www.musik.australische-kultur.de

Magdeburg, September 16th, 2009

Michael Brown is Tracer’s singer, guitar player, manager and man with thousand different hair styles. We met on his 24th birthday on September 16 in Magdeburg and got to know why Tracer is in Europe instead of Los Angeles, why sleeping in the back of a van is not a bad thing and why they might even get a new permanent address in Berlin.

Michael, we’re talking on the second day of the Great Australian Wave-tour. How was the start?

The first day was pretty good. The crowd was a bit down, but all the bands were really cool and we got the chance to meet everybody and say G’day. So that was good. But we’ve been here for about a month anyway, touring around.

It’s your 24th birthday today. Happy birthday and all the best for you…

Thank you – Danke!

…and the obvious question: How is like to celebrate your birthday so far away from your loved ones and from most of your family – with the exception of your brother?

It’s OK. I mean – it’d be nice to spend it with my family, but being in the middle of Germany is bloody fantastic. Not everybody has the chance to celebrate his 24th birthday playing in a rock band touring around Germany. So it’s very exciting for me.

Many people have a bit of a problem to describe your style of rock music precisely. There are comparisons even with Silverchair, maybe because you are three young guys as well…

Yeah, Silverchair. They are a cool Australian band, we love them. But we’re more into I guess what you call the “stoner rock”-bands. We’re not into that whole scene really, but we like Soundgarten and the 90s bands, Nirvana, Queens Of The Stone Age – these are the bands we are fans of.

But there’s also a bit of 70s in the music.

Very much – I mean we’re big fans of Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath or Deep Purple.

Was it by purpose that you – let’s say – “mixed” those decades musically or was it something you found out while you were playing?

My brother and I were part of band in Australia since we were 13 and 10. We were a blues band and we got really into the blues and found out all about the old blues guys. I guess the 70s opened up a new door to the blues with Jimmy Hendrix and all those sorts of people. I guess we just progressed from that and ended up with everybody that was into that in the 90s and hence Tracer came to be.

Is this the first time you are touring around Europe for a longer time?

Yeah, the first time! We’ve been here for a month and we’ll be here until January. So all up it’s a five months tour and we’re taking in Switzerland, Germany, Czech Republic, Denmark, The Netherlands, Belgium and the UK.

Do you have a bit of a “homebase” in Europe?

Yeah, our drummers auntie lives in Switzerland and she’s given us a place to stay there, which is very good. She feeds us as well, which is good because we’ve got no money. But my brother and I have some family in the UK, so hopefully we’ll be out there have some dinner with them sometimes.

Some of the other nights you sleep in your van?

Yeah, we’ve got a Renault van we called Nessie, we built a bed in the back. So all three of us get cozy in there and sleep next to each other in the back of the van, which is very comfortable. But that’s only when we can’t find any other place to stay. You know, we do what we have to do. We just want to play music in front of new people. If that means sleeping in the back of a van for five months, so it’ll be it.

But that doesn’t necessarily mean that there are no “new people” in Australia that don’t know Tracer yet?

True. But the reason why we came to Europe is that you can travel short distances and be in a town that is bigger than any town in Australia. It is very expensive to tour in Australia – and the music that we play is more well received over here in Germany and other parts of Europe. So we decided to save our money and come up over here and see what we can do. In Australia we have a good following in our hometown and a little following in the next big town. But the next big town from us is eight hours away – if you drive eight hours here you’ve been through two countries and twenty big cities…

You live in Adelaide, so the next big town should be Melbourne. Wouldn’t it have been better to settle over to Melbourne or maybe Sydney – to a place where there is a more lively music scene than it is in Adelaide?

We were going to that actually. Last year we decided we were going to Melbourne. Then we thought again and said ‘Well, if we are going to Melbourne and spent a lot of money living over there – we might as well spend a little more money and come over to Europe and see what we can do here’. I know a lot of American bands do the same. They say, Europeans like live music and back at home we tend to do what the Americans do, which is go out clubbing, and that doesn’t mix very well with our style of music. So we came over here and see how things are working. If we like it we might even stay here.

In Germany we think about Australia as a “rock nation”. Everybody has a guitar and just “rocks”. You said that your music isn’t received as well in Australia as it is in Europe. Why do think it is like that?

I assume it is because Australians follow popular music from wherever it comes from, we follow trends rather than listen for ourselves. And I think people in Europe know what they like rather than being forced to listen to something. Maybe that’s the case, maybe we tried the wrong places – but I don’t think so. We’ve played in Berlin twice and both times everybody really loved the music. So maybe we found a place that we’re happy with.

Your album is called “L.A.”, with question mark behind. Why?

That’s another reason. We were either going to move to Melbourne, come to Europe or move to LA. We decided against LA, beause a lot of people who have been there that we have known tell us that is more a town for “wanna-be-rock-stars” and “wanna-be-movie-stars”. We thought if that’s the culture there we don’t want to be part of it. And “LA” with the question mark to us means: Is LA really the place people need to go to make a name for themselves.

So you don’t want to part of LA-Scene. What about the Australian scene?

Oh, we’re into it – but it is very difficult to get into it. There is a nice stoner-rock scene in Melbourne, but is very small compared to here. What we’re looking for is a label or manager or booker or something like that, because I think there is place for the music that Tracer plays. It’s just trying to find that place. And in Australia it is very difficult to tour around because the distances are so vast and it costs a lot of money and we don’t have a lot of cash because we don’t have label backing or anything like that.

Which means that the plans for the future should be to find a label and a booking agent…

…and a manager, so that I don’t have to do all the work. This is difficult, but at least brings us to nice places. I mean: The culture here is fantastic, and we never felt more at home playing music than we have over here in Europe.

You do a lot work over social communities like Facebook or Myspace. How important is that part of let’s call it Web-Marketing to you?

A lot! It’s the key. It’s the absolute key. Whenever we have day off all three of us spent ten hours on our laptops trying to find new fans and get them to our shows, trying to find new gigs, trying to find labels. Without the internet this tour wouldn’t have happened. I never called anybody. It was all done by e-mail, Facebook and Myspace. So without the internet we’d be stuffed.