Fifteen minutes with: Peter Fenton

Crow were another of the critically appreciated but never commercially recognised Australian bands of the nineties, disbanding after their 1998 album Play with Love. The band reformed in 2007 after early a decade apart and now has released a new studio album Arcane. We speak to Peter Fenton ahead of their Cad Factory show.

yourGigs (yG): What were the first things that initially got Crow back together?

PF: We got offered to do some shows, it was as simple as that, it always buzzed about in the background and I just casually mentioned it to my brother and he was open do doing something and it was all pretty straightforward in an awkward do you still like me do I still like you sort of thing, nobody just wanted to just play shows, trotted out some sonic jaded glory, we felt stronger that if we either did it or didn’t do it and not going out to make some half-baked countdown type show that not only would we play songs from past records but we would also write and play new ones.

yG: What did it feel like when you first got back to rehearsing again?

PF: A bit strange, sort of like dancing with an old auntie. Initially it was awkward but then you realise you have a long history with people, not just talking my brother, but you can feel the musical depth from playing music together and you draw from that, it bears fruit. Everyone to a degree knows each other very well, it hurts when you play these songs and haven’t paled them for awhile. Some parts of songs you can’t remember, but your body can, your hands just go to where they are meant to – I think its cell memory or something.

yG: Did you notice what the things members have been up to since have changed since they’ve come back to the band?

 PF: Everyone was still playing strongly, and there’s that initial very physical, its more you remember how good people were. They illustrate their growth in their playing. I’m not saying we all stand around doing lead solos or anything lie that but you can hear it in the musical exploration of the songs and the execution had confidence about it that shows people are still playing, it kind of just makes me think there is an almost alarm about people playing music on and on and on when there’s this thought that people should stop playing music at 24. Otherwise you won’t get played on the radio, triple j have a thing where they only play music made by people ages 15 to 24 if you are outside that you can get f—-ed. Nowhere else in the world does that happen, in literature, jazz or blues, or acting, people are encouraged to go on. People grow and its one of the great reassures is to be asked to make great music with people that have not only grown as musicians but you also have that shared history with.

yG: Was part of that why you didn’t just want to play the old songs as it didn’t reflect where are you at, at the moment?

PF: Yeah it would just seem to be a bit shallow to just come back and play songs. As a band I always want to be relevant there’s a power in that, always the modus operand was to play original music that had an energy that resonated and had a time and a place to it, that is what I find personally interesting in music to engage in that and the idea of just coming back to just play songs we just did ten or 15 years ago had me reaching for the anit-histimenes.

yG: Were there any concerns about holding up the legacy of ‘Crow’?

PF: Yes, the last thing we wanted to do was did something that embarrassed ourselves or what we’ve done before, there’s not too much you can do about that, you can’t be self conscious and do a contemporary record and go oh my god some radio head or let’s just get some hip hop loops behind us and sound really cool. You are aware of that, together we are heavy, you fall together and you play and write and you trust one another enough that you bring along a song and you play it and it is not up to scratch that they will probably take great delight in telling you so. My brother is in the group and the other tow I consider them brothers as well just for the sheer history we’ve enjoyed together, I think there’s a lot for plain speaking, that’s shorthand, you don’t have to wonder about what the other guys thinking because they’ll tell you. The thing that we want to do is to hand it over publically from our own hand. It is a record we spent a lot of time making, on the recording on the disc it says we worked in three studios, we did 2 days at the cad factory and 2 days at moonlight and we got versions of songs  and what we used mostly was drums, and the rest we laid on top. I’ve got a reasonable studio out here and I can travel in it, so we spent time in spare bedrooms making the record. We didn’t feel embarrassed in releasing something that was a little raw, we thought it was acceptable to throw something out that was tender and a little roughly hewn, instead of saying ‘hi how are you, we’re a little puff of smoke over the mountain range saying we are back in action’.

yG: The last time this line up of the band recorded was your debut with Steve Albini – how did recording this album compare to that?

PF: Albini had us recording in his basement and he recorded with his studio stuff upstairs so it was a little fragmented. He was an interesting person, he was very dry and people gravitated to him, other people found him a little aloof, it was difficult, when we first arrived in Chicago he put us up in this strange hotel, I’m still yet to write some of the stories that came out of that –it was one week all that time ago, so we just had to plough on and just make the record. I think he stalled us for one or two days, something in his basement flooded and we had very little time to record, we spent time mixing it when we shouldn’t have, as we ended up mixing it back here.

I think people had things going on in their lives which were unrecognised which lead to things becoming very strained, and obviously my brother left the group soon after we came back, I remember him saying, I wish we’d never come here. But now we recognised there were thing at play there that people had to work their way through. I can understand I’m not talking about something personal in someone else’s lives,  and am trying g to be respectful to them, but things happen at the time and you don’t understand why, but looking back you can, as time gives clarity and time gives people the change and opportunity to drive through those things. It brings with it a certain power to it that people drive through these things, and on this record it sounds like the same people that made that record, but I hope that it sounds a bit wiser and stronger and that the years have not wearied us and we have remained strong and active in our own lives and remained active in other things and hopefully that has given us character.

yG: Has the fact that both you and Peter Archer now live out in the country affected your outlook and music at all?

PF: I can really hear it in his songs, he lives 8 hours out of Sydney, that’s real country, I live on the rural fringes of Sydney, it takes me an hour to get in but I can still get in there and drink at the town hall hotel or something and still remain culturally active. But I like that sense of space and grandness of land. I feel better in those kinds of environments, so that is the choice I’ve made.

I still love the vibe of a Tom Waits record, that stubborn-ness, I’m very drawn to a ragged power in songs, I kind of go searching for that, so when we had all the songs together, we realised that there was some space and distance in between what I was doing and what Peter Archer was doing, and I just thought was to get someone like Jason Walker in – who is a pedal steel player and a wonderfully strong bloke - and to use that instrument to fuse through the differences and bind it together. And most of those songs were one take just hear the songs then record it, it was a really enjoyable afternoon.

yG: with that recording did you get the impression that this would be the first of more Crow recording to come?

PF: I’d like to think so, and I had my first discussion what Peter archer about it, maybe the next record has no guitars on it, asides like hat, it will take a little while over getting over the fact I haven’t done any recording, and I know it’s only just come out, though, I just can’t bear the thought of going to go and switch on stuff in my studio, I can’t stand it. I’m writing and I’m writing as I always did on scraps of paper and with funny symbols, and I’m always writing and that’s going quite well and am very personally open to continuing and the others think that as well, there’s no clauses or conditions – everything just points the one way.

yG: How did you approach the whole being back in a band and touring recording all over again – did it feel like it was a second chance you were given?

PF: There were a couple of moments back in the day I thought we were really going to cross over, but that didn’t happen and I don’t know if I really want it now. I kind of had a good look at the effect it had on people and I’m quite satisfied with call it a legacy, or the history that you leave behind, I’ve got no regrets about any of that, it is always the same roundabout really, write songs, record songs, put songs, out, have lovely and evocative conversations with people like you and the whole cycle starts again.

I enjoy all the aspects I enjoy writing and I enjoy recording and I enjoy the creating the hallucinations of it, I love being engaged in it, I love mixing, we did it in four days we did it with Jim Moginie in his home studio, its good solid stuff, it’s not fun in the Luna Park roller coaster kind of way, it’s a slower, more jaunty trip but it’s something that I enjoy a lot. I don’t really know if it’s a second chance, the modus operandi was always to produce strong original music that had a sense of time and place and that resonates us to play and I think you have to put a fence around it there. When you start to think of trying to put your kids through private school or having a nice shiny car it pollutes it a bit.  I don’t think we like to think things like that and it certainly hasn’t been our experience, we’re just keeping it simple and keeping it real.

 yG: We are a gig guide, so like to ask people some gig related questions- do you remember the first time you played?

 PF: the very first time we played was a garage at a house party and yeah, we just bought booze and feed and just played in someone garage and I don’t think we’ve done a house party since.

yG: Best gig you’ve played?

PF: hmm, why do you always remember the worst one, hmm, which ones the best one? I can’t remember the best one!

yG: Worst onstage moment?

PF: A cross between Summersault – which had this incredible line up – Foo Fighters, Beck, Sonic Youth, we played about two or three o’clock in the afternoon it was the hottest god dam day, and it was so hot on stage, they even turned on lights on there too, and I could barely stand up on stage because it was just torturous bright glary light and it was really hot, probably because I insisted on wearing a suit too, that really bad. There is another one that really makes me shudder, Annandale, mid nineties, for some reason I thought I could jump off the stage backwards and land on my feet on the floor, I was half way through this reckless action, I could actually hear someone near me in amidst this rock band playing and this relentless action you could actually hear people gasp, and I landed on my shoulder, and I just think back oh that was stupid, I was just too caught up in the rock moment in a spinal tap kind of way.

 yG: Is that your worst rock injury as well?

PF: Yeah I’ve been given a few fat lips as I’ve been moving around and suddenly I’d have to sing so you end up standing on the mic stand and it comes and whacks you into the face, it’s kind of a wakeup call from the universe to punish you.

yG: One gig in history you wish you were at?

PF: I thought Altamont? But then oh no, I saw this movie, that has Janis Joplin and The Band and they are on a train, but something about a train, but there is this great scene where its just this one big long party and there’s this great footage of Janis Joplin late into the night/early morning but she still sings so beautifully but she’s so off her head.

Crow play the CAD Factory 6 August, Arcane is out not on Non Zero.