Tangled Magazine

An interview by Laura Hartley

Lead singer for Aussie band, Small Mercies, Steve Blaik, took time out to talk to Tangled Magazine about their upcoming album, Beautiful Hum.

You’re supporting Shannon Noll on tour next month, which must be pretty exciting.
We get to travel around the country and playing live is some thing we love doing. We’ve played with Shannon before and he is a good guy. We’ll probably have a few drinks with him throughout the tour, get up to a little bit of mischief [laughs].

Where did the band meet?
Danny and I met over 10 years ago back in high school. We’ve been playing together for a while now and their have been a few line up changes along the way, including a new bass player and the lot, but we started off as a high school band, playing in maths class somewhere and then we just evolved into what we are now.

Danny’s father came up with the name “Small Mercies”. He saw the pairing between small mercies being the little things that you are happy for, and the years of us just struggling through and being happy for the small things that have kept us going till we got to a point where we got through. We came up with hundreds of really crap names at that time, and it was the least crap [laughs]. We’ve warmed to it a lot, now its part of the band.

What made you go further than a high school band and pursue a recording contract?
We all really enjoy music, we thought what we were doing was good, and we thought we had a shot so we put in some hard work and really gave it a go. Some of our heroes that we grew up admiring were people like Slash, from guns n’roses or Eddie Vedder. They were all musicians and songwriters and that is where our passion fuelled from.

How did you get signed to Sony BMG?
Again, it was a long process. We had been touring around for a long time just doing gigs and plugging away, writing and recording songs, and we eventually signed with management and from there we sent out our demos out to a number of different record companies. Sony BMG showed the initial interest and watched a number of our shows, and said, “We could really work with you guys, we think the songs are great…”. From there they signed us up and we were able to record the album.

How is Beautiful Hum different to your previous EP’s?
The last EP came out probably four years or so ago, so it’s been a while between records. I think as a band, as musicians and as song writers we’ve all matured. We’ve refined our art. We’ve found our sound, we’ve worked on it, and it has evolved into something that we’re really comfortable with. It is the same with song writing. We had written hundreds of tracks, so we had a real wealth of songs to choose from for the record. We are really proud of this album.

Was it hard choosing just 11 songs, when you had hundreds to pick from?
Every song is like your little baby or child that you burped and reared, so it is hard to work out which ones you want to represent. Innocent, the first single, was an obvious choice, and Don’t You Know Who I Am? was a definite purely because it represented a different spectrum to the band. Some other songs, like Almost Perfect, which is one of the first songs we ever wrote together as a band, is one that just stayed with us forever, and it earnt its place on the CD.

We put a lot of trust and faith in our producer [Matt Wallace], because he’s obviously had a lot of success in the past [Maroon 5, Faith No More], and we came up with an album which we thought best represented us.

How long was the whole recording process?
We spent six weeks in the USA recording, and then it took another two weeks for the album to get mixed. It was a really awesome experience to have six weeks purely dedicated to the creative experience of recording an album. It’s pretty incredible recording in a studio in The States, particularly in the studio that we used, where there were plaques for The Vines and Evermore. It certainly helps to bring out the best of you.

Why did you decide to record in the USA?
Mainly because we were really keen on working with Matt Wallace. It worked out to be the most productive way of doing it.

I don’t know what we expected [working with Matt], we’d all heard a number of horror stories about working with US or international producers, so we were a little anxious when we went over, but he turned out to be such a humble and lovely person to work with. He was so encouraging and he really had a way about him that brought out the best in our songs and our performances. It was one of the best experiences of our career, and our life as musicians.

What inspires your song writing?
It could be anything, a particular emotion I am feeling at a certain time or a certain point of view I want to get across. I think inspiration comes from anywhere and as songwriters we try to recognise that migrant and use it to our best ability. A lot of times myself and Danny, the guitarist, collaborate. We come to each other with an idea, whether it’s a melody or a lyric, and we sort of nut it out between us, then take it to the rest of the band. Other times, the song happens in the jam room itself when we are mucking around, making noise, and we develop it from there.

Do you and the band ever clash while working?
I think with any band there is going to be conflict, but it’s in the same way you have conflict with your family. Sometimes we get on each others nerves, especially if you are on a tour bus or closed environment, and I think we actually know each other so well that we know how to get on each others nerves, but ultimately we’ve been together for a long time, and were friends before starting the band. That’s what created such a solid foundation. We build on that, and get over any problems.

What do you think you would be doing if not singing or song writing?
During the whole time we have been playing we have all been studying or had other jobs. It’s only in the last 18 months that we haven’t had to rely on that as much. I have a degree in education so I was doing a lot of teaching prior to the whole band thing. Danny has a law degree [laughs], Jeff, our bass player, was an electrician and our drummer, Marty, is a bit of an IT guru. We’ve pretty much got all the other occupations covered! We’ve certainly done a bit of work prior to this in other fields.

Small Mercies Beautiful Hum is in stores on May 24, 2008.
To hear their music, or view tour dates, go to http://www.myspace.com/smallmercies