Now the duo, made up of Taasha Coates and Tristan Goodall, are hitting the road for the second time this year, following their sell-out national tour last year performing their award winning 2006 debut album ‘Between Last Night And Us’ and their special Spiegeltent tour earlier this year.
Pawning their very hearts for rock and roll, Coates says this second tour for 2018 was a no-brainer for the long-time musos, allowing them to add the rest of their illustrious repertoire to the show to keep warm the hearts of fans.
“We’ve been touring every year since we started; we’ve never stopped touring,” she smiles. “We’ve got four Audrey’s albums of songs to choose from so we could do this tour and hardly play anything that we did on our last tour.
“We’ve actually got ‘The Audreys Song Book’ which has all our songs it in with charts and lyrics so we can pull repertoire from anywhere,” she explains.
“A few months ago, because we had just toured the first record prior, we went back and did a lot of songs from the newer records which was fun. Sometimes Trist will say the title of a song and I won’t know what he’s talking about; there’s like 60 songs and it might be something we recorded 10 years ago and, while you just cannot sing it that high or low any more or how you used to, it’s so much fun.”
While the duo haven’t recorded an album since 2014, Coates embarked on her own solo record, Taasha Coates and her Melancholy Sweethearts, during her temporary hiatus from The Audreys which they also occasionally pull material from for their shows. “Sometimes I’ll kick Tristan off the stage, and sometimes he stays on stage and just makes jokes at my expense, it’s wicked,” she laughs.
Referring to Goodall as her “best friend”, The Audreys journey so far has been nothing short of phenomenal over the past 12 years, having graced almost every major festival in Australia and played more gigs than they can count. They’ve rocked festivals and clubs in Europe and North America, sold songs to films and TV shows far and wide, written music for theatre, won awards, hit the charts and, of course, gone gold.
Despite having lived in separate cities for years while achieving all they’ve done, with Coates in Adelaide and Goodall in Melbourne, Coates reflects on their positive evolution as both a band and individuals.
“We’ve not lived in the same city for years so it wouldn’t be any harder than normal [to make another album],” she says. “I think me having kids has been the toughest thing. We used to go away for a week or two, get a beach house or borrow someone’s shack but we just can’t do that now.
“We wrote our fourth record when I had just one baby, but we definitely will work on some new music,” she continues.
“It’s definitely on the agenda. When we’re together on this tour maybe we can do some writing, but it is hard. I think there’s this fantasy idea about touring where you have all this hotel room or pub time, but you just don’t. You packing, unpacking, talking to fans, playing, driving and you don’t get a lot of downtime while touring, unless you really make an effort to schedule it in. But you never know what might happen.”
With 12 years of experience behind them, the decorated blues-and-roots duo The Audreys promise a live show that is not to be missed. Prepare to be blissfully immersed into their world of fuzzy guitars, plucky banjos, sweet ukuleles and quirky melodies.
When & Where: The Bridge Hotel, Castlemaine – August 25. Tickets via Oztix.
