s produced a solo project that’s taken ten years to make. ‘Lucky’, which was released on 5th April, is an album of delightful understated country/indie songs, lovingly crafted, unhurried by the usual industry pressures.
Tim Gruar recently had the opportunity to have a chat with her about her debut solo album and to have a bit of a reminisce about the past…
I have fond memories of driving out to Avalon Studios, in Lower Hutt with my friends to see the Chills recording a ‘live’ set, in what was supposed to be a nightclub scene for Radio With Pictures. This was in the late 1980’s, not long after the band had returned from a recent stint in London where they’d been touring their first proper album Brave Words. The band, like most in New Zealand at the time, was comprised mainly of earnest young white male men. Apart from Flying Nun band Look Blue Go Purple, female pop musicians were still as rare as hen’s teeth. However, towering over the drum kit was a seemingly shy but confident young woman: Caroline Easther. With her distinctive, deliberate cadences and a wild mod of untamed blond hair she really stood out.
I bring up this story with Caroline, as my icebreaker and she laughs. “Yeah. I remember,” she says, “that filming was very ‘fake’, cringe worthy, a very strange thing to do. The audience sat around like they were in a student cafe. Artificial. It’s like those breakfast shows on TV. About as ‘un-rock’n’roll’ as it gets. Still, we got some prime time telly out of it. Radio With Pictures – we all aspired to be on that.”
She notes that as we’ve all got older, the mediums have changed. We no longer want to be heard on student radio (or breakfast TV). “And I never wanted to be on ZM or 2ZB.” It’s National Radio these days. “I don’t know if I’d ever go back. I’m still not sure about the great big media publicity machine. Then again, The Chills, or any of those other bands were hardly the kind the hoards swooned over.”
Not even because you were the only female drummer at the time? A bit of role model? “Mmmm. I don’t remember anyone coming up to me after, to talk about me being a girl in a band, though. But then I was so shy back then. We all were. Even Martin (Phillipps) found it hard talking to people.”
Caroline Easther has always been like that. A quiet, but confident achiever. Still, she’s genuinely surprised when someone takes an interest in her projects. She’s not dismissive – just not keen to blow her own trumpet too loudly. Nearly always behind a kit or ‘down the back’, she’s played with many iconic Kiwi acts over the years including The Spines, Circus Block Four, Dave Murphy’s Juke Jivers and Beat Rhythm Fashion.
Caroline grew up right on the edge of town, in Marton. “A place that’s on no road to nowhere. You have to deliberately drive off the main road to get there”. Her Uncle Bob had introduced her to the guitar and showed her how to play 3 chords which she expanded after swiping her sister’s guitar and learning every Cat Stevens song. Then she heard Neil Young’s ‘After The Goldrush’. “That song got me excited. I gave up my classical learning and just wanted to ‘do’ rock’n’roll.” She began writing her own songs for school music competitions and eventually borrowed her dads’ office cassette recorder so she could record songs to send in to national competitions like Studio One, even entering a song the year Shona Laing won with 1901. “I never got anywhere, just entered with ‘teenage songs’. God knows if the tapes were ever heard.”
I asked Caroline if she ever goes back to Marton. “Yeah. Guitarist Alan Galloway and I supported Barry Saunders and The Warratahs (who she often gigs with) at the Marton Players Theatre and I was telling the audience, a full house, that the last time I stood on that stage I was 8 years old and I was playing a munchkin in The Wizard of Oz. I even recited my lines. What a strange thing to do! We return there on 11 May, this year – I might have to do it again.”
Discovering the drums at 19 was a life changer for Caroline that led to her eventually moving to Wellington in the early 80’s where she played with many different bands including Beat Rhythm Fashion, who themselves have just done a limited national revival tour. “We had four really great gigs, in the main centres. I’d been playing in an country/folk band called Hobnail for a while. It wasn’t really my thing. They are my family, my earner and I love them dearly but playing these Beat Rhythm Fashion tracks again was so much fun. Hobnail does theatres and ‘listening venues’ but this time we were playing these rock venues, going hell-for-leather, full kit!”
She joined the Verlaines in 1983 and then the Chills three years later, when they whipped off around New Zealand before heading to the UK in February 1987. I have to ask about recording the iconic John Peel Sessions in London. “I really didn’t realise how big he was. We were a bit dismissive. I don’t think it was out best moment. We were a bit too relaxed. You live and learn.”
After touring Europe she returned to Wellington and started writing in earnest for her band Let’s Planet, who played support at some great gigs – REM, Crowded House, Throwing Muses, Split Enz and The Proclaimers. These gave good exposure to the songs from their three albums – Favours, Loving Tongues, La Gloria as well as their E.P. Bounce.
Caroline is thankful for her ‘sunny disposition’, which she credits to the time she walked away from a spectacular motorbike accident at 17 years old. Because of this she never forgets how good it is to be alive. Even though there is the occasional melancholy feel to her songs, it is with an up-lifting sense of humour with hope and love woven in.
Her new album, Lucky is a set of ten very musically different songs – with varied pace, feel and instrumentation. It’s guitar driven thought with scatterings of piano and banjo, a trio of recorders at one stage, the friendly sound of piano accordion and odd smatterings of violin – all backlit by strong, unfussy keyboards and a few layers of atmosphere.
This album has still has elements of that elusive Dunedin sound, I suggest. “Well yes. And no. Everybody says every song is different. Quite often they are, then, again, quite often they aren’t,” she laughs. “I like the idea of being ‘a little alternative’ but it’s also pretty poppy, in the arrangements, the choruses, etc. Some are pop driven, some are sparse, some alt-country. I’ve employed all those sounds I love from my favourite bands, a very ‘clean sound’ – I was influenced by bands I love like Sneaky Feelings.”
Were some of the songs ‘leftover’ from the Let’s Planet days? “Yes they were”, she acknowledges. “We did three albums and an e.p. That was where the debris lies, I guess, in the unrealised material.” She tells me that when it comes to Let’s Planet, “we never really stopped.” But, “I wanted to record something of my own, without being under pressure. Plus, I really wanted to work with David Long. I knew what I wanted it to sound like and I didn’t want to be constrained by studio time and some sort of deadline, limited money and other inputs. I knew what I wanted and I knew David could get it for me.”
So, I ask, was it the location of Long’s studio, which is located out in the wild and woolly Southern outlook of Wellington’s Owhiro Bay, that swung her choice to work with him? “Well, yes and no. I knew his sounds, and I know him pretty well, what sounds he appreciates and likes; his guitar sound and knowledge. He’s also such a lovely guy to work with. He likes organic, natural sounds. Some of it was made there. Other parts like the drums were made over eight years ago. We took all the parts to Dave and he mixed them together.”
Hang on, eight years ago? How old is this album? ”It’s quite old. I put the drums down nearly ten years ago. I knew it would take a long time, because he’s so busy. We’d steal a day here and there. Getting us together in the same room was a bit tricky, us both being busy types. The album doesn’t have the latest beats or trendy sounds. It doesn’t need to have one particular soundscape that reflects 2019. It is what it is and it’s taken a long time to be that because I was in no hurry and it was such a lovely process.”
Perhaps I’m showing my age but as a parent myself, I can’t help hearing a level of maturing and maternity in some of the songs. Am I right? – I ask. “Yes, you are. There is a certain amount of that maturity. There’s a couple of love songs in there (Anything For You, Your Footsteps Falling, Jaguar Boy), everyone’s favourite topic. That last one – Jaguar Boy, is a ‘fictional song’ about young love, about a girl who loves this boy and gives him a pair of socks and hangs around outside his house. But the chorus is about my husband, Chris, really. He’s my ‘Jaguar Boy’, he used to drive a Jag, an adult car. The verses are a ‘young-lovey thing’. I know it’s a mix but the two (ideas fitted) together. Even though it’s two different scenarios. It’s one of my favourites, we could never play it live as I couldn’t find the right drums, the right ‘feel’. I ended up playing drums and getting ‘it’ nice and straight. The nice ‘easy’ feel.”
“And one about my daughter (the sublime and lingering Meg’s Song). This is a generic song about children leaving home, letting your kids go.” Caroline’s underplaying the importance of that message, captured in the subtle sweet melancholy of her lyrics. “I’ll let go of the wheel just to see how it feels…but I’ll be feathering the brakes as her world accelerates..” Caroline also refers to many of these songs as “fictional skeletons”, “things I observe and build a song around. My husband and I go off on trip somewhere just ‘pottering’, stopping and smelling the horses. Appreciating those tiny details…I’m not a politically motivated sort of person. I don’t invest my time in big sweeping gestures. I don’t do important big things. I do important little things. I love that.”
Caroline tells me that she works as a music teacher, with students in primary and secondary school and considers herself really lucky to work with kids, and be a part of their world. “My house looks like it’s decorated by kids. I walk in sometimes and think “who lives here?” There’s not an inch that isn’t covered by something I’ve collected or picked up or been given. I take delight in these little treasures. Nothing is worse than walking into a house that’s so sterile, with nothing on the walls. I can’t believe people live like that.”
And that’s Caroline’s music – full of small, subtle details, tiny nuggets, and treasures hidden in the hooks and the licks. “Sometimes big things disguise themselves as little things, And they curl up, and they hide, and they refuse to come out”.
Caroline’s writing focusses on the things that are closest to her, using quirky, personal touches. She writes of people and moments and small things that move her. This album is the sum of parts, music recorded over a long time, Caroline confirms: “I played all the acoustics. That’s how it started, with me playing all the original songs, almost to a click track. Then I drum to half those recordings. (Cinnamon Girls’) Hamish Graham drums to the other half. Then we bring in more band members, but I’ve got a lot of licks and guitar work on songs like No Ordinary Day and the beginning of Find Me.” She also credits another band member, Alan Galloway for the ringing and jangly guitar parts, especially on Jaguar Boy – slightly ‘out of the box’, weird stuff.
Caroline will take the album on the road for a small tour, playing places like Nelson and Paekakariki, perfectly intimate for these songs. She’s looking forward to playing with her band, The Cinnamon Girls (an obvious nod to Neil Young) and fronting her own material. It should be ‘interesting’, she thinks. I can detect just the slightest wry smile of satisfaction in that comment. Yet more quiet achievement, I suspect.
Caroline Easther and The Cinnamon Girls are in the middle of the ‘Lucky’ Album release tour, with shows in Nelson (3rd May), Golden Bay (4th May), Marton (11th May) and Paekakariki (25th May) still upcoming. Tickets to these shows are still available, but get in quick as they are sure to sell out!
Image Credits: Feature Image courtesy of Ebony Lamb Photographer
![Lucky [DIGITAL/CD]](https://i0.wp.com/www.ambientlightblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/BandcampCarolineEasther.jpg?resize=300%2C157&ssl=1)
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