Fresh country air inspires Audreys
Adelaide-born folk-blues band the Audreys have scored a hat-trick of blues and roots ARIA Awards with their three albums to date, and have number four ready to roll.
However, while singer Taasha Coates says a few new songs will be aired at their WA shows this weekend, fans will have to wait until March 14 to add Till My Tears Roll Away to their collection.
"It was finished a few months ago but you can't put a record out (before Christmas) unless you're Andre Rieu or someone like that," she says from her new home in Mt Barker, South Australia.
Till My Tears Roll Away comes more than three years after the release of previous album, 2010's Sometimes the Stars.
The break was partly due to Coates giving birth to her first son, Finley, who is now 2 1/2 years old, and returning to South Australia to be close to her family after several years in Melbourne.
The new album was recorded in Adelaide and Melbourne, where her songwriting foil Tristan Goodall resides, with regular producer Shane O'Mara, who played guitar on the album alongside the Audreys rhythm section of drummer Ben Wiesner and bassist Brett Canning.
"It was a very positive process, which not all our records have been," Coates says. "You know, sometimes it's really hard work. I think the few years off were nice . . . you come back fresh.
"We didn't break the mould or anything, except that we tracked it really differently.
"We got the band in and we didn't play them anything until they got to the studio so that they wouldn't know the songs, which was really mean of us but really worked.
"We had this idea it would have this immediacy in the sound if the guys were like, 'What comes next' rather than it being too comfortable." Thus the five-piece studio band played with "a sense of freedom and chaos", according to Coates.
"We seriously had them in the studio for three days and played them the songs on the first morning.
"They're great guys so they were really into it and they just pulled it out."
The writing of Till My Tears Roll Away was also different to previous releases. While Coates and Goodall went overseas to find inspiration for second album, 2008's When the Flood Comes, this time Coates had to stay close to home and young Finley.
"We've written records in the Chelsea Hotel in New York and, you know, those real hipster scenes," she laughs. "When the kid was napping, we were writing on the couch going, 'This is seriously daggy'.
"Sometimes my mum would take (Finley) and we'd shoot down the pub. Sometimes we'd get down there at 11am and have four shots of tequila - between the two of us. They'd see us walking in and be like 'Right, better get the tequila out'.
"It was one of those great country pubs where it's $2.80 for a glass of wine. We'd set up a little bar table and write all our lyrics after a few tequilas."
The Audreys feel no pressure to make it four out of four ARIA wins with Till My Tears Roll Away. However, Coates admits that first ARIA win for 2006 debut Between Last Night and Us did put unexpected stress on the band.
"We totally had second-record blues. We fulfilled every cliche and hated ourselves for that," she says.
"When we made our first record we were just a little local band from Adelaide. We were going to press 1000 copies and thought we might have half of them stuck under our bed a year later."
The debut went on to sell more than 35,000 copies and earn the first of those three ARIA gongs - a blessing and, temporarily, a curse.
"All that sort of stuff put a lot of pressure on us for our second record," Coates says.
"But you have to let that stuff go. Part of the skill in being a creative person is being able to block out that kind of noise so that you can do your art."
