A conversation with: Vacations
March 22nd, Thunderbird Music Hall
Hailing from Newcastle Australia, Vacations, the four-piece indie rock band, took the stage at Thunderbird Music Hall in Pittsburgh. After the band’s soundcheck, I sat down in the cafe with frontman Campbell Burns to discuss their newest album, life away from touring, and the future plans for Vacations.
What is life like back home in Newcastle when you and the band aren't touring and playing shows?
Life is very relaxed and cruisy, it's a beachside city. I say it's a city but it feels like a town because everyone knows each other; there's a very wholesome sense of community. If you go out on a Friday or Saturday night, you’re bound to run into someone you know and it's always pleasant. I have a studio, “Sawtooth” where I work doing music full time, so I’m always making music with my friends, or friends of friends, or whoever: writing songs and productions, engineering for recordings, and throughout the week everyone else in the band is working their side jobs. Joey is a reserve firefighter and a bus driver, Jake works in an electronics store, and Nate, due to the pandemic, doesn't currently have a job, but he’s doing music and getting into production himself. It’s a pretty serene peaceful existence in Newcastle, laid back.
What’s the music scene in Newcastle?
Because the pandemic has taken a hit on everything, I don't really know what's going to be happening next. There are so many people who haven't gone to gigs, and a lot of the fans who have come out for our tour. It’s their first-ever show and they’re like 21 or 22, which boggles my mind because I was out seeing shows when I was around 16 or 17, but concerts haven't been a thing for the past couple of years. The music scene is strong, there is always something happening. I’d be biased to say the acts I work with I think are fantastic, acts like Teddie, Underlay, Antille landmarks. There are a lot of good little bands on the up in Newcastle. The music scene isn’t as strong as it used to be though, we had a lot more venues, there were more bands on the up and everybody was sort of on the same page. But it fizzled down a little bit but it's going to come back up, it's like a wave. There will be another wave of musicians and I think that will come through as the pandemic eases in Australia, and more people start going out again; people see bands playing and say “Fuck! I need to start a band”. That's why I started a band in the first place because I was like, “I want to do that.”
Has there been any influence on you by local artists and musicians?
Absolutely, I think I’m influenced more by what my friends are doing than what a major artist could be doing. It almost becomes a friendly competition. I remember when we were starting out, someone might have put out their first film clip and we would think, how do we do that? I spent the last year building that studio with my friends and it's been nice having people come through asking, “What are you working on? Where are you at with your life at the moment?”. It's sort of like a therapy session. We share ideas and talk about music. I'll play a song and they’ll play a song. It's fun to see what your friends are doing, how they’re working, and what techniques they’re using.
Your newest album Forever in Bloom, tell me about it.
It’s funny because it's like, two years old. It's crazy to think about because we haven’t played a lot of these songs live before, but the record will be two years old this year. I feel like records for me, and maybe a lot of musicians and artists, feel this way about their own projects, but they feel like time capsules for me. That record really does reflect who I was when I was 23, 24, but now I’m 26. I still feel connected to it in some way, but I look at it very differently now. In the same way that I look at “Changes”, “Vibes”, “Days”(Previous Albums and EPs), like anything I’ve done differently.
What does the record mean to you?
I think that record is a lesson, Because “Changes” was done when I was very young, in my bedroom with no management, without any budget, or promotion. Contrasting that to a record like “Forever in Bloom”, which did have the management, it did have the big record budget, a fancy studio, and a very experienced producer (Oscar Dawson) behind it. It's a very different experience. We’ve worked through two different extremes, and now we know what works and what doesn’t work as a band, which is something we’ve thought of going into future projects. I have a love-hate relationship with the record. There are some tracks that I think turned out fantastic, other tracks I’m a bit disappointed with.
Do you have a favorite track on the record or one that was the most enjoyable to create?
The whole recording process was a blur. We did it all in 2 weeks. 13 tracks in 2 weeks, we just crunched the whole thing. The whole experience was really fun, I loved doing “Panache”, I loved doing “Actors”. “Glow” was fun, they’re all my personal favorites anyway, it was a different approach to everything. I think probably “Panache” is the most stand out, it's the most black shape and divisive song that I’ve written particularly. It's so funny to me, but hardcore fans of “Vibes” listen to a track like “Panache” and they’re like, “Aw what is this? Go back to your old sound”, and I’m like, this is fun for me!
On “Panache” particularly, you used the Juno synth, correct?
Ok so, I did but I used a soft synth, the TAL-U-No-LX. It's a software synth, so not the actual Juno 106. But I actually now have the Juno 106, which I wanna use in future music because the actual hardware is so fun. I was pretty inspired by Porches and Blood Orange at the time, so I used a Juno. I also used a DX7, just you know, very basic patches. It’s so cute listening back to the sounds as well because some of those sounds are so simple they work. But, I think future releases will be interesting as I explore synths a bit more. For me, it's like asking yourself questions, like what would “Vacations” sound like if it just had synths? Or if there was no guitar or bass? I like to approach songwriting like that. It makes it more fun and engaging. Otherwise, if I just repeated myself constantly by writing “Young” over, over and over again, everyone would get bored. I would get bored and there would be no point in doing it.
You guys released an album at a time when the world was on total lockdown due to covid. You couldn't take the approach where you release a record, and then start promoting it by touring, so what does it mean for you to finally get back on stage and play these new songs for everyone?
It's wonderful and it's very exhausting! But I do love it, you can’t beat the experience. As you said, the world was shut down for so long, we haven't played shows in like two years, especially a headlining tour. And to do that on the other side of the world in a country like the U.S., and finally see these fans who have been wanting to see us for five or six years, and engaging with them, bantering with them throughout the set, and then meeting them afterward. Talking to them, and just signing whatever they might have is just a really rewarding and refreshing experience, it's wonderful. Even though we’re only halfway through the tour, we’ve made so many amazing memories that we’re not going to forget. We’ve been documenting everything while working with “Pure Nowhere”, which is an artist collective working on a tour diary online. That will hopefully lead to like, a book that we can give back to the fans. I will say I do desperately want to get back to the studio, which is the fun part about touring live, because now I have all these things I want to write about.
Once the tour is over and is all is said and done, What’s next for “Vacations”?
I have a few projects to produce I’m working with a couple of artists back home, some singles and EP’s there, because I’m definitely diving more into that side of the career of being a producer, being an engineer, and a songwriter for others, I just find it so satisfying. However, I know people want to know what “Vacations” are doing. I've been playing around with sounds. At the moment I don't know if I want to commit to this but I will, I’ve been writing for two separate projects, because of the idea of trying to tackle another album again, it's honestly exhausting. Albums are really taxing on everybody, mentally and physically. The amount of work that goes into an album, I don't think a lot of people truly understand that process, it takes forever. So I’d love to do something small like a five or 6 track EP, something simple. Some synths, some drum machines, something fun. Potentially leading into another album where it's more trumpets, pianos, and bicycle bells, real like “Beach Boys” sort of vibe. I don’t want to repeat myself writing music. There might be things that are like a throwback, for instance, if you enjoyed “Vibes” you would probably enjoy “Glow” on “Forever in Bloom”. That's a very simple sweet guitar track. I always like doing little callbacks like that but always changing the sound of it, otherwise as I said, it just gets boring. As long as I’m having fun, I think that’s what it's all about.
Listen to “Forever in Bloom” here