Winterbourne is the collaboration between two lifelong friends from Sydney, James Draper and Jordan Brady. We spoke to James’ about the bands’ debut album and songwriting process.
You grew up coastal and a lot of this album as put together in Byron. When I listen to the album I feel as if it’s coated in a summer haze. Do you think your surroundings have affected your songwriting?
We always wonder about this because we definitely have a tendency to gravitate to somewhere where there’s there’s trees. We’ve never lived in the city and we’ve never been tempted to. We’ve never written surfy music or anything sounds like it’s come out of Byron really so we were kind of hesitant when we decided to go up there and make the record. It turned out we were totally wrong about that and Byron is just a lovely place with cool people and a lot of cool music comes out of it.
You grew up in the UK. When did you move to Australia and meet Jordan?
Me and my family moved in 2003 so I was 9. I met Jordan in High School so that was another three years later. We met in year 8. I had a friend who had started a band and he wouldn’t let me in the band because he already had a guitarist. That guitarist was Jordan. So I didn’t like him at the start. We became friends somehow
A lot of this album warns us of the perils and sometimes damage of social media. Was this an intentional theme or was it something that crept into a few of the songs?
We never sit down and try to direct anything lyrically. I guess when you put together a bunch of songs, that are basically rambling from inside your head, it’s likely that quite a few are going to line up with each other. There’s even a couple of lines that are basically the same that we didn’t realise until we listened back.
Finally, there’s a lot of instrumentals layers and details. There’s even choruses singing. How will this translate to the stage for your tour later in the year? Will it just be the two of you performing?
We’re still trying to figure that out. Sonically, it’s a dream for us and taking it on the road and not being able to play all the parts is really sad for us. It’ll be a band, we’re not sure how many yet.
Winterbourne’s debut album ‘Echo of Youth’ is out now. You can listen to it below. You can catch them at their album launch on November 9 at Howler Melbourne. You can get tickets here.
Written by Chelsea King