BIG DEAD

Writer: Keeley Thompson

The surrounding landscape of trees and shrubs moves like a stop motion animation while the car persists down the highway. Windows down, the summer breeze teases their sea-salty hair and cools their hot, sunburnt shoulders. 

Sleepy eyes gaze from the backseats as the afternoon sun tints nature’s ceiling with shades of tangerine and marmalade while the front-seated share stories, songs and cigarettes. 

Big Dead is the Meanjin dream-jazz inspired-soft rock-cinematic project of Cam Bower (guitar, vocals), 

Joshua Dunn (guitar, vocals), Lachlan Kidd (bass clarinet, noise), Lee Brackenborough (keyboards, bloops), Ben Shannon (drums) and Swampdog (bass) . Together, the group produce music crafts order from chaos through their idiosyncratic style and captivating live shows

Creating music reminiscent of cucumber, melted butter and hot sand between cold toes, Big Dead create a rich, vast sonic landscape to explore and to escape. A slow transition from angst to indifference and (sort-of) resolution, Big Dead’s music creates and then cures its own ailment

KEELEY: How did you all meet and how did Big Dead begin? 

JOSH: Cam and I met in High School on the Sunshine Coast and started the group with a bunch of other friends. It was mostly a way for us to play our songs and to craft our songwriting. We’ve gone through a few lineup changes since that initial group and have landed with our current formation. 

KEELEY: So stepping into now, did you go into the band with a clear vision or was it more of a passion project? 

CAM: It was a big of a mixed bag, I think. We didn’t take it very seriously to begin with - we didn’t record anything for quite some time. If we did we’d probably have four albums by now. When we first started we didn’t have any songs so when we played live we’d just jam. Which is interesting because we’ve kind of started doing that again - come full circle to a degree.

As we progressed and found our current lineup (and some stability in that line up) we were able to build a more concrete vision. We didn’t really put the work into Big Dead as a ‘serious’ project until much later after its birth. 

KEELEY: What does your creative process for music creation look like? Do you go into it with a structure or is it more free flowing? 

CAM: I think we’ve got a pretty good structure. I tend to do the majority of the writing for the main ‘body’ of the tracks and then I give it to Josh and Lee and they do their magic to the song. I love the approach we have because it’s like one genesis for an idea. 

JOSH: Sometimes the initial idea is very vague so we can kind of fuck around with the song a lot to find its endpoint. But if the originator has a very clear vision for the track that tends to get communicated and we work from there. 

CAM: It changes from song to song, but we do have quite a collaborative approach for music making. 

KEELEY: I suppose that’s one of the (many) bonuses of having a good creative relationship with your band members is that you can go to them with 50% of an idea and know they’ll synthesise it in a way that’s both authentic to the original idea whilst still being personal to their own talents? 

CAM: Oh yeah for sure! And it’s cool to be able to use everyone's individual talents. Because a drummer is always going to come up with a better drum beat and a bassist is going to come up with a better bassline. When someone is operating within their skillset you’re pretty much guaranteed that they’ll be able to make a cool idea sound even cooler. 

KEELEY: Where do you find inspiration from musically, artistically etc? 

CAM: Lately for myself it’s been in all kinds of different places. I’ve been listening to and writing a lot more chamber music and that’s been really cool to use a new musical muscle. 

Outside of music, I’ve just been finding inspiration in the passage of time and the beauty of reflection. I’ve been taking a more observational approach to life I think. All sorts of things have been triggering my impulse and it’s nice to be able to find inspiration from so many things and also from nowhere. 

JOSH: And I, on the other hand, continue to complain about the minor (and major) inconveniences of life. 

KEELEY: Is there a specific artist, song, album etc that awakened your ‘music sentience’? 

JOSH: I remember listening to The Gaslamp Killer and that really changed my view on what you can do to entertain people with music. Portishead was another group that made me hungry to explore music and sonics. 

CAM: Dummy by Portishead just about knocked my head off the first time I heard it. I remember being at a friend's place late at night (doing the things you do late at night) and he played it so loud through this amazing sound system and sat there totally shell shocked. 

I think I’ve had quite a few times where certain artists have really changed my outlook on music. Musicians and bands like Erik Satie, Explosions in the Sky (and Savage Garden when I was really young) had such a formative impact on my musical expression and musical enjoyment. 

KEELEY: Do you have any highlights or proudest moments from your timeline as a band?

CAM: I’m really happy with where we are as a band right now, but there’s also been a lot of little moments too. 

JOSH: Yeah! I remember playing our first show at Ric’s Bar which was so fun (this is back when it had no roof above the smokers and was all round a bit of a mess). I also really enjoyed our gig at The Triffid with a band called Knower and also just any tour we’ve been on. 

I love how being stuck in a car with your bandmates for an extended period of time changes moods. Tours always start with high energy and by the end of it you’re so keen to not see anyone from the band for a week. 

CAM: Playing with Tortoise really gave me hope as a musician. They’ve been around for a while and are just so talented. To support them was such an honour.

I also think that being older has made me appreciate things a lot more. A few years ago I would’ve probably gotten frustrated with myself and the band from the way we approach our music creation, but I’ve really moved away from that “grind” mentality. 

KEELEY: What’s your favourite song to play live? 

CAM: Of our newer stuff it’s probably Waters. 

JOSH: I was going to say the same. 

CAM: It was the first song we wrote with the new rhythm section. It’s really fast and loud and quite different to what we’ve done in the past.

JOSH: Yeah at the moment that’s my favourite to play in the live set. It’s three minutes of hanging on for dear life just trying really hard to get it right. To play it live with everyone feels so cathartic, I can look around and see everyone struggling and it’s a good reminder that we’re all in this struggle (and success) together. 

CAM: Another good one is Credo which is that classic Big Dead energy with waves of quiet and loud and lots of fucked-up difficult bits. 

KEELEY: Do you have any tips, advice or insights for aspiring (or current) musicians/creatives? 

CAMERON: Just.. don’t. That’s my advice. 

Nah I’m just kidding. I think the only real advice I can give is that if you put the work in, you’ll get something from it. How you choose to value or deal with what you get from your efforts is what matters. Make sure your definition of success and/or joy isn’t based solely on fame or money etc because if that doesn’t occur it’ll be hard to keep going. 

JOSH: I’d say be true to what you want to do. Don’t make decisions based on what other people think. 

CAM: I went to a Bigsound Conference with Support Act today and they spoke about the importance of self-time and how critical it is to detach from content creation and take care of yourself mentally, physically and spiritually. 

Ideas actually come when you’re not trying to come up with them. So take time out and let go of things sometimes! 

Oh and finally. You need to learn to fail because you will fail often. You just need to learn to remove your identity from the outcome and not take rejection or failure as a reflection of your creative skills. 

KEELEY: Tell us about the new single! How did you guys create it, what was the inspiration for the track? 

CAM:I tried to rip off the groove from Swamp Thing by Hiatus Kayote and failed miserably, but often those kind of experiments always lead somewhere else more interesting. We did the initial tracking at airlock studios here in Brisbane with Cody McWaters. The tune was kind of not finished in my head when we were playing it back then, but I thought we should get something down. I had a suspicion that it was going to be one of those pieces that went through 3 or 4 iterations before it settled. Turns out it was more like 6. Eventually I slowed it down and treated all the parts more like samples. We re did drums at airlock with Emily Hopley and she pulled a sound that kind of shaped the rest of the approach. Saturated and smashy. From there, I worked on it until it was feeling good and then tracked some new vocals and everything kind of fell into place in a couple hours after that. The bass was the final piece of the puzzle and is essentially swampy (bassist) improvising over a rough outline I gave him. 

the song is about my daughter Billie in parts, and is in places from her perspective and in other places from my perspective. It’s a love song, really.

KEELEY: What can people expect from your show at Black Bear? 

CAM: Lots of improvisation, lots of noise. For the last year or two we’ve been leaning heavily into the improvised parts of our set. I like how comfortable that place of unknown outcomes is. We try not to have things be too prepared and that element of danger is a really exciting way to work as a live band. We take a lot of risks when we play live, and I think that energy feeds into things. We also have two awesome opening acts by way of Lucy Francesca Dron and Hannah Macklin.

BLACK BEAR LODGE | 30TH AUGUST | TICKETS HERE

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