Frenzal Rhomb’s Jay Whalley talks touring during Covid
Frenzal Rhomb, for those unaware, are a collective made up of musicians prone to injury; from broken bones, to dislocated eye sockets and peruvian brain parasites, these guys have seen it all. So, when I caught up with vocalist Jay Whalley, it did not come as a surprise to hear that their bass player had torn his Achilles tendon. “So yeah, he’ll be sitting during the next round of shows. Actually, fuckin’ Gordy is stuck in Melbourne, so we’re using a ring-in drummer, who’s actually in another band with our bass player” Whalley laughs. “Pretty much Lindsay and I have joined Local Resident Failure, and we’re playing Frenzal Rhomb covers.”
Update: This interview first ran mid-2021, before most of the upcoming Frenzal shows were re-scheduled yet again.
“Full Tilt has just been moved, because there’s a lot of bands stuck in Melbourne, so for Spring Loaded we’re using a ring-in. Have you heard of YouTube?” He asks in a way that makes me question the authenticity of his query. “Well, if you’ve heard of YouTube, you’ll know this guy. It’s YouTube sensation Kye Smith. We needed a drummer when Gordy broke his arm a few years back, and he already knows every song, from every band that ever existed, including ours, so it was a no-brainer.” For future shows however, who knos what the lineup will be – “As long as one of us, or at least someone who looks like one of us is there, it’ll be ok.”
There has been a rumour floating around that a new Frenzal Rhomb album might be on the horizon, and we were pleased to hear this was not simply folklore, with Jay explaining “We’ve got a bunch of new demos, and they’re all [brand new] Frenzal Rhomb hits! We just need to record them at some point, which of course is proving difficult, because we want to do it in Colorado with Bill Stevenson” at Denver’s infamous Blasting Room Studio. “We considered recording somewhere else, but it just sounds so good and it’s such a good experience, with a lot of positivity and collaboration. We’ve been booked in for the last two years now, so we’re just writing and refining, and when the time comes, we’ll have 285 songs to choose from.”
As for the title of this newly confirmed album? “The working title is Escape From The Vegetable Cult. I’m part of a vegetable Co-op in my community in Sydney and it’s like a fucking cult. As a vegetarian, I know first-hand that vegetarians can be very difficult people, and if I were to leave this cult I would be excommunicated from the entirety of Western Sydney, so I’m stuck! But yeah, the album, I’ve got lots of songs and some of them are good, so it’s going to be fun when we finally get to do it. So as long as we get our shit together. I’m sure our government is also hanging out for the new Frenzal Rhomb record, so it’s in their best interests to really get things moving.”
Covid lockdowns were surely a good opportunity for songwriting, right? “The problem I have with songwriting, is I need other people around me to tell me if it’s *shit.” Admits Whalley. “I just assume that everything I write is fucking amazing, so without that, during Covid I really lost the drive to write songs at all, to be honest. I’m just starting to get cracking right now again but that was not a very creative time at all for me.”
So, with tours being cancelled constantly, could the future be more focused on intermittent acoustic/solo shows? “I played an acoustic show the other night with Lindsay (McDougall) at an RSL in the western suburbs and it was pretty fun, because I was playing music again, and after a few minutes it became apparent that, apart from the promoter, nobody else knew or cared who we were.” He chuckles. “It became this pretty amazing spectacle, the only songs we had practised were these really offensive Frenzal Rhomb songs, and we’re playing in front of a bunch of families trying to finish their dinner. It was pretty good. There was also a school reunion going on and they didn’t like us, so it was just us, Lindsay’s wife, the promoter, and a couple of other dudes. It was then I started thinking I don’t know about this acoustic malarkey.”
“I tried to enamour myself to the crowd by showing off my rugby league knowledge and talked about how the Tigers beat the Panthers last week and whatnot, and then I was like “anyway this song is about how rugby league players are pretty rapey.” So we play the song and at the end it was totally silent, except for this one woman who was like “Go the Tigers!”
Then we did that cover of Errol that we do, and I thought “yeah this will win them over” and it was silence again, except for this one guy who went “yeah, rock and roll!””
So, what will you do if tours and music festivals continue to be cancelled? Can a band transition to a digital workspace like the rest of the world has been forced to embrace?
“We’re thinking about doing some NFTs.” He says excitedly. “You know, it’s like collecting cards, but people collect these pieces of digital artwork or unique pieces music. People pay through some environmentally good version of bitcoin or something… Even as I’m talking about this, I’m listening to myself and I’m going “you don’t know anything about this, why are you talking? Anyway, I think we’re doing something like that; we’ll sell old demos or stuff we’ve recorded that no ones ever heard, for like four bucks.”
Tickets and more tourdates for 2022 can be found here: https://tix.to/frenzalrhomb