Recently the Cud sat down with guitarist and vocalist Jock Elder of Sydney five-piece rock outfit, Chalmers St, to talk about his up-and-coming band, discuss their recent release Walking Sleeping Naked and ponder the variable trials and tribulations of being in an unsigned but busy, ambitious band.

THE CUD- Tell us a little about the origins of your band, and what best describes your sound.

JOCK ELDER- We formed in Sydney a couple of years ago. Initially we were just 3-piece rock act, forming when a band that I was in previously had pretty much run its course and called it quits.

Over the last couple of years we’ve had a bunch of line-up changes (relationships and career choices tend to play havoc with band personnel, let me tell you!), to the point where we’re now a 5 piece that’s just released our debut CD. Sound-wise, you could pigeonhole us as a melodic rock band - we’ve been compared with the likes of Something for Kate and Killing Heidi.

THE CUD- Was it a challenge pulling together a band with people from such fairly diverse musical and other backgrounds?

J.E- The trickiest part for us is always the basic logistics of getting together. Everyone in the band is either working or studying full time, so sometimes it can be quite the achievement just to get everyone in the same room at the same time!
Musically speaking, it’s less of a big deal, even though there is a fair bit of diversity in our musical backgrounds – e.g. Niki (vocals) has a background mainly in jazz music, Namik (drummer) is more of a funk-metal kinda' guy, while I’m into melodic rock, a la early Radiohead. And Adam (bass) used to be into Creed, but we don’t like talking about that…

The important thing is to involve everyone in the songwriting process and try and incorporate all these influences into a sound that uniquely “ours”, hopefully without stylistically sounding like a complete “dogs breakfast”! Or like Creed.

THE CUD- You’re a veteran of a number of Sydney bands, what keeps you motivated to continue pursuing new projects?

J.E- I enjoy it! It’s as simple as that. If I wasn’t playing in bands, I’d still be playing guitar at home and writing stuff anyway – but being in a band and playing gigs with a bunch of your friends is much more fun!

THE CUD- The new CD is titled 'walking sleeping naked'. What was the inception of the album? Is it a collaborative songwriting effort?

J.E- We decided to put together this record because we thought we had a bunch of strong enough songs to make it worthwhile. Having a properly-produced CD also makes things easier from a promotional point of view – if someone wants to know what we sound like, we can just point ‘em to our website (www.chalmersst.com) and they can have a listen, or we can sling ‘em a CD.

The songs on the record were pretty much all written by me – because of various personnel changes, we’d never had the time to take a collaborative approach to songwriting. Most of the songs were actually written before Niki, Namik and Kristi (guitar) were even in the band. Like the songwriting process that I was referring to earlier, the next bunch of songs we do will be “band” songs with everyone contributing – we’ve already started working like this, and it’s all sounding pretty cool.

THE CUD- Where did you record the album and how long did it take?

J.E- We recorded it in Sydney at The Ant House, with Ant Whitehouse on production and engineering duties, and with me co-producing (which mainly involved me stroking my chin and nodding at Ant, whenever he suggested something).

It took AGES! About 8 months from start to finish, with a few big gaps in the recording process. Namik went overseas for a few months during this time which slowed things a little, but the biggest hurdle was that we parted ways with our previous singer about a month or two into the recording process – you can see how that might have been a bit of a problem! We were lucky enough to come across Niki pretty quickly, and she fitted in quite nicely!

It took a little longer also because we were all on a fairly steep learning curve – some tracks and performances needed to be redone later on because we didn’t think we quite had it right. The attitude we had throughout was that we didn’t want to rush it for the sake of saving a few dollars in studio time– we wanted to try everything, get everything right, and end up with a recording that we were satisfied with. Which I think we did!

THE CUD- Share for us a little insight of the struggles inherent in being an unsigned band in Australia trying to promote their music without the support of a major label?

J.E- The trickiest part is getting your music in front of people whose opinions count – people like Richard Kingsmill (music director of JJJ radio – he who decides what gets played on the national youth radio network), other media people (in print, radio and TV), promoters and artist managers. Major labels already have relationships with these people giving signed bands a foot in the door – which can lead to airplay, press, and decent support slots if the band is lucky enough, and good enough.

Less-well-connected (unsigned) bands are often forced to take the “shotgun approach” of sending out unsolicited CDs, making cold calls, and so on, while trying to build their profile using their own initiative. The hardest part of this approach is standing out from the crowd - it’s hard for someone like Kingsmill to have a really good listen to every recording he’s sent (even though, as a real music enthusiast, there’s no doubt he’d like to), because hundreds of CDs would come across his desk every week.

THE CUD- Is that frustrating?

J.E- Yeah, but you’ve just gotta’ be patient. Most “overnight successes” are around for ages before getting a break. If you believe what you’re doing is good enough, you just have to keep plugging away, improving, and doing all the right things, so that if an opportunity does come along, you’re ready for it.

It’s also important to remember why we’re doing the band thing in the first place – because we enjoy it! It’s always very important to keep that in mind.

THE CUD- Can an artist truly survive independent of major support?

J.E- Yes, but you need support of some description. A good example is someone like Paul Greene. Paul, who we’ve played with a couple of times, has taken the independent route and has managed to make a go of it over the last couple of years. As well as doing the hard touring (2 laps of Australia and counting!), and the fact that he’s an excellent performer and songwriter, he’s also built a very solid support crew around him to take care of management, booking, media stuff, and everything else that’s involved offstage.

If you can build a team of people that are good at what they do, who believe in what you do musically, you can make things a whole lot easier for yourself!

THE CUD- Tell us about the band's live performances. What are your biggest challenges performing live?

J.E- Performing live doesn't seem like a challenge, as such – it’s the best bit! It’s the only time when we don’t have to worry about anything at all but what we’re playing. Although admittedly, sometimes it can be hard to get really fired up to play a cracking set when you’re on stage at 11pm on a rainy Wednesday night playing to a completely empty room, but you just have to take the attitude that “OK, so we’ll rock the bar staff then!!”

I suppose, if there is a challenge to playing live for us, it’s to always try and entertain and engage with the audience, regardless of what’s happening on stage. This sort of thing comes with experience – we put on a pretty good show these days, but 6 months from now we’ll be significantly better.

THE CUD- Any mishaps or misadventures of Spinal Tap proportions you should tell us about?

J.E- The closest we’ve come to disaster was a couple of months before the end of our recording sessions, when Ant’s computer (with all our recordings on it) decided life wasn’t worth living, and proceeded to melt down.

It was a nervous ol’ couple of weeks for us there, while some lab-coat-wearing data recovery specialists picked over the smoldering carcass of Ant’s hard drive. Ant probably would’ve had most of his hair fall out if he wasn’t so bald already. Anyway, we got lucky, and were able to retrieve virtually all of our stuff.

THE CUD- Finally, what's up next for Chalmers St?

J.E- Within the band, the plan is to keep improving. We really like our songs, but we think we can write better ones. We’re also pretty happy with our live show, but again, we can do better. Ideally, you want people who see or hear you for the first time to go “wow…!” Which is a pretty lofty goal, but you've gotta' give these things a go!!

Outside the band – try to raise our profile. Airplay (we’ve had some radio airplay so far, but you can never have too much! Might have to call Kingsmill again…), press, TV and good support gigs are what we’re really looking for over the next little while, as well as doing some interstate shows too.

And above all, we’ll be looking to keep enjoying ourselves!