Frenzal Rhomb have just released their 9th studio album titled Hi-Vis High Tea and will be hitting the road starting in June for an Australian tour. We caught up with the bands vocalist Jason Whalley to learn more about the album and upcoming tour.
SCENEzine
Firstly congrats on your new album Hi-Vis High Tea. You must be stoked to be putting new music out?
Jason Whalley
Yes it’s been a while. It’s been nice to finally finish it. We got to go over to Colorado and do it all with Bill Stevenson and Jason Livermore. It was a relief to do it. We were demoing for a long time and we were all hospitalised in various ways in between the two records over those years. It was good to come out the other side of that and go…hey! New record!
SCENEzine
What’s the current state of the bands injuries will you be good to go for the next tour?
Jason Whalley
No we are all going to come on in various states of disrepair. We are all going to be attached to moving drips with wheelchairs. No, no we are surprisingly fit actually all things considered.
SCENEzine
If you were to go back in time and speak with Jay from when Dick Sandwich EP was released do you think he would believe you that in 2017 Frenzal Rhomb would still be releasing albums?
Jason Whalley
No I would not. I would say you are a futuristic fraud get out of my way. No I didn’t and in fact when we released Dick Sandwich I was at university and my parents are academics. I told my father I was going to be dropping out of university, going on the dole and starting a punk band with our first EP called Dick Sandwich. I showed him the cover of it with the character on the front eating a sandwich full of severed penis’s. You’d never seen a more disappointed human in your life. My comeback was as if I’m going to be doing this when I’m 40 dad. For my 40th birthday Lindsay made me a trophy with that engraved on it. Since then my dad has been very supportive of my alternative lifestyle choices. But at the time I had no concept that it would go for that long.
SCENEzine
In a similar way did it not seem possible when your younger to work with an industry legend like Bill Stevenson?
Jason Whalley
Yeah definitely although he has been doing records for a long time. I remember Bodyjar did some stuff with Bill and I always thought man how did they do that. But it just comes down to organisation and at the start we were really bad at that. All the money that we used to get from shows when we first started we would put down our pants and go to the pub. Not a very sound business decision.
SCENEzine
How did Bill feel about the song “Cunt Act” when Americans seem to find that word more harsh than Australians do?
Jason Whalley
Yeah well we’ve done a record with him before so we’ve met him before. He’s been to Australia quite a bit so he gets the common vernacular of Australian’s. He actually said he wanted to write The Descendents version of that song which would be called “Dick Move”. Which is basically the American equivalent to “Cunt Act”.
SCENEzine
How does your lyric writing process work?
Jason Whalley
Well when I write songs I tend to just come up with one hook line lyrically and then try and write the song around that. Then I get annoyed that there’s more than one verse. We used to write three verses for god’s sake which now just seems ridiculous. Something like “Cunt Act” Lindsay wrote that. He came with it as a almost fully constructed song for me that was my perfect Frenzal Rhomb song. It treads the line between political and ridiculous and it’s rocking and says “Cunt Act” heaps.
SCENEzine
I really dig the track “Shelving Stacks”. Is there much of a story behind that song?
Jason Whalley
That’s a song about a guy that I met that would work overnight at Coles doing the shelf stacking. He’d do the late shift and also put MDMA pills up his bum. The Australian vernacular for that is shelving so the song really wrote itself once I heard that story.
SCENEzine
I’m guessing after hearing the album that you didn’t attend your school reunion?
Jason Whalley
No neither of them. I did have to change names slightly when writing that one to protect the innocent.
SCENEzine
In June you are headed over to Canada to play Montebello Rockfest with the likes of Rammstein, Offspring and Bad Religion. You must be excited to get over there for that?
Jason Whalley
Yes it’s very exciting and strange because our tour goes Perth, Bunbury, Montreal then Gold Coast. It’s lovely that they want us to play at the festival we haven’t been to Canada in a long time so hopefully every one will turn up to the stage we play on at 10am just before doors open or whenever we go on. I have no idea when we are playing but hopefully we won’t travel all that way and play before doors open.
SCENEzine
Frenzal are really an Australian institution so when you play overseas do the audience understand you guys?
Jason Whalley
I feel like we’ve got fan bases in Japan and Belgium and maybe strange towns across the Midwest of America. I feel like if we got all the Frenzal fans in USA together for one show it would be a mad show with 2000 people. But the reality of touring America for us is really playing 100 shows in front of 40 people. Which is cool fun when you’re 25 and out of your mind but at this point it’s a punish. So when this festival was like we will fly you all over for one show we were like shit yeah! I’m going to go camping with my wife and child after the festival.
SCENEzine
We interviewed Lindsay back before Soundwave was cancelled about how stoked he was to play it. Do you think Australia will ever see the return of a Soundwave size festival again?
Jason Whalley
I don’t know all those festivals are such a gamble. You always hear about people losing so much money. Then when they do work the margins are so small. I’m amazed that there are any festivals, that people have the guts to do it. There seems to be lots of festivals still happening but just on a smaller scale.
SCENEzine
Do you have anything special planned for the Australian tour? Maybe a Donald Trump piñata?
Jason Whalley
Probably not, no piñatas at this point. I think in keeping with the record we are making Frenzal Rhomb Hi-Vis vests. So it’s going to be a very safe show. It’s going to be good we are going to actually practice before this tour I’ve been told. Which will be the first time since 2013 so it’s going to be a blast.
SCENEzine
A huge crowd favourite is “Never had so much fun” is that something you look forward to when you know it’s coming up in the set list?
Jason Whalley
Mainly because it’s at the end of the set list so I know the shows nearly over and I’ve lived through it. I love a lot of those old songs and the audience seems to really like them still, it’s always exciting to see people going nuts.
SCENEzine
It seems like the big thing to do these days is anniversary tours. Were you guys thinking about doing a Meet The Family anniversary tour?
Jason Whalley
Well we’ve never really done a record that’s good from start to finish. So to play a record from start to finish there would be a lot of down time where people would be like what the fuck is this, hurry up and play Russell Crowe’s band for gods sake. We did a request only tour last year marking our 25 years as a group. That was great fun we played songs that the audience requested on a facebook pole. We had to re-learn a lot of old songs. The songs went for about an hour and a half which for punk music is probably the worst thing you can do to an audience. But this tour coming up should be fun because it’ll be a mix of brand new stuff and all the hits.
SCENEzine
So is that the downside to having short songs that you need longer set lists?
Jason Whalley
Yeah that’s true because even at the end of a 40 second song it still feels like we’ve just done a whole proper length song for some reason.
SCENEzine
Can you leave us a last message for your Aussie fans excited for the tour?
Jason Whalley
You should come along to a show because it’s going to be the best fun you’ve had that day by far.
(Interview by Christian Ross)