The Goon Sax en route to By The Meadow

By The Meadow, the much loved boutique music festival, is back for its sixth year in 2019 taking place on March 29-31 at the lush farmland hamlet of Bambra (Victoria’s enchanting Otway Surf Coast region). Leading the local menagerie is Brisbane three-piece The Goon Sax, still hot from dropping their September album, We’re Not Talking. The trio just wrapped up an east coast tour to celebrate the launch of their sophomore record, and are set to support Parquet Courts early next year. We chat to drummer Riley Jones.
Hey thanks for chatting to Forte Magazine. Congratulations on being added to the By The Meadow lineup for its sixth edition. Have you ever been to that one before?
No we haven’t ever been to that one. We’ve played a few festivals, we’ve done Meredith and some overseas as well but it will be good to get to this one.
What are you looking forward to about heading to the Meadow?
Well if it’s really in a meadow then that will be pretty cool! I’m looking forward to playing, I haven’t seen the full lineup yet but it seems this festival has a really good rep. People seemed really excited when we’ve told them about us playing it so there seems like there’s a lot of hype for it.
For you guys as a band, do you prefer performing on a festival stage or are you more fans of an intimate gig?
I really like festivals because it’s usually really well set up. The sound, the atmosphere and normally there’s already drums there so I don’t have to bring my own. You just need to get up and it sounds great; there’s nothing to worry about – I love that. Then once you’re done, you can just enjoy the rest of the festival.
You guys dropped your second album We’re Not Talking back in September! How’s all that been?
It’s been good! The response seems to be pretty good. We did a tour overseas for two months and people seem to like it, both the record and the shows. We went to Europe and America, which we did for our debut as well. This is the fourth tour we’ve done – we’ve been pretty busy!
For this album coming two years after your debut in 2016, do you feel there’s many differences between the albums, in terms of both process and content?
It’s pretty different. We’ve worked really hard on this one, not that we didn’t work hard on the first one but we were just able to play our instruments better now and think more about the production – this producer made it sound really polished. The first album, I was only 17 at the time but they’re just about our feelings at the time in our lives.
What’s the writing process like, is it a collaborative effort?
We are now. It used to be the process of they would write songs and bring them to practice and then we’d work out our parts, but now we’re writing songs together and sharing parts; it’s a bit more fun and more collaborative now. It’s just something that’s happened over time for us, we have a better idea of how to get the sounds we want and how to go for an aesthetic. It can be hard to communicate what you want to your friends, but I think if we keep going, we can definitely get to a strong shared vision and I’m really excited about that.
What’s next for The Goon Sax heading into 2019?
We’re just going to work on our next album so stay tuned! Oh and we need to get a practice room…
Catch The Goon Sax at By The Meadow 2019. Tickets via www.bythemeadow.com