Garageland: We Want To Celebrate! (Interview)

Garageland is reuniting to take part in The Others Way Festival happening in Auckland this coming Friday, September 4th. This will be the first time the band has played since 2007 and the first time the original lineup has been together on stage since the 1990s. The band was a student radio favourite in the mid-90s with hits like Fingerpops and Beelines To Heaven.
Garageland is reuniting to take part in The Others Way Festival happening in Auckland this coming Friday, September 4th. This will be the first time the band has played since 2007 and the first time the original lineup has been together on stage since the 1990s. The band was a student radio favourite in the mid-90s with hits like Fingerpops and Beelines To Heaven. Garageland will be in good company as the festival, which takes place at various venues in and around K-Road, features some of New Zealand’s finest musical talent, both contemporary and from the past including Aldous Harding, The Bats, Tiny Ruins, Ghost Wave, Princess Chelsea and Solid Gold Hell. The 13th Floor’s Marty Duda spoke to Garageland’s Jeremy Eade to find out what he’s been up to in recent years and how he is preparing for this highly-anticipated reunion.

Click here to listen to the interview with Garageland’s Jeremy Eade:

Or, read a transcription of the interview here:

MD: So, how are you feeling about the upcoming reunion?

JE: I think everyone’s getting their head around it now. Umm…got some songs!

MD: That’s good.

JE: We’ve been practicing. I think it’s going to be a lot of fun. I really like the festival.

MD: So who’s in the line-up of the band for this reunion?

JE: It’s the original line-up. So, my old mates Debbie, Mark and Andy…yeah, I’ve known those guys for a long time. Yea, so it’s the original Garageland that came to Auckland. It’s gonna be really good, good to have Debbie’s guitar back.

MD: The last time you guys did a reunion was 2007, is that right?

JE: Yep, but we didn’t have Mark. So, this is going to be fun for us because it’s probably the first time since 1998 that we’ve actually all played together.

MD: So what have the rehearsals been like? What was it like the first time you got together?

JE: Well, I’ll tell you on Monday. (laughs)

MD: Oh, you haven’t done any rehearsals yet.

JE: No, because Mark and Andy have moved out of Auckland. They no longer call this city their home. One’s in Christchurch and one’s in Hawkes Bay, they’re very regional people now. (chuckles)

MD: So do you guys keep in touch at all?

JE: Yep.

MD: And what have you been doing in the mean time?

JE: Musically, I…ummm…I’ve just taken some time off, I guess. I think there was a bit of a burnout. But I still play heaps of guitar. I’ve been playing parties!

MD: Oh, really?

JE: They’ve been going quite well.

MD: What kind of parties?

JE: Just friends and…we did a really cool one and did versions of Stones songs and Pogues songs and a couple of originals…just to keep my hand in, you know? (chuckles)

MD: So, have you been doing any songwriting along the way?

JE: Yeah, that’s, I always kinda, when I play I write. I’m always writing so…one day I might look to do something with that, eh. About ten years ago I did a thing called Red Drum. It had some plays and then I just…just the whole…I’ve had children, so…they’ve been taking priority, I guess. Yeah, I’m a songwriter so I’m always writing.

MD: Back in the day, in the mid-90s, you guys seemed to be everywhere. A lot of people have a lot of very fond memories of seeing you around the country. What are your memories of that time? Do you look at them fondly?

JE: Yeah, I remember, our strongholds were Auckland, Hamilton, Christchurch and sometimes Wellington. Yeah, coming down to Hamilton and Christchurch and just seeing big crowds for the first time, I was really…that was a really good memory.

MD: Do you have any particular gigs that stand out?

JE: Probably when we first went to Hamilton and we got 700 people and we were expecting 100. Contact had been thrashing it…a very similar equation to Auckland where student radio really championed us. RDU is Christchurch, too. We went down and played this place and it was just packed, you know. We didn’t really know how big we were in those towns and it was great. And they’ve always been really supportive, especially those two places.

MD: Did you watch the recent TV special about student radio?

JE: Yeah. It’s pretty strange to hear so many mainstream voice now…a lot of those guys, I think that was their finest radio moment.

MD: Definitely. It helped you guys out I guess.

JE: Yeah, well I was listening to Paul Casserly and Graeme Hill and Marcus Lush even before we had music out so I really liked those DJs; I thought they had really good radio shows. It was a really fun radio station.

MD: Do you keep up with what’s happening music-wise these days?

JE: Ummm…well…(laughs)…I’ve seen the rows of what I call Cabaret Pop…everyone’s gotta have dances now, it seems. I don’t really…to me, that’s not really rock & roll, it’s a cabaret. It’s gone a bit cabaret, which is probably good, you know. Maybe that’s a bit of a vacuum for guitar. It must be really hard to be in a band at the moment. There’s a lot of good stuff happening locally, I think those guys are operating under quite hard pressures, so, good to see.

MD: Nobody seems to be able to make any money doing whatever it is that they’re doing.

JE: No, even the small revenue streams of the 90s have kinda dried up, you know.

MD: This Others Way Festival…how do you picture this thing going down? Have they told you much about the format of it and how you’re going to fit into it?

JE: Yeah, I’ve spent a lot of time up on K-Road so I think it’s kinda cool because inner city…being a participant and going into town as a young man…I hope it has a kind of South By Southwest feel, you know…an Austin kinda feel…you just walk up and down that road and see heaps of bands. I think it’s going to be really pleasurable.

MD: Any of the acts you’re particularly excited about seeing?

JE: Well, The Bats are on before us, so that’s the pressure, huh? (laughs) Just the bloody Bats! Probably Solid Gold Hell and The Bats, I’ve seen both of those bands live and when they get going, pretty good. There’s just so much new stuff and a lot of them are playing. I’d love to check them all out but I’m gonna have to look after myself that night. I’m playing! (laughs)

MD: Absolutely, yes. So what do you do to prepare yourself for something like this where you haven’t played with the band for seven or eight years and it’s not a regular thing and you haven’t been performing publicly for a long time?

JE: Yeah, well, I think were probably saved by the fact that we did so much touring. We were a good, professional touring band at the end of our career. We’re all pretty solid players so I don’t think it’ll be a problem.

MD: Is it muscle memory…it just comes back?

JE: Ah yeah, you know we played those songs so many times I know how to play half those songs behind my back. Which I will be doing! And I’ll play the other half with my teeth.

MD: Was the reason that the band originally split up just because of burnout or do you think back and go, ‘why did we do this’?

JE: Yeah, I think it just uh…you know you could get all vulgar about revenue flows. It just cost a lot of money. It was just the promise of some good overseas playlistings that just never came through. We were always kind of chasing this next level but it just didn’t come through and I think once we started ??? everyone lost interest because we just wanted to keep getting bigger and bigger. For survival really, it was survival you know, we needed to get bigger and bigger.

MD: How much overseas touring did you do?

JE: Oh, a lot. That was seeing the world, mate. (laughs) The Western part…we went all over England, Scotland, we invaded the US, probably 50 cities. I went to New York four or five times, LA similar times…really spent a lot of time in America and London especially with locals…because we had local labels and that was really cool so we got a good feel for those places. We had some good…Campbell Smith, our manager at the time, went on to bigger things. He was making some really good connections. You know we had some people’s ears, you know, and things would happen, like we’d get into Rolling Stone or we’d get on the cover of festival magazines. There was a lot of reactive…you know, this is happening, you gotta go there! (laughs)

MD: So do you miss all that?

JE: Yeah, I miss, kind of that feeling of excitement, yeah. Of course, anyone would, it’s exciting to move your band forward like that in a small space of time. It was really exciting. I don’t miss…at the end of the day, it is a strange industry in some regards. You have politics in every industry though. I don’t miss those.

MD: I think a lot of people have some very fond memories of seeing you guys and hearing you guys and buying the CDs and whatever and it’s the 20-year thing now where people get very nostalgic.

JE: (laughing) sings “20 years ago today!” I know when that came out (Sgt Pepper) twenty years seemed like a century but it’s funny to think it’s been 20 years.

MD: It does fly by, doesn’t it?

JE: It does, it totally does. Generally this pattern of the music two decades ago suddenly become fresher. There was a 70s revival in the 90s and the 80s in the 2000s. There’s so much good stuff in that period. I still listen to The Pixies, Dinosaur Jr, My Bloody Valentine, Jesus And Mary Chain and of course all the great Flying Nun stuff.

MD: So is this a one-off thing or do you see more gigs happening for the band?

JE: I probably…because the logistics are difficult…I’d like to do more festivals, yeah. I like that idea, you know. Share the load (laughs) It’s a great event to come back in because it’s perfect, you know it’s just Auckland indie bands…well New Zealand alt…I hate that word, alternative, but New Zealand cool stuff on that street for a whole night. I think Ben Howe’s done really well organizing this.

MD: Do you see yourself doing any new music or is it strictly going to be stuff from the 90s that everyone knows?

JE: We’ll definitely be playing…we kinda have three chapters so, this is first chapter with Deb and we haven’t played a lot of those songs so we’ll definitely be playing our old songs. Nah, I won’t be risking new material. (laughs) I don’t think anyone wants to turn up and hear us rehearse our new jazz offerings! It’s been a long time and we want to celebrate.[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rntb_E8-8fE]

Click here for more info about The Others Way Festival.
Garageland will be in good company as the festival, which takes place at various venues in and around K-Road, features some of New Zealand’s finest musical talent, both contemporary and from the past including Aldous Harding, The Bats, Tiny Ruins, Ghost Wave, Princess Chelsea and Solid Gold Hell. The 13th Floor’s Marty Duda spoke to Garageland’s Jeremy Eade to find out what he’s been up to in recent years and how he is preparing for this highly-anticipated reunion.

Click here to listen to, or read, the interview with Jeremy Eade of Garageland.

Save