Interview with Josh – Skye Harbour : Music Interviews

This is one of those times when I know I’m right. Sometimes, I am wrong. Sometimes I am so wrong it makes me wince and want to hide. But this time, friend; I’ve picked you a winnah. Meet Skye Harbour.

These likeable Indie pop-rockers have been playing like mad in the past year, flitting between hometown Adelaide and surrogate mama Melbourne, with capital city and regional dates in between, plugging new single Hunch and chipping away at their forthcoming debut album. It’s all a bit exciting.

“We’re developing our identity as we come into the world” says Josh Hardy, vocalist and keys-man. “It’s good that, as we are playing more gigs and getting more ‘out there’, we’re getting reactions from people and that’s shaping how we make songs”

Hardy, a classically-trained pianist, has been knocking the keys since he was but seven. “I was crying every time I went to school” he says. “They didn’t know what was wrong with me. They decided I wasn’t stimulated enough at school, so a psychologist suggested learning an instrument and my folks bought me a piano and said “learn piano!” (laughs). It just became part of me, and I kept learning until I got to high school and discovered rock music and I didn’t wanna play classical. I didn’t wanna do exams, the same piece every time. There was no more pressure; I could do whatever I wanted”

Hardy laughs when I note that he has ditched the songwriting staple of girls, instead focussing on the relationships of and within the band. “I’ve written a lot of music about girls but I’m just kind of over that sort of thing” he offers. “Further Away was about losing Jack (Arentz, now of Deja Entendu) from the band and dealing with that and moving on and Hunch is about losing the guy that replaced him, but in more dramatic circumstances, that I should have realised straight away and acted on. At that point when I wrote those two songs, the band pretty much was my girlfriend…going through serious break-ups and the like. That was why it came out in the songs”

The notion of ‘houses’ makes itself known in the Skye Harbour discography, not least of all in the title of their EP. There is both a sadness and optimism in this allegory, as Hardy explains.

“The EP was written between the ages of eighteen and twenty-one so it was pretty angsty (laughs). The notion of ‘houses’ just kept coming up; I had just moved out, that was probably a lot of it. We moved to Melbourne and that was the first time I lived out of home! I felt like, when I moved to Melbourne, it was kind of like a period of change. ‘Home’ is not just a house; it’s a ‘home base’. It’s the centre of you. At that time, there was a lot of moving out of home literally and also in the sense of going out of my sphere of everything I knew, to trying to expand that and push myself out of that; by choice and not by choice”

“Most of my preconceived notions about Melbourne were based on Motorace” Hardy offers with a chuckle. “I loved Motorace. I made a fan wallpaper when I was fifteen, it was a picture of Motorace playing live and I did some Photoshop action, I wrote ‘MOTORACE’ in shitty font, and around the edges, I wrote “I wish I could move to Melbourne, I wish I could move to Melbourne” (laughs). Everyone was cool and doing Motorace-y things! I just thought it would be awesome and it’s pretty much lived up to that”

Skye Harbour have been rabidly gigging of late, endeavouring to stick out in the overcrowded Melbourne market. And any working musician will tell you, it’s been a tough slog.

“We really wanted to do it for real; we got disheartened by everything in the industry, but you just have to shrug it off and come back and remember why you’re doing it in the first place”

Hardy has no delusions about the importance of being business-minded in today’s ever-developing music industry; “To be successful, you need advertising; to get advertising you need money, so you gotta be smart, business-wise. Playing the right show to make the most money to get the most use out of it. I just want people to like our music, to think it was good. And maybe come to a show or two, and maybe buy a CD, or download an MP3”

The band have also fully embraced the technological advances being made around them: “So far we’ve had over ten thousand downloads across the world. People from America, India….when we released Houses, we had a page where you could download the whole EP for free and by the time we took it down, five hundred people had downloaded it, and I thought, ‘If we had charged ten bucks each for that’ (laughs)….but at least people have it”

“People should stop complaining, about downloading” Hardy elucidates. “They should move on, create a new business model. People still like music; you can still make money out of it. I’m not saying you should use music to make money, but people aren’t gonna be pressing thousands of CDs and putting thousands of dollars into studio recordings if they’re not making money”

“We had that period of romantic notions” Hardy says, further illustrating the often tough mechanics of band dynamics. “We had the disillusioned period where the romantic notions weren’t very congruent with what is the reality of the industry, and we’ve come out the other side saying, “Okay, things aren’t the way we thought they were gonna be, but…”

“Anyway, I’m excited by it” smiles Hardy, a man all about his music. “It creates a sort of anarchy that a band like us can jump on; fresh, not narrow-minded about the industry. I’m excited about the prospect of coming up with new ways of doing things, being able to ride a wave of something so massive”

Check out Skye Harbour on MySpace: and Triple J Unearthed: where you can grab their new single Hunch.

Skye Harbour – Tour Dates

May 6 - The National Hotel, Geelong VIC
May 7 - Spanish Club, Fitzroy VIC w/ Foxx on Fire (farewell show)
May 16 - The Empress, Fitzroy VIC w/ Quiet the Few and Oh, Deanna
May 2 1- Ding Dong Lounge, Melbourne VIC w/ Wilfred Jackal (single launch)
June 3 - Shake Some Action @ 161, Prahran VIC