radionotes podcast episodes

Key Out

by | Dec 4, 2022 | episodes | 0 comments

Key Out

Key Out has a follow up to their 2020 anthropomorphia (Half A Cow Records) album, it’s called afterville out through False Peak Records.

Their latest was recorded in both Sydney and the Central Coat of New South Wales while members were living in three different States – making one of the lead Singles Face from the release so much more direct with their real-life narrative in recent years and their latest Drive in-turn a must listen.

Two of the members of the band – Pat Haid (Guitars/Vocals) and Rohan Geddes (Drums) – joined John Murch for this chat…

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IMAGE CREDIT: Supplied

Key Out and juno point will be playing with Sounds Like Sunset at the Petersham Bowling Club on Saturday 14th January 2023 – tickets through MoshTix

SHOW NOTES: Key Out

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Feature Guest: Key Out’s Pat & Rohan

From The Archive: Our chat with journalist and TV Presenter…

Next Feature Guest: Moonshine’s Angie Glasscock

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CREDITS

Theme/Music: Martin Kennedy and All India Radio   

Web-design/tech: Steve Davis

Voice: Tammy Weller  

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TRANSCRIPT

First version provided by REV team member – check to audio before quoting wider

John Murch:
Welcome to radionotes.

Pat Haid:
Thanks, John.

John Murch:
When you join us, you’re between two gigs. The venue you played last night is one of those classic Australian pub café venues.

Pat Haid:
It’s really incredible venue called the Link and Pin at Woy Woy and it’s been there for a few years. It’s run by a few folks that were in and around the Sydney music scene for many years and this is about an hour out of Sydney, and it’s almost a throwback. It’s people that show up for the music, they sit there, have a drink, chat, love music. We sold records. It was just the best atmosphere of a gig we’ve played in years and years. It is a little café, a little space, sounds great, but it’s the sort of place where bands like You Am I and The Hard-Ons and the Cannanes and Sounds Like Sunset and just great acts night after night go through there. It’s crammed with people that are just into… Listen to music and it’s one of those heartwarming kind of places and obviously they’ve had a bit of strife over the last couple of years trying to make ends meet and make all that work and they’ve pushed through the whole thing. They’ve kept going.

Rohan Geddes:
Some of the problems that they’ve faced are those common problems. Like how do you have licencing and how do you have your council bureaucracy and all of those things. It’s not as simple as just inviting a bunch of musicians to play shows in a café. You have to go through all these licencing, that sort of thing. So that’s one of the problems that’s really restricted, just being able to play music in lots of places. But that’s probably why I think people are appreciative of it as well because they’re like, “Wow, this is my local little café/bar and we can just show up there on a Friday night” and hopefully us being there made their night not just… Oh, I don’t know. It’s just one of those things that music is the same as when I was growing up and starting to go out and see bands and just following these venues because they were just so exciting and that sincerity of the place really comes through, I think.

John Murch:
What were some of those bands you were seeing as a young tacker?

Rohan Geddes:
I think a lot of those bands, I remember Bluebottle Kiss are doing reunion shows like this weekend and Knievel and I mean there were just so many that I was just a couple of years younger and I thought “Wow, these people are sort of…” Those couple of years difference and they can seem a lot older and more mature at that point and they’re really inspirational and it’s real privilege, they’re still playing. Some of those people have become friends and still have influence in more personal ways, but it was just going to the Hopetoun and the Sandringham in Sydney and The Annandale and all those iconic venues where you could just show up and not really know anything about the bands and had the best night of your life that week.

John Murch:
Talk to us about the formulation because there’s a number of great records now under the belt of Key Out now, including the latest one Afterville. Talk to us about that process of deciding that this record was going to be made in the atmosphere that was going to be made because it’s a particularly interesting recording process that this record went through.

Pat Haid:
Yeah, well you mentioned our few albums, one that we did in probably 2018, What Do You See? The process around that time was and Rohan and I were the nucleus of the band and would get a sketch of something together and we recorded that with Jay Walker from Machine Gun Fellatio. So we went down to his place and did a week of recording and then built things around that and that was a really instructive experience for us just seeing how he used the studio. It wasn’t about using fancy mics and expensive equipment necessarily, really creative approach. He found things that were good, had some little guardrails but just captured good sounds and worked with them. And I think after that recording experience we decided to jump in and have a go ourselves and that evolved through the last record and then this one and this one was kicked along by the situations of COVID and distance and everything else as well.
But what we did was recorded it all ourselves, ground up bits and pieces at a time headed off in one direction, used things, edited, kept building and writing through the recording process as we were bouncing things off each other and finishing them. So yeah, not necessarily false starts, but I guess part of that creative process was doing things, deciding they weren’t the right things, subtracting a lot of what we put down on the tape and ending up somewhere we were happy with.

John Murch:
Having things in your pocket that you are willing to build and work on.

Pat Haid:
So when you say that a song like Tree comes to mind and that was one short little guitar line we built an extended song around, trying to just keep minimal elements building throughout the few minutes to… I say building, but the crescendo is hushed in itself, probably. The idea was probably to find the central or the key or iconic sound or theme and work with that rather than piling things in and organising a pop song, having that building around it and trying to let the subtlety of some of that come through rather than some of the temptation, I think, in the digital areas to put down 96 tracks and over dub and over dub and perfect things rather than sometimes just catching that moment at two in the morning when you record something with a cracked voice or a dodgy chord is the thing that really captures a feel of what you’re trying to do.

John Murch:
Leaves, is actually the opposite in terms of starting with a simple idea and then expanding it.

Pat Haid:
That started with four notes on the guitar and an idea playing with Upstrokes to be just completely basic and make something that could sound quite boring. But that gave us the space to do something with and we’ve made an effort over the last couple of records to edit, to be concise. This song was heading that direction but just found space and ended up being the epic and album closer and our friend Dave, who’s playing live with the band now, came in and played loud guitars all over that and yeah, it blew out from a two-minute to a six-minute song.

John Murch:
Rohan, talk to us about how you keep that tight, how you keep six minutes tight and in its place or at least having a narrative for that long?

Rohan Geddes:
Pat and I have a really similar, I think, view of music generally, which is there’s a paradox, because on the one hand we both are into expansive shoegaze or whatever, however you want to view of that music. I think we probably all know what we’re talking about. Expansive guitars, prolonged songs, songs with a three-minute introduction and then a two-minute song and then a four-minute outro. And I love that stuff. I mean we’re both fans of all that stuff, but at the same time I think for me, yeah I do actually just get bored if there’s not something about those expansive things that keeps you interested. It’s the subtleties, I think. If I hear a pop song, something that is embedded in the music, that there’s a three-minute song there, I just go, “Let’s just do that.”
It is really a process of that editing and saying I think that’s enough and I think we’re aware of as well that for someone listening to an album or seeing a band, it’s obviously very different to playing the music yourself. I don’t assume that people want to see me play for an extended period of time. I mean, if they do great. But really, yeah, you just want to get some kind of message across, some kind of vista into something as concisely as possible and that’s really helped us, I think, with that cutting things down to, “That’s enough, the song stands on its own so we don’t need to embellish it.” But that also gives the opportunity to embellish and to go on if we’re in the mood. And I think that, that also makes it exciting.

John Murch:
You guys told the AU Review, you used various drum kits. Can you talk us through that process because within that six minutes you are jumping around a bit?

Rohan Geddes:
It’s just putting together, and again we’ve been fans of the… I mean, you should see my Underground Lovers T-shirt, but I mean they’re absolutely probably my favourite band if I have one. And that syncing together of really different drum sounds and somehow they, I think are the best people that just do that without it being… Without you noticing somehow they slide these electronic sounds or just go into a song with an electronic drum loop. But it still sounds like the band. It still sounds like… And you see them live and they’re doing that or linking all that stuff so I think that’s a broader view of drums and percussion and what those sounds could be. I don’t care if it’s not an acoustic drum kit in a band, if someone’s… If there’s a drum loop, I like the sound and we go with that and then we try to, I suppose, blend those things together, overlap them. But sometimes I go, “Oh yeah, that’s right, that’s an acoustic drum track that I did over a loop,” but I even forget where they merge and I think that’s a good thing.

John Murch:
Pat, you’ve moved into the central coast, that’s somewhere in New South Wales and Rohan, you are still in some place called Sydney or around that place. The record labels in Queensland and other members are in Melbourne. Does distance work in the favour of Key Out?

Pat Haid:
I think it’s made us think about what we are doing and how we are doing it a little bit. There’s definitely pros and cons. It does have its elements of being an absolute pain in the neck to organise, but we were probably given a bit of leeway by the social situation over the last couple of years as well where absolute distance is something that people close together were experiencing as well. We have had to work out those new ways to work, but it complimented what we were trying to do and the way we were making records and producing things, made us have some stricter rules around that kind of stuff. We couldn’t just get together and bash something out and make a record. It had to be a bit more deliberate. I think it probably comes through a little as well, the fact that we’re distant and thinking and slow and deliberate about some of the things we’ve been doing.

John Murch:
Based on that, how much of this record or your records generally, but particularly Afterville is written down or on the screen in terms of notation or where the song is actually going to go before the record?

Pat Haid:
That’s a good question and I’d say probably very little beyond that central trunk. I think that most of these tracks when I think back on them were probably built around starting and playing a little bit, but then perhaps just an acoustic guitar line that we would riff off with different things. Maybe a synth would sit over the top of that and that might be the thing that we worked with or perhaps the drums and Rohan said sometimes we were using loops, sometimes we recorded two different types of drums, play this one straight, play this one crazy and bits and pieces come in and out. Then dictated to an extent where those songs would go. I don’t think we yet in any of these tracks had a preconceived endpoint, knew what would be the single, what would be the short and long song, where they would land.

John Murch:
The recording space, I believe was an abandoned house?

Pat Haid:
Well most of this recording happened right about the time… Well, it was being finalised right about the time I was leaving Sydney. So we’d started it in my old rental and as I was moving up here and we had empty rooms that we could use and space and things and try to capture some reverb of a place. Also, a place where we were away from everything and had an orange tree out the back. We made the most of that as well. It was hopefully a first and a first record that we make in this place and something that we can make more of over time.

John Murch:
It’d be amiss not to talk about the mixing of the record because when you have someone, that of Wayne Connolly, on your very recording, how was Wayne involved in this? And for those that don’t know, he’s worked on records for the likes of Underground Lovers, Hoodoos as well as You Am I, but for me from the ’90s playing on the radio from the Meanies.

Pat Haid:
Yeah, one of the first shows I played with a band about 20 years ago, band I used to play in playing called Idols of Space was supporting Knievel when Wayne… That was his gig at the time and he was like, “Oh wow, we’re playing with Wayne’s band.” And our drummer at the time said, “Hey Wayne, do you want to make a record for us?” And he said, “Oh yeah, okay.” So we found some time in between all the things he was doing at festival and other places at that time doing… This was post his Welcome Mat’s days. But yeah, I think just in the midst of You Am I exploding and all of those records, classic records that he did.
We met with him there and played with him over the years and he’s been a really good guy to be able to… Obviously there’s a lot there you can do in the creation and the recording process, but there’s probably no substitute for somebody that has listened intensely in and out of music for decades, knows about the space of sound and where to compress and where cascading reverbs sit and to be able to organise all the things we put together.
One of the bits of feedback he gave us as I was talking to him as we were mixing, he wasn’t entirely happy with the multiple drum kits and drums everywhere and how he put different sounding kicks in phase and so he’s done an amazing job, I think, tidying up our loose ends.

John Murch:
Rohan, how do you feel about that censorship and considering where the censorship was coming from?

Rohan Geddes:
In some ways I would defer to Wayne as tidying up the loose ends. Yeah. Because I mean the history with Wayne for me is very similar. It’s back in that late ’90s period when so many bands were getting started and Wayne was probably playing a bit more live at that point with Knievel. And it was just… Yeah, it’s just a lot of trust and I mean that happens with any producer. There’s just a really high level of trust that you… Everyone has a vague idea of where you want to get it to, but the difference is how you actually then get it to that point, I think. But yeah, there’s just really good trust there that it’s not going to change the essence of what’s actually there. It’s just going to make it, again, easier for the listener to actually understand what you’re trying to do. Less confusing.

John Murch:
Not to lessen that, but we’ll quickly get through the mastering as well. Mikey Young, where should we know their work from?

Pat Haid:
Eddy Current Suppression Ring was his great band that were around for a few years and Total Control. But yeah, he’s been mastering a lot of records, Australian and international records and he’s just got a small little setup and makes great sounding things.

John Murch:
Speaking about sound, is that a dog trying to have their say?

Pat Haid:
That’s the record cover dog.

Rohan Geddes:
The official mascot, I think

John Murch:
How is it to have them on the road with you?

Pat Haid:
Yeah, she’s a good recording companion. Will patiently sit under a desk and warm your feet trying to do takes in the early hours of the morning.

John Murch:
A lot of late night conversations about where the record’s heading?

Pat Haid:
Yeah, really good listener.

John Murch:
Great thing about some bands is that the ideas are very distant that they come from different places and then accumulate obviously together. How would you rate that distance between the band members’ ideas of what music is about?

Pat Haid:
That’s a good question. Probably not one that we’ve necessarily, I think explicitly thought of and maybe that comes back to trust. I think at some level we like a bunch of similar bands but also dive into all sorts of different things and record it and have been recording remotely and at different places and things and without much direction. And I think that both in this recording process, things that Rohan has done and Saskia has done and Caroline has done as well, were not things that I necessarily expected or directed or anything like that when I put an initial line down and said, “Hey, throw something on this.”

John Murch:
Also that of travel, because obviously it opens up with Train, but do you get a sense of freedom when you are in a travelling in a perpetual motion? May that be in a train or a car?

Pat Haid:
Well we recently actually did a good drive and a good space and the song that comes to mind immediately is Wide Open Road by the Triffids. We were blasting some Triffids on our drive to Brisbane and the way that Australian bands need to travel through cities, day’s travel to Brisbane, day’s travel to Melbourne, day’s travel to Adelaide. I think a lot of these, the songs on this record are about that distance and escape and Drive was an attempt at capturing that in probably the more pithy pop song end of the record. That’s one that we built around that 909 loop. A whole heap of arrangements. I think we pulled a lot of them out, but it still remains one of the probably more sophisticated and delicate ones with synths and closely mic and driven acoustic guitars pulling away from each other in creating dissonance.

John Murch:
There’s a lot of fun in the film clips. Is that important for you that once you’ve recorded an album that the visual representation has a bit of fun?

Pat Haid:
Yeah, I think so. I think we can probably tend to the important and don’t necessarily want to stray into the over important. They’re important things to talk about and sing about and it’s also quite fun to get into a Tiger or Tigger costume and juxtapose ridiculous visuals with more serious music

John Murch:
Playing with the Electorate and I believe there’s a person called Josh Morris in that, but there’s also a cousin called Jack O’Neil. Can you talk to us about Josh and Jack and what they bring to particularly together, but across this record?

Pat Haid:
Yeah. Oh, the Electorate’s a great band. The members used to be in a band called The Temple Bears about… Oh decades ago and then split and Josh fronted a band called Atticus, Nick Kennedy played in Big Heavy Stuff and Knievel and any number of bands, a great drummer. And Elliot Fish also played in Big Heavy Stuff and Josh just got this just amazing captivating baritone voice. So for a couple of bits on our record where we needed a low singer that we couldn’t necessarily do. We asked Josh to come in and do some singing and my cousin Jack, who also has a low voice, so we recorded both of them on a couple of tracks. The Electorates put out a record last year, an incredible record we actually played with them at the Bali. Those guys are just professionals have been in one of those bands where the guys have played in all of your favourite bands for the last 20 years and super songwriters, great players and can’t wait to play with them again.

John Murch:
Who has been one of the favourite bands that you’ve been on stage with over the journey?

Rohan Geddes:
That’s a difficult question because there’s just literally so many. Probably, again, I was in my foggy brain state, I was remembering back to… Because we played last night, we played Dave Challinor from Sounds Like Sunset and did a solo acoustic set, which I’m pretty sure was a first. It may have been a first for him, certainly a first for me to watch, but I played drums in Sounds like Sunset originally, and I guess the nostalgia is there. But I do remember one of the first shows that we played was with Bluebottle Kiss and Knievel and we were just starting out, felt like we didn’t really, really know what we were doing.
There were definitely sprawling songs that I think it was like we had three or four songs and we had to fill a 40 unit set rather than in the other way around thing. So there was lots of sprawling, that’s what I can say. But the thing was that both of those bands watched our whole set, which was a thrill and cheered after every song and I think… It’s still a really vivid memory and I think going on first and seeing bands after you that you really respect and admire, it still really sticks out in my memory as a supportive, they sat through the whole thing. They enjoyed it and it was just really memorable, I think.

Pat Haid:
Just taking back to your first question, I just wanted to talk about a recent show that we played in Brisbane. So our label False Peak is a relatively new label, been around it for three or four years. It was actually their fourth birthday. They put on a showcase with all of the bands playing in this great hall that they’d hired in Fortitude Valley and the bands played throughout the day and that was a really inspiring experience as Terra Pines played with us, who put out a great record. Just these incredible pop songs driven by incredible drumming, two fuzzy overdrive guitars. Guitar interplay and those blissful sonics and melodies over the top. That was great to see, but it’s also quite eclectic label. There was ambient and electronic music in morning and rock bands on there and emo-tinged acts from Brisbane as well and that was a great day.

John Murch:
What are you as a band getting from the label? I mean from a heartfelt sense?

Rohan Geddes:
Yeah, I probably, especially the last, what should we say, how many decades? I think with the financial support in a way falling out of labels, but with digital stuff and all that kind of stuff, it used to be these people from record labels hunting the next band to have on their label and to make the next Nirvana. I mean, that was a very simplistic analogy really. But I think now it’s much more… Smaller labels are essentially almost like one person running it out of their bedroom. There’s always been a certain amount of that, but I think then what you get is someone who really appreciates your music and your records and there’s a much more personal touch to that and someone in your corner as it were to promote that. And that’s really nice and really flattering, I think. It’s really about feeling supported and having someone who understands your music and really genuinely wants other people to appreciate that music as well. That’s what’s at the core of it, I think for me.

John Murch:
False Peak seem to be a label that know exactly who they want on board and are going to nurture that very sound. And the label manager, I believe is a musician themselves so they’ve been there, they’ve done the hard yard.

Pat Haid:
It’s really inspiring, I think, as well. A, having someone in your corner and B, the community that is built around that and it’s almost like the Link and Pin as well. When you see people going out doing the work, it’s just slog sometimes to be in bands. I can’t imagine what a slog it must be to manage 14 bands and releases and someone’s real heart and drive and dedication and ideas go into that. When you occasionally hit the wall or have had enough of being in a band for a little while and you’ve got someone like that standing behind you and building something. It’s Nice.

John Murch:
How’s it feeling Pat to have the label in another state? Back to that idea of distance again, is it actually refreshing?

Pat Haid:
It was refreshing to start with a new label and talk to someone about new ideas and new things and that distance is further than it’s ever been, spatially, when we talk about the band and the labels and the organisation, but it’s also getting easier to traverse that distance and to be able to maintain relationships and communication and all of that stuff through technology as well. So it is something that’s been different. It’s not like we can’t go around to Remy’s house and knock on the door and pick up a box of records or anything. It also, again, probably makes you think a little bit more about what you want to do when you’re doing it and how that’s going to happen.

John Murch:
Talk to me about the actual getting a record, physical record produced?

Pat Haid:
I think, well two things. First of all, you need a slightly different master and someone with greater technical expertise than me can explain that. Something different needs to happen with the bottom end when you’re scratching grooves into fossil fuels as opposed to uploading something digital.

John Murch:
Not the most environmentally friendly, I know.

Pat Haid:
Yeah, it’s nice to have something that’s not digital ephemera, but pressing has been very difficult over the last year or so and it’s been explained to me that major labels are repressing Phil Collins 40th anniversary records and taking over the few small presses there are. So the lead times can be six months, eight months.

John Murch:
It’s a very rewarding process for you. Is that the feeling you get when you finally see what you’ve been working on for a number of months, years in your hand?

Rohan Geddes:
The vinyl phenomenon is obviously very tangible and you can put it on and see if the record’s spinning around. There is something a bit about that and when we… Putting out albums is as much about the visual, I think, as the listening in some cases. I mean, the film clips and all that stuff, but there is still something very… And I think with the CD going out of… I mean I don’t know whether people buy CDs anymore, but it’s either digital or vinyl. But I think the vinyl, you get a big poster, you get an image and that takes time to curate and put together as well and has always been a part of music, that visual thing. So I think having the big box of vinyl records, hopefully if listeners out there get on board, we won’t have a big box of vinyl, we’ll have an empty box, but there is a satisfaction in having those objects.

John Murch:
The artwork on this final record?

Pat Haid:
Those images come from just out the front of this place, the recording place. Again, a late night stumbling across something that we thought was nice, taking some photos, some slow release photos, capturing colours and images and I think that I’m a blurry person on one side and Caroline on the other and you’ll get a bit of, well the surrounds of where this is made. We’re probably about an hour from Sydney, but it’s almost a different world. It’s a bit slower, there’s more space, there’s nature, there’s birds in and out of the trees and wallabies up the hill as well. A great place to be able to think and make art, to be able to unplug a little bit from the bustle of the city and do something different.

John Murch:
Some quick questions as we round out. Rohan, what are you reading at the moment?

Rohan Geddes:
One of the books I was going through was Christopher Hitchens biography from a few years, years ago that I hadn’t read. That’s been really interesting.

Pat Haid:
I’ve got David Sedaris’ new short stories on the go. I love David Sedaris.

John Murch:
What draws you to their work?

Pat Haid:
I think it’s both the fact that he’s incredibly… Probably the funniest person that his work I’ve ever read, but also so heartfelt. You can go from one page to just laughing at the ridiculous and outrageous things that you’re doing, on the next page he’ll be talking to you about how he and his partner have just had a crisis, a family member is ill and passed away and just talk so movingly about that. Perhaps that juxtaposition between the hilarious, the tragic and the reality of life.

John Murch:
I’m going out on a limb. Leaves is possibly the new single from the album, so it’s good that I go on a limb to find those said leaves. Rohan, are you much of a cook?

Rohan Geddes:
I’m a bit of a cook. I’m a landscaper by trade. I have a bit of a veggie garden as well. So yeah, even though I’m still in the thick of the city, I make it up as I go along. I’m not much of a recipe guy. I love to be inspired by whatever I’ve got lying around or growing, hopefully.

John Murch:
How aesthetically pleasing is your job?

Rohan Geddes:
Yeah, it’s good. And hopefully my job is to create, again, maybe it’s just the analogy with music is to create little vistas. I mean, most of my work is in and around the inner suburbs of Sydney, older houses that are a hundred years old, but they’ve got some falling apart backyard or the good old just concrete, the whole backyard trend. But to make those small spaces really usable.

John Murch:
Pat, for you, this record Afterville, what does it represent?

Pat Haid:
I think it’s in a bit of an escapist work, like a lot of ours and a lot of it was written in and around the time that I was thinking about and moving away from Sydney. So a document of the last few years, it’s probably of that distance and that moving and that thinking about new spaces.

John Murch:
How crucial was that move away from Sydney? I’m sensing there was a lot of pressure going on at the time.

Pat Haid:
Yeah, it’s something that I’ve been thinking about for a while. Where I was, was a place where it was increasingly difficult to have the space and time and resources to make music and do art and those sorts of things, which feel a little bit more achievable now. And it’s something that’s been, I guess, central to my person for a couple of decades and something that I wanted to keep doing and that I think I can keep doing a little better where I am at the moment.

John Murch:
Pat and Rohan, thanks very much for joining radionotes.

Pat Haid:
Thanks very much, John.

 

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