The Church
Subscribe
X

Subscribe to Forte Magazine

The Church

“We’re looking forward to playing Queenscliff Music Festival next weekend because we played it once before and we felt we were pretty bloody dreadful! So it’ll be nice to come back and make amends.” A promise made is a promise kept by Tim Powles, drummer of the legendary alt-rock outfit The Church.
Almost five years on from their 30th Anniversary and the ARIA Hall of Famers are busier than ever. “I’m outside in the bushes of Ian’s [Haug – new guitarist, ex Powderfinger] studio in rural Brisbane. I’ve got a G ‘n’ T in my hand and it’s raining lightly – it’s very beautiful. I’ve been cooped up inside all day long and I’ve had very little sleep. We have so much happening at the moment,” Tim says.
“We recently played the East Coast capital cities for the release of Further/Deeper [The Church’s 25th album, out now through their own label Unorthodox Records] and stupidly or bravely we simply played the entire album – no old songs. It was something we needed to do, we blooded in,” he paused smiling, “We got our hard-core fans totally involved in it, but now we’re ready to mix up some of our old favourites and a few fan favourites and put the whole festival set together for Queenscliff.
“Well, we’ll see how people’s memories are when we get there but I assure you that we’ve got a lot better in the last few years. We did a ‘Psychedelic Symphony’ show at the Opera House with a huge orchestra, played with The Pretenders and then we did the wineries with Simple Minds and Devo. We learnt a lot as musicians – we all suddenly got a lot better! Which is an odd thing for a band that’s been going for as long as we have,” he laughed.
In 2010 The Church returned home after a lengthy tour of North America to commemorate a milestone. “We’ve got a lot of fans in America and, in fact, we think America kind of kept us going through late ’90s and early 2000s. It was the American fans that were really solid then. That’s how we survived – by going there regularly all the way through the 2000s.
“Then when we realised we could celebrate our 30th Anniversary, we became more home focused. It’s like we suddenly turned a corner and we realised that we’d (maybe) stubbornly, but miraculously, somehow stayed together.
“We’ve all been through a lot though, then we had a bit of a bump and one of our long time members [guitarist Marty Willson-Piper] decided that he didn’t like the way things were going and didn’t want to be involved anymore. It’s now a year since Ian came along and there’ve been a lot of changes. But we survived, and this album [Further/Deeper] has been a massive reward.
“The reception for Further/Deeper has been awesome! It tips its hat back to fan favourites like ‘Priest = Aura’ [1992] and ‘Forget Yourself’ [2003]. Particularly with Steve Kilbey’s lyrics, there’s a sense of timelessness. Personally I think that’s kind of a boring thing to say about The Church, but it’s true,” Tim grinned. “At the moment the main stress that we’re all suffering is, ‘Oh, so what’s going to go wrong now?’ Because things are actually going right!”
When&Where: Queenscliff Music Festival – November 28, 29 & 30
By Natalie Rogers