The Drones have become a bit of a household name in Australia these days and it’s not too difficult to understand the appeal.  Combining great musicians, blistering live sets and a relentless tour schedule the band has well and truly established themselves as one our best musical exports.  I had the pleasure of seeing them at their last Brisbane show and must admit that despite being only a fairly recent convert I was blown away, which was why when the opportunity to interview guitarist Dan Luscombe via email on one of the bands short returns to Australia (they headed back to Europe two weeks later) I was pretty darn stoked.

Now to digress a moment here I have a confession to make – this was my first interview and I wasn’t altogether sure what I was doing.  It seems relatively straightforward, and while in actuality it really is, for those who haven’t done it before it can take way too much time.  Having dredged my mind clean for questions I decided to put it to a panel of advisors (my girlfriend’s half-drunk house mates) who represented musicians and non-musicians alike, but most importantly were considerably bigger Drone’s fans than myself.  In the end I think we came up with something resembling a good list, but there’s always that fine line between stimulating and nonsense.  You be the judge.

Back to Dan though: Dan has been well respected on the Oz music scene for years but many people don’t know much more about him besides the fact that he didn’t join the Drones until late 2006, when he left his former outfit Alpha Male to replace Rui Pereira.  Besides Alpha Male, Dan’s also played in the Black Eyed Susan’s, Four Hours Sleep, the Paul Kelly Band and Stardust Five (w/ Paul Kelly, Dan Kelly, Bill MacDonald and his brother Peter Luscombe, 17 years his senior) and teamed up with Paul Kelly again to do the soundtrack to the Ray Lawrence film ‘Jindabyne’.  Perhaps a good way to get to know Dan and the rest of the Drones though (besides this interview!) is through Dan’s tour blog from the 2007 European tour @ http://dronesdiary.blogspot.com/ .  It’s a great read that makes you simultaneously smug and jealous from start to finish.  At the risk of over-prepositionalizing any more sentences though I’ll let Dan do the talking.

So you’ve been touring all over the world recently, and you’ve done all this before.  How has this most recent European Trip compared to your others, most notably the 2007 one? What’s the general ratio of work time to play time?

Well, thankfully we haven’t been at the mercy of a fairly shoddy booking agent since that tour. And I’m being pretty generous in that description. The work to play ratio is a grey area. If sitting in the van comes under the “work” banner, and it probably should I guess, then it’s about 80/20!

Favourite travel destination?

I’d say Paris. We’ve got a few buddies over there, and they provide a very homely atmosphere. Nice lookin’ joint, too.

So Just what happened to Gorka and Van Morrison? (Read Dan’s blog for details). What measures have you taken to ensure this tour doesn’t end like the last one?

We’ve taken the necessary measures, put it that way. But one can never expect things to always go smoothly. “Be prepared” is not just a Boy Scout’s motto. I’m not sure what happened to either Gorka or Van, but I sometimes lay awake at night, wondering.

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As part of the brand new Dukes of Windsor website launch , they will be giving away a 3 track Remix EP for free! The songs that have been remixed on the EP include:

Dukes of Windsor – So Beautiful (Cory Blight Remix)
Dukes of Windsor – Land of Strangers (Cory Blight Remix)
Dukes of Windsor – It’s A War (Cory Blight and Andrew McKinnon Remix)
Additional keys by Scott Targett

Hey, Cory from Dukes Of Windsor here. We wanted to thank you, our fans, for all of your support so far. To show our appreciation, the band put me in charge of creating some brand new free tracks for you (since I spend all my spare time in front of a computer)! – three spanking remixes of a few classic Dukes ditties. Scott lent a hand with some additional keyboards for the tracks as well (Thanks Scotty, the red wine stain is still in my carpet by the way). I hope you enjoy the remixes, I sure had a lot of fun with them – now it’s time for me to get back to work on the new album we are currently creating! Thanks again, Cory, (A Duke).

All you have to do is sign up to become a member of the Dukes website (click on the ‘Become A Fan’ button) in order to get your free download. By becoming a member you receive information about exclusive offers and competitions, you can participate in commenting and interact with other fans. Then when the boys hit the road in March they will be giving away yet another free track, not a remix this time but a brand-new song recorded this month by the band. The track is called “Down In Dirt”.

As part of Two Flat Whites ‘Mega Month of May Giveaways’ & our first birthday celebrations, two of our favourite bands have joined the party. Two of Australia’s most talented emerging bands have embarked on a national tour called ‘The Less Talk, More Problems Tour’. Bluejuice & The Paper Scissors will be playing near you!

To win one of twelve albums from the bands, go to the below links & check out their tour dates & latest songs. All you have to do to win an album from Bluejuice or The Paper Scissors is to email your name & full address to info & tell us your favourite song. It’s that easy!

The Paper Scissors tour dates & songs

Bluejuice tour dates & songs

So get emailing to win one of The Paper Scissors or Bluejuice albums. Don’t forget to check out one of there gigs on there ‘Less Talk, More Problems Tour’. Entries close Saturday, 10th May 2008. Winners will be published the next day on Two Flat Whites.

Hailing from Sydney, post-indie/soul four-piece, ‘The Paper Scissors’ first hit the national limelight in 2006 when their track ‘We Don’t Walk’ from their ‘The Paper Scissors EP’ which was picked up by FBI, JJJ and Rage. Their burgeoning reputation for frenetic, crowd-friendly, loud and tumultuous live shows, saw them hit stages nationwide with the release in 2007, of their debut LP ‘Less Talk, More Paper Scissors’ which assured their rapidly ascending position, both at home and abroad. If you haven’t heard The Paper Scissors, do yourself a favour & buy a copy of there album. This is one of Two Flat Whites favourite bands!

If you sign an autograph what do you write? And where do you call home?

I’m always confused as what to write on an autograph. I try to avoid ‘keep rocking’ or ‘keep on keeping on’, so usually just stick with ‘thanks heaps’ or if I have enough time to have a chat I will personalize it a bit more.

In your own words, what do you do?

I sing and play guitar in the paper scissors, I am the main songwriter and co run Our First Label, our label, as well as doing most of the web based stuff and the graphic design. I work in a café a few days a week to pay my rent.

Childhood Memories:

TV Show – Mr Squiggle. Loved that show, it was pretty weird and psychedelic, but at the same time creative.

Hobby – Was always drawing/painting, playing drums, also played cricket when I was a wee whipper snapper and basketball when I was a slightly larger child.

Food – Grew up with pretty wholesome hippy food. Was always good though, vegetarian food can go so wrong, but my mum is pretty good at it. Food and cooking have always been a pretty important part of my life, some of the best conversations I’ve had have been with my mum when cooking dinner together.

Fear – I always had this irrational fear that I’d get home from school and my family would be gone. Just packed up and left. I’m not sure what that’s all about.

People – Lots of musicians around all the time. I remember waking up and wanting to go back to bed because everyone would be hanging out and playing music and stuff.

Defining moment – When my parents won a lawnmower in a raffle, they then sold the lawnmower and bought me my first proper drum kit.

Schooling memories, chore or cherished?

Primary pretty cherished, went to a community school with only 50 kids, lots of music and drama and art and no uniform or homework. High school was a chore for the first few years, lots of big scary kids who I didn’t like and they reciprocated the feeling. Then moved to Byron Bay in year 9 and it all went much better then, back to art and drama and photos and music.

From the hours of 9am to 5pm, what do you get up too?

Either working in café or working on The Paper Scissors’ stuff. Lately working on our tour with Bluejuice.

Where can people see you perform?

With Bluejuice, somewhere near you.

For love or money?

HA HAHAHAH!!!! Well we’re definitely not making any money, it is for the love.
It’s all worth it when things go right and the audience gives the love back!

The Paper Scissors with Bluejuice

What future endeavors are in the pipeline?

New songs, new remixes & new clips. I’m going to record an EP as Pork Pies, my solo incarnation.

Where do you see yourself in 5 years?

Making music, in love, making art, writing, not working a day job, maybe living in another country for a while & learning another language.

If you could invite 3 people to chat over coffee, who would they be & why?

Darondo (he’s this 70’s soul star, he was a pimp, then went on to have a music career and
a TV show, he is doing come back shows in the US at the moment, he is hilarious, look him up on YouTube), ahhhh….

Bowie, because I would like to meet him and suck his brain, and maybe Julian Barrett from the mighty boosh, because I reckon he’d be cool and could talk about music for hours. But I would give you a different answer tomorrow. I think my friends would give me just as good a conversation though.

Coffee or Tea?

Tea. I love coffee, but if I had to choose one forever, it’d be tea. There is so much comfort in tea and so much more time. Coffee is more like a really pop song, where tea is like a whole great album.

Two of Australia’s premier emerging acts, Bluejuice & The Paper Scissors have officially announced a massive co headline Australian tour. Covering 6 states, 2 territories and 1 hemisphere, The ‘Less Talk, More Problems’ Tour will see both bands tread the boards together throughout April / May 2008. Bluejuice and the Paper Scissors are two great independent Sydney bands with shiny new debut albums in their cabinets, and this tour is set to be a two-month-long party across the whole of the country.

Recently shortlisted for The Amp 2007 awards , it’s been nothing short of a phenomenal few months for Sydney’s punk hoppers bluejuice. Vitriol ,
the 1st single from their debut album ‘Problems’ (Rolling Stone) was the 2nd most played song on triple J in 2007, scored #11 in triple J’s ‘Hottest 100 2007’ , was one of Rolling Stone Magazine’s top 100 tracks of 2007 and the Australian iTunes ‘Single Of The Week’ during January 2008. Currently pushing 50,000 YouTube views , the Vitriol video also took out the highly coveted top spot in the nationwide ‘Sunscreen Music Video Competition’.

New single The Reductionist has been on high rotation on JJJ for over 2 months. Rage placed the clip 3rd cab off the rank for its national debut on Jan 25th and continues to air it in poll position.  Rage also made The Reductionist their ‘Indie Clip of The Week’ feature w/c Jan 28th.

Also hailing from Sydney, post-indie/soul four-piece The Paper Scissors first hit the national limelight in 2006 when their track We Don’t Walk from their ‘The Paper Scissors EP’ was picked up by FBI, JJJ and Rage. The success of We Don’t Walk in combination with their burgeoning reputation for frenetic, crowd-friendly, loud and tumultuous live shows, saw them hit stages nationwide with the likes of Midnight Juggernauts, Datarock, Patrick Wolf and at festivals such as Falls, Southbound and The Great Escape.

Released in 2007, their debut LP ‘Less Talk, More Paper Scissors’ assured their rapidly ascending position, both at home and abroad. The Sydney Morning Herald proclaimed of their first single: “Yamanote Line is the best song ever written. Truly”. The Sydney Magazine named ‘Less Talk…’ Album Of The Month for Oct ’07, RRR placed it in their Top 10, and PBS and FBi made it their Album Of The Week. With triple J placing Yamanote Line on high rotation, 2007 saw the band crisscrossing the country, further cementing legions of converted with what the Herald Sun called their “Growling brilliance”.