My Tim Rogers Interview

"Be prepared, be prepared, be prepared til the end…”

I have been a fan of his work for pretty much my entire adult life. I have seen him perform in various guises somewhere in the vicinity of 100 times. I own upwards of 20 recordings he has been involved with and even been introduced to him on a couple of occasions. I’ve had a day and a half to prepare for the interview. That morning the hilariously cheeky press release and a copy of the album Luxury of Hysteria arrived and I had spent a particularly enjoyable afternoon immersed in it, playing its ten stirring, pensive tracks more then five times through. Yet despite all this here was nothing that could have possibly prepared me for actually having to speak to Timothy Adrian Rogers.

It was more than just talking to a musician, it was meeting an idol. Not an idol in the modern starry-eyed over-preened fame seeking young musical hopeful way, idol as in someone that has had a lasting and substantial impact on your life and you constantly look up to and draw inspiration from.

“I have Tim here to speak to you, are you ready?” the publicist asked.

“Yes”, I answered in a deceptively confident manner.

Tim Rogers (TR): Hello

Andy Ryan (AR): *shakily* G’Day Tim, how you going?

TR: Oh about 6’2 & 1/2, 75 kilos, packed to the rafters.

AR: * apprehensive giggle that sounds horrendously and embarrassingly effeminate back through the tape *

AR: [partly as interview technique lessons recommend asking an off-topic, chatty, mood lightening question to ease both yourself and your subject into the interview, but mostly as I work with a bunch of insufferably fashionable, prissy and hip girls and guys who are ‘really into colours’ and rarely get the chance to talk about footy, and I like footy, me] You’d be a pretty happy Rooboy after the weekend too I take it?

TR: yep, got my tickets bought and heading over to Adelaide on Friday, yeah, it’s a roller coaster ride for sure.

AR: Reckon they’re going to go all the way?

TR: Um, look they’re just the kind of side where you never know what is going to happen, I’m not beating any drum about them, its just great to see them play for another week actually. But anything could happen.

AR [hesitates as he ponders putting forth the fact that the Kangaroos had in the previous two weeks achieved the biggest ever points turn around in finals history and have also inadvertently discovered numerous avenues to goal and attacking strategies after losing spearhead forward target Nathan Thompson in the pre-season, much like the Swans kicking 22 goals against Hawthorn a few weeks prior when Barry Hall was injured and imagine a good natured mutual jovial dig at the Hawks and the enjoyment of beating them…but instead figure I’d best get to the topic at hand and manage a semi authoritive sounding “so…” before descending into a pubescent squeaky “What were your initial aims and mind-set for this album?”

TR: I knew I wasn’t going to be satisfied approaching it the way I’d done things previously, and wanted to scare myself a little bit and go to outer reaches of what I can do in terms of music and writing, lyrically, just getting out of my comfort zone really. I did that and I really enjoyed it and I don’t think I want t go back.

AR: Do you think the final product ended up how you first envisaged it?

TR: Yes but just a lot better, absolutely, it’s a little different. When you are playing with other people you just use that opportunity to really play together and knock things off each other and really listen to the people you are playing with and work with it.

AR: TnT (bawdy side-project with Tex Perkins), was the first instance you actually wrote songs in collaboration with somebody - was that a huge step for you as a songwriter putting so much of yourself into the songs when someone else is involved?

TR: Absolutely, I just don’t really enjoy doing it [collaborations], the process of doing it, I find it quite confronting doing it often, so with this one I wrote pretty much the songs as they are t a point, you know a very basic melody and cord structures, and then send them to the people that I wanted to play on the record and then say “look what have we got, what can we get together?” and it all came crashing in.

AR: Do you think the process of collaborative song writing has improved aspects of your own song writing? Are there things you have taken from it that have affected your solo work since?

TR: Well, you hopefully get influenced by everything that you do, either because you’ve hated it or you’ve loved it, I just find with what I’m doing now, things have really got to start with me, it’s the only way I can do things with just my imagination and that’s got to gestate, like sit in a petrie dish, for a while. I could never get in a room with someone and think lets bash this out and think I can come away with anything good. I just don’t find that very satisfying. I like to test myself in my environs and push my imagination and endurance levels, I like to try and find something that really illuminates you and excites you and from then on it’s just whatever happens really. If you choose to use other people to arrange things for me then hopefully other things will come of it. I don’t know, it’s an odd little process. I don’t have a rule or a certain way I go about things.

AR: Have you developed skills in the arranging side of things due to diversity of musicians you’ve been involved with over the years?

TR: A little bit of that, I’m not schooled at it. I think I [only] possibly have an ear for whether or not things work or not. I think also a lot of it has got to do with working with people you have gotten to know, its not really of the same mindset, but you’ve got to bounce off each other and trust each other. You know I haven’t got much better at writing formal arrangements for someone but hopefully have learned something about writing a good song, I mean hopefully -the public may disagree - but, hopefully there’s something there.

AR: Did your experience playing with the Symphony orchestra open your mind to new possibilities musically?

TR: Yeah, things that id considered for 15 years, cause I consider the first 100 songs I wrote rubbish. There was always a lot on my mind that I though one day I would like to happen, like counter melodies, I like them. Just playing with symphonies and jazz groups and just being more demanding of myself. I need more abstraction to be satisfied. A couple of things I don’t want straight-ahead 4/4, here comes the chorus doesn’t interest me any more.

AR: the music you listened to, do you think your tastes have matured?

TR: I think I’ve gone the reverse, sometimes yah but I still love stupid Rock’n’Roll music, as long as its got some kind of kick to it, like punk, good electronic music, I don’t think its matured really at all, I think maturity and music are two words hat should be mutually exclusive.

AR: * awkward pause while making mental note never to use ‘maturity in an interview again *… Do you think your performance aspects playing music to people – when you are putting more into the song writing part of it, that it deserves more you when you perform it for people?

TR: Yep, I just demand that of myself, I just know if I put over some kind of performance that I feel I’m doing more than my best and I’m not going to be satisfied and my sleep…yeah I want to be better at what I do – but there’s no school to kind of do that – I’m sure there is, it seems that people could go and take music performance classes and they are good when you are doing formally written pieces, but my minds looser than that, its kind of just getting up there and playing these songs and its kind of odd cause you get better at that, just trying to write better songs helps, I don’t use darts or anything.

AR: is there any limits to the possibilities you have for the songs, had having the profile you have helped achieve them?

TR: The big limit and the most annoying thing is my own voice at the moment. It’s gone from scratchy to only getting worse, and I’ve got to find a place that can work, it’s not a very adaptable voice. Watching Daniel Johns sing last night or Bernard [Fanning] they can really throw themselves around vocally and I just haven’t got that I haven’t been at that vocal ability and so I would like to be able to write for someone that had that voice but it’s difficult giving other people songs, and hopefully that’s the only one. Id like to think I can do anything, but y’know there’s this fucking throat that I’ve got so y’know maybe writing for other people is the way to go, I’m not being self flagellistic or feeling sorry for myself its just the reality of it. I’ve just got to work with that and do the best things possible, and hopefully I’ll be able to get there somehow.

AR: It would just be such a huge step to write for somebody else, would there be any sort of point you would have to reach – would there be other considerations other than your voice to consider?

TR: I don’t know, I’ve got no idea; I just demand a lot of myself as far as writing songs. It would be easy to just write rubbish lyrics and highly structured music, but I know I want to be exhausted by the creation of the music I make and I need to push myself and be better than what I did before – and thankfully that’s not difficult.

* Kevin Arnold from the Wonder Years poignant hindsight voice over * [this may have been a particularly pertinent cue to delve deeper as to why Mr Rogers is so incredibly strict on his own work. He is such a hard marker in fact that after completing his band’s second – and arguably most crucial – album Hi Fi Way he was so convinced that he had blown the recording and made such a catastrophic disaster of an album he embarked on a particularly destructive three-day bender. But nope, I could only manage a meek laugh and ploughed edgingly onwards with the scattered, somewhat random assortment of questions…]

AR: The tour for this album sees you play a number of more shall we say… highbrow … [I think the word I was really looking for here was salubrious, oh how different this response, and for that matter, the rest of the interview could’ve been] venues like Bennett’s Lane, do you enjoy the more upmarket settings is it much to adapt to from your more standard pub gigs?

TR: I think the thing is over the course of 18 years of playing evert night, I’ve played somewhere that’s vastly different from the night before generally whether its with you am I or by myself or with any other band so generally no. I just want that night to be the best for everyone there. [angrily] It definitely wasn’t a thought of ‘let’s go high brow’, I mean these places are really fucking expensive to hire, I mean the National Theatre in Geelong and the Opera House, places like that, and it’s a foolhardy decision just to do something different, for myself and anyone who is interested in coming to see me. Bennett’s Lane for example isn’t highbrow, it’s a club run by people who are very passionate about music and that’s a real turn on. Just because they predominately have jazz, I mean it’s intellectual music, it’s real soulful music. I kind of resent the fact its looked upon that I’m going upmarket or something, it’s fucking not. Its an opportunity that people can generally go and hear something, when you play the pub a large percentage of people don’t give a toss what you are playing. You know that’s peoples prerogative, that’s fine, but I want every night to be different, I still play pubs, hundreds of times a year, I can tell you man, really, here or in Europe or the states, or wherever, but I like to try something different and get out of my comfort zone.

AR: Putting this album out on your own record label – Ruby Q Records – is that something you always wanted to achieve?

TR: Of course not, it’s a fucking pain. I’d love to have things done for me and have good looking promo people push your wares to radio stations and the like but we can’t do that and we wanted to have a situation where we wanted to put something out that we really feel very strongly about, and didn’t want to compromise any aspect of it, didn’t want to be told what to do for track listings etc, so the only way we could achieve that was to put it out on my own label. But no I have no aspirations at all to run my own label, I just didn’t want to compromise.

AR: Have you found having the freedom to control what you do outweighed the disadvantages?

TR: I’ll let you know in a couple of months time! At the moment it’s a lot of work and there is not a lot of certainty about what I am doing, y’know I made that decision and I borrowed a lot of money and y’know we’ll see how it works out. I do like not being answerable to somebody and when people suggest things and people telling me ‘well if you did this, you’d be successful’. Well look I mean really, come on, there’s a lot else I could do.

AR: If it does prove successful would it be an avenue you may want to pursue with You Am I? [Who have been signed by EMI for their latest album]

TR: No, we’ll soon be dropped by EMI, no problem. I’m not really sure, we do a lot of things by ourselves now anyway, I mean we are self-managed, and look after ourselves pretty well. I mean its great to be ignorant and stupid and let people do everything for you, we like the people at EMI and they are god people, but I mean Rusty and Andy both run their own labels, so it’s a possibility.

AR: Do you find nowadays you almost have two distinct personalities between your You Am I stuff and your solo stuff?

TR: No, there is not distinct personalities, its just that I’ve got different people around me, different friends I’m making a record with or playing with that week, that month, but they are not really distinct from each other. I’d like to think its me, and different parts of me that is all kind of in there, both bands have moments where the lines are blurred, I just like hanging out with both people. In order to hang out with them I’ve got to write songs for them so they can turn up at the show.

AR: Is there any overlap in terms of musical contributions people can make – are there some songs you think the You Am I guys could add this or the other guys could best contribute towards it…

TR: yeah there’s a little bit of that going on, it doesn’t happen a lot, Its not like I write for any particular band or think they’ll sound great playing these songs, but sometimes it happens for sure. But everyone in both bands are adaptable and I can swap lots of different things and they can play lots of different things and that is the exciting part about it.

AR: Performing solo, if you didn’t have the background of playing with a band first and started off solo there would have been a great difference in the way you perform and record?

TR: Very different, its been a long while just bashing around in a rock band al over the joint and getting used to just being hit with bottles, cans and spit. I’m always waiting for that moment when I’m playing by myself or playing something a bit more delicate and think I should wear a helmet.

AR: Everyone seems to offer you advice about success in hindsight –and how close you apparently came from getting huge -is this a frustrating point for you?

TR: Yeah, it sucks; I really don’t want to hear about why its happened and what happened. There is nothing I can do about it, I've just got to try and be as good as I can but that’s more, just to satisfy myself, rather than sell records. Y’know there is not a book on how to sell records, you could write books on it, but that’s ridiculous. If you go chasing success you are going to become quite consumed by that, and I don’t see then how you could give any other attention other than making interesting music, you strive to then make something challenging that is good and dense and then sometimes very light weight to try and replicate that same feeling you got from listening to something you love and trying to write it yourself, that is the intoxicating bit about it.
Look having money would be fantastic, and free drinks, free drugs, fantastic, that’s great, but y’know, you’ve got to live with yourself.

AR: Was there any ever glimmer of your more successful moments that sat comfortably with you?

TR: Well I can get into it as much as anybody, I mean I like people getting into my music, but then it becomes a trap. If you write something that becomes a hit then you’ve got to play it every night of your fucking life –or you’ll be asked to play it every night of your life whether you choose to or not. I’m in that situation where I can choose to do whatever I like. There is really intoxicating bits about fame and everything, that goes with other people, but there is also a lot of bullshit that comes with it. And I guess we’ve seen quite a bit.

AR: The Cat Empire is currently attempting to break You Am I’s record for selling out eight straight shows at the Metro in Sydney – do you have an opinion on that?

TR: Oh good on ‘em, I didn’t realise they were doing that, I mean they are probably just out there trying to sell out venues, but if they are putting up a challenge to us then I’ll meet them in the car park, but good on ‘em. They are obviously, great, I’ve never seen them but there is a lot to like about them. I hope they do, I honestly hope they do and then, I’ll come back with a record that is fucking incredible and people may actually get to hear it and we’ll sell it out for three months.

AR [sensing a significant lighting of the mood and thinking I’d best quit while I’m ahead] Alright – that’s all the questions I have for you (in reality that was about 6 questions ago and I was just coming up with the rest off the top of my head), it’s been a great pleasure to talk to you and I look forward to seeing you when you are playing in these parts.

TR: Dynamite – good to talk to you handsome.