We interview Australian group, The Buckleys, about their first visit to Nashville, their new single ‘Breathe‘ and more.Â
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Hello!
Hey! Thanks for having us!
Not at all! I’m so excited for you guys with the release of your new single ‘Breathe.’ It must feel very surreal right now.
Sarah: Yeah, it’s a very interesting strange time that the world is in. I think the world is in a lot of pain right now so we just thought that it would be the perfect time to put out this song that means a lot to us. It’s kind of our musical prayer to the world and hopefully it’ll give someone a little bit of a break and happiness in the day.
I know you’ve also just come off your world virtual tour. Where did the inspiration behind that idea come from? This really cut through the masses of livestreams as a really innovative idea.Â
Sarah: Well we were supposed to be doing a bunch of touring this year. We had released our first international single called ‘Money’ right at the same time as the pandemic blew up and hit and everyone went into lockdown. We were kind of like ‘oh so what are we going to do?’ We play music because we want to bring smiles to people’s faces and we love connecting with people and the live aspect is the most important aspect for us.
Molly: We really didn’t want to lose that side. We wanted to still do it in a way where we could perform and bring that to people.
Lachlan: Just jamming with the family, you know?
Sarah: We’re really lucky to have Live Nation come on board and be involved with it, live streaming on all of their platforms. Chris Murphy and Tiffany came up with the idea at Live Nation. It was amazing to see it all come to fruition and share music with everyone.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tgi-xl5azjk
I guess that’s the nice part about being a family that you don’t have to have the logistics of quarantining in multiple locations.
Sarah: Yeah exactly, we had the whole family here in lockdown.
Molly: And we’ve all been playing together since we were babies. As a band we’ve brought in a drummer and a bass player, but it was cool to go back to that original family aspect that we played with when we were six years old, when it was just the family.
Have you guys always played together?
Sarah: Yeah it’s so crazy to look back. We just released a documentary called ‘Meet the Buckleys’ and we found all this old archival footage of us when we were so young and just jamming and busking at Tamworth. We used to run this night at the Billinudgel Hotel – a pub near where we lived – and we’d play there every Friday night, just a jam session. Our dad would ring all our friends’ parents and tell them to come over.
Molly: It was so funny, he wanted us to get all vibed up and perform in front of a crowd, so he’d call them up and say they should come down to the Billinudgel Hotel and watch us. I had no idea til like two months ago.
It must have been so fun to trawl back through the archives and your memories in that project.
Lachlan: We looked like such ratbags.
Sarah: It’s so hilarious, there’s so much there and then making new memories with the virtual tour, we had our little brother Dylan playing drums with us and he’s only thirteen years old. He’s playing drums and joining the band slowly, I had to bribe him with lemonade.
Lachlan: Having siblings definitely has its pros and cons.
What music did you guys grow up with then, because there’s so many different elements in your music?
Sarah: It’s super funny because dad was actually a rock and roll drummer in the 80s, so he was playing that kind of music for a while and I think when he had kids, he loved the family element in country music – the wholesomeness – so he played a lot of Patsy Cline and all that. Still mum had Fleetwood Mac playing on the record player and Joni Mitchell and The Eagles. We were really lucky to have that diverse upbringing in music, so all of that feeds through into what we write and create naturally and authentically. Hopefully it resonates with people and it’s so much fun.
I know that Sarah you’ve always done a lot of the songwriting, when did you begin to write properly? I know that a lot of the songs were written in Nashville, so when was the first trip and take us back to that?
Sarah: Yeah, well I always wrote songs when I was really young, but I really got into it and got the bug when I was about eleven years old. Me and Molly decided on this goal that we were going to get to Nashville by the time I was sixteen years old. I was so focussed on that and it was all I ever thought about.
Molly: We saved up probably for about five years and just put all our money into this little tin jar.
Lachlan: Yeah I wasn’t part of that, I just wanted a new guitar.
Molly: Anything we could, it was a big goal of ours, especially going to Tamworth Country Music Festival, everyone focussed on Nashville and we’d heard about it all our lives – we had to get there.
Sarah: We eventually got there when I was sixteen, I didn’t know much about the songwriting community or anything really, we just wanted to go and experience this magical land that we’d heard so much about. We got there and we played wherever we could, in little music venues, Douglas Corner was a place we played and that kind of changed the pathway for us. We met the band booker there who really liked what we were doing.
Molly: She’s a legend, she got Sarah and I writing with the most amazing songwriters. It was everything we had heard about, we had landed there with no real plan and then all of a sudden three or four weeks in, we were writing with these incredible people. The stars were aligning…
The first single I heard of yours was ‘Daydreamer’ which I loved that was written with Kelleigh Bannen!
Sarah: Yeah I wrote that with Kelleigh in Nashville. I was staying at her house and Phil Barton. I think she was making lunch or dinner or something, I was playing the guitar riff that you hear in the song and she thought that was really cool and started singing the vocal line that you hear in the song. Then we started writing a little bit of it, sat on it for a while. The next week, we were both in a co-write together with Phil Barton who’s an Australian songwriter doing amazing things over there. We played it and finished it with him.
The current single is of course ‘Breathe’ – did you write that a while ago or was it inspired by current events?Â
Sarah: Yeah, well we recorded our debut album over in Nashville in November last year. We had all the songs pretty much picked out for that record and then I went over there a week and a half earlier to write as much as I can. I ended up writing about fourteen that week and we used about six of them on the album.
Molly: It was so funny, Lachlan and I were jumping on an international flight and she sends a whole list of new songs and they’re all amazing.Â
Sarah: ‘Breathe’ was one of those songs that I had written with Chad who produced the album. At the time, the Australian bushfires were actually happening and so that was a lot to see happening in our home country. It was just this message that I needed at the time. I think everyone goes through things every day where you just need to stop and remember to breathe.Â
Molly: It’s so good that everyone can interpret it so differently. Everyone’s got a situation going on where they can resonate with the song.Â
Sarah: Yeah! When we’ve played it for some people it’s about a relationship, some people it’s about the world, some for the environment. That means the most to me as a songwriter that people can put it into their own lives and connect with it.
Final Few
If a biopic was made about your life what would be the opening track?
Lachlan: The Boys Are Back In Town
Sarah: Don’t Stop Me Now by Queen.
Who’s most likely to forget the words on stage?Â
Sarah: I think me.
Who’s most likely to say something they shouldn’t in an interview:
Sarah and Molly: Lachlan – that’s why we don’t give him the microphone.
What record would you bring to a desert island?
Sarah: I love Queen and Freddie Mercury.
Molly: I feel like I’d bring a Blondie record… I can imagine myself jamming to that on a desert island.
Lachlan: Are You Experienced by Jimi Hendrix.
Complete the sentence…
Music is… power.
Country music is…Â real.
The Buckleys are… wild cats, cool cats and kittens!
