Angus & Julia Stone are on tour Europe to promote their recent Album 'Down The Way', which just got released in Germany. Immediately after their arrival in Germany Austrade's Bernd Brueggemann had the chance to talk about them about different audiences in different countries, their music, their parents and how good it is to sometimes have a break and not see each other.
Austrade: Welcome to Germany. Your shows here are basically sold out. How is that like?Julia Stone: It feels really good. Every time we have played in Germany it has been a lot of enthusiastic people coming to the shows. Some of my favorite shows we have actually played in Europe. Very good audiences. So it is exciting.
Austrade: So the Germans are finally getting it?
Julia Stone: I think from the beginning, even when we were playing very small shows, the German people got it from it start. At least the people that come to our shows. They are really quiet and really listening and connecting with us. At one of our first shows in Germany, it was in Berlin, we played underneath this old train station, and it was so epic! They were just super-quiet and super-attentive. Some of the things that we were singing about, there were moments where all of the audience would start laughing, that was kind of funny. Other people, other crowds had not necessarily caught on to. That was really nice.
Austrade: You started as separate acts. When did you decide to form a brother/sister-duo and perform together?
Angus Stone: That was something that just happened along the way. Julia organized shows for me because I was too lazy, sitting on the couch, just writing songs. So she organized this open mike nights and I would get up and sing some songs and Julia would sing some backing vocals and guitar parts. It came to the point when Julia started writing some really beautiful songs and she asked if she could play some songs. Then we sort of started playing together but still separate. We’d even sell CD’s separate after the shows, standing individually with our own CD’s and people would have to choose which one to buy...
Austrade: Who sold more?
Julia Stone: Angus! (Laughing.)
Angus Stone: But eventually we thought ‘let’s record something together’, so we don’t have to go through that traumatizing...
Julia Stone: Well, we didn’t record as such together, we still recorded our songs separately. With “Mango tree” and “Paper aeroplane” it was still like Angus’ time in the studio and then I went in and hung out with him while he was recording. And I was listening and a part of what he was doing. Then I did a session at the house for my album or my record or whatever it was at the time and Angus was obviously there playing his parts on the songs. Then we decided to put them on a record together. So there were still separate recordings at that time, but them we said ‘let’s make it easier for the people and put them all on one CD’.
Austrade: You are talking about that time like it was ages ago. But we are talking about only five years. Now you release your records worldwide and people recognize you. Is the whole story going a bit too fast for you?
Julia Stone: I don’t think in terms like “too fast” or “too slow” or too anything. I mean, it’s going how it’s going and we just go with the flow. I think whatever happens and however it has been unfolded, it has been the right thing, because we are evolving into happier people. We have learned a lot and we are growing a lot and we are playing with some phenomenal musicians, and every step of this process has been a really interesting part of us growing up and learning to live better. It definitively has been a lot of crazy adventures that I didn’t expect for my life. Neither did Angus. We both have been very happy living back in Sydney on the beach. Angus was into building and I was teaching trumpet, and we had a happy life just surfing and swimming or doing whatever. So this wasn’t necessarily a goal or ambition to tour the world playing music. In a sense it is just interesting that life has unfolded like this. It is unexpected and it has shaped us to be more thoughtful about the way that people live, and also our connectedness around the world to other humans.
Austrade: How has your understanding of other people changed?
Julia Stone: Angus always says ‘We meet people on the other side of the world’, because Australia is so far away. And we hear their story and it is not so very dissimilar to our own. This is a nice feeling. We are so all the same, everywhere.
Austrade: Normally parents care about their children in a way that they want them to have a job they could live from. “Musician” is not the top sport on that job-list.
Julia Stone: Our parents are very different! (Laughs.)
Austrade: How did your parents react when you told them that you both want to be professional musicians under “one label”?
Angus Stone: I don’t know. What did they say?
Julia Stone: It didn’t ever happen that we were telling them that we were going out selling music.
Angus Stone: We still haven’t told them!
Julia Stone: They still don’t know what we are doing! (Laughs.) They were actually our biggest supporters. When we started we didn’t have jobs, we just lived. We were very fortunate. Our parents were just really supportive of whatever we do. I think if Angus had decided that he wants to be trains-men and work as a builder our parents would have stood a hundred percent behind that choice. And when we first started my mum bought me car so that we could drive to open mike nights and she gave us money to print up our first load of CD’s. She basically sponsored us for the first period of six months, because you just don’t have any money first when you play music. Dad even set up a live music venue in our community for us to have somewhere to play. We live in quite a small town in a way. It is the suburbs of Sydney and there is no way play live music. So we did some of our first shows at the venue that he has created.
Austrade: Does it still exist?
Julia Stone: It still exists! It is called “The Music Room”.
Austrade: And now other bands are playing there?
Julia Stone: Yes, and he also does some interesting nights. The last one he did was a youth orchestra and an African percussion group. He does indigenous evenings, where it’s all aboriginal artists, he does kind of everything. He always tries to get music from all around the world touring artists and a community act. He gets up young kids from the community who have not had the chance to perform.
Austrade: You know each other from the beginning of your lives and now you are working with each other. How is it like to play and work with your brother or with your sister?
Julia Stone: I would disagree in a sense like I don’t think I knew Angus very well from the beginning of our lives. I mean, we must have known each other as children and played together. Obviously a strong love, because Angus was adorable as a kid, he was very very sweet, but right now, from playing music together I have come to know him better as a person. For me it is not that he is my brother, it is the person that he is that makes this so amazing. To tour with an artist that I respect and admire is part of the reason that I started writing music. Angus was one the first people that taught me how to play songs on the guitar. I listened to him writing songs. We went travelling to Bolivia for a couple of months together and at that time he was showing me songs that he was writing and I just thought “Wow! This is this kid!”. Our mum and dad separated when we were teenagers and we spent a lot of time at different houses, sometimes we would catch up, but mostly we had very separate lives. Angus was a skater and a surfer and I don’t know what I was into, I was just off with the fairies. So this was the first time to see this man and I was thinking ‘Wow! He really has something important to say’ and this inspired me to write music. So I am really happy to be with an artist that I respect and love. And I think that also the chance of our family upbringing is always good. It has been difficult at the beginning, with all the habits that we have been in. Again this has been a good challenge to grow up a lot and learn to be a little bit more respectful.
Austrade: What is the difference between being on stage and off stage?
Julia Stone: Just... We stop acting. (Laughs.)
Austrade: Is it acting that on stage you, Julia, seem to be more responsible for the quiet parts and in terms of music Angus for the not-so-quiet bits, whereas off-stage it just seems to be the other way round, with Julia being the lively and talking person and Angus being the quiet and thinking? Not meaning, of course, that Julia is not thinking...
Julia Stone: No, I am the not thinking person. (Laughs.)
Angus Stone: I send messages to her in my own dimension.
Julia Stone: Angus is the brain and I am the voice. (Laughs.) I just look into his eyes and then I hear what he says and I say it.
Austrade: Is this level of understanding possible if you do not grow up together?
Angus Stone: It has to do with growing up together and having a lifetime of understanding where we have come from and all the stuff along the way. There is a lot of unspoken ways of dealing with things und just getting things done. Sometimes a lot of explaining and talking can confuse things. I think I have an understanding of Julia’s music and the way she writes and she does understand my music.
Austrade: After the release of “A book like this” in Australia in 2007 it took almost two years since it was released in all parts of the world. So your new album “Down The Way” for the Americans comes shortly after “A book like this”, but for the Australians it took three years. Were you afraid that the Australian might have simply moved on?
Julia Stone: Oh no! I don’t think that it has any relationship to what we think or feel about music. I feel that there is a connection when we play a live show with the audience. But when it comes to things like people moving on or forgetting about us or the music not being relevant: That is stuff that is out of our hands. If people don’t connect to what we do than it is just how it is meant to be and I feel comfortable with that. And I feel really comfortable in what we do. If ten people buy the records and they feel that it is something that is relevant to their life than this is alright. It is all good, whatever happens.
Austrade: When selling billions of records is not too important, getting an ARIA Award would have been good?
Julia Stone: We didn’t get one, actually.
Austrade: Gabriella Cilmi took them all. How is your relation towards her?
Julia Stone: We don’t know her at all, actually.
Austrade: But you hate her?
Julia Stone: We hate her. (Laughs.) No, of course not! I don’t know her, I don’t know her music. We have never been growing up watching the ARIA’s. At one point in our lives during our high-school times we have listened to the radio a bit, but apart from that everything that has happened in our own house was live-music. We had a record player, but we only had about four records. Mostly it was dad playing the piano or mum singing or dad’s band rehearsing. And we were not allowed to watch much television. So mainstream media was not something we grew up with until we were teenagers. And I think when you grow up around nature it is more interesting going for a surf or dancing, than it is thinking about the ARIAs or the MTV Award.
Austrade: So the “business” part of the music business doesn’t bother you at all?
Julia Stone: I think it is not something I am interested in a lot. But Angus is on the internet every day. (Laughs.)
Austrade: Were you exhausted after you finished touring with “A book like that”? Was it too much touring?
Angus Stone: Yes. It got to a point where we were at an airport in New York and we were just really tired and it had been a long time on the road, not having any sort of home as such. I guess we sort of made the decision at the airport that we stop touring for eight months or something and have some free time and do exactly what we want...
Austrade: ...and you found out that doing exactly what you want was to record a solo album? How did “Lady Of The Sunshine” happen?
Angus Stone: Yeah, that was good! When I did have a little time off I went to my friends based in Coolangatta in Australia and recorded all these songs I wrote along the touring. We put the album out and the radio stations started playing it. The only thing is: I never played any shows for it. I just wanted to see how it went on its own. And it was good. A lot of people liked it and I really liked it.
Austrade: “Big Jet Plane” was originally one of the songs on the “Lady Of The Sunshine” album and was re-recorded for “Down The Way”. Why?
Angus Stone: It was one of the songs I wanted to play on the road, so I thought I put it on and get Julia to sing on it. I wanted more people to hear it as well. I think with Julia and I it is just a bigger amount of people following our music.
Austrade: While listening to the lyrics of “Big Jet Plane” we thought ‘he wasn’t very happy at that stage’. When we listened to the lyrics of “I’m Not Yours Anymore” we thought ‘she wasn’t too happy at that stage’. Sounds like there was trouble in a relationship. Who was separated?
Julia Stone: We both came out of long-term relationships last year.
Austrade: And you used music as a kind of catharsis?
Julia Stone: I think that is definitely what music is. It is not always that, sometimes it is an expression of joy or just a feeling that you want to create. But when there is a sense of sadness or loss music is way of expressing that in a positive way, not taking it in and holding onto it. A lot of my songs come from that place. A feeling overcomes me and I have to live with that feeling for a few days or I have to write a song, I have to get rid of this. I don’t know exactly what it is, I can’t put into words what it is about in English. But in music, with the melody and the chords I can say what I want to say.
Austrade: But on the other hand you are offering your deepest emotions to complete strangers. Does that disturb you? Is that something you think about while you are writing?
Julia Stone: I don’t. I never hold back anything for that reason. I feel mostly people are happy for you to express yourself honestly and also very supportive of it. Sometimes you can be in a vulnerable space to be singing these things, but I always get the sense that in our shows people are arms-opened and really embracing and feeling like ‘I have been through this as well’. And more than anything I think this connects me to other people and it makes me feel really good. I am being honest and other people say ‘this is exactly what I feel’. And it feels amazing that you are not the only person on the planet that feels alone.
Austrade: Are you a speaker for the people that are not able to express their feelings in a way you do?
Julia Stone: I don’t think so! I think that everybody can express their feelings in some way. It might not be through music, but it might be through dancing at a nightclub, it might be through walking down the street and humming a tune, it might be through sweeping the floor. Everybody in their own way is expressing their feelings every day.
Angus Stone: Whether they know it or not.
Austrade: The songs for “Down The Way” were written when you were separated from each other. Julia was in New York, Angus in Australia. Dis that have any influence on the album?
Angus Stone: I think even though they were written when we were apart there is a common thread that runs through all the songs. But from that being in different places it adds different colors that we never had achieved if we didn’t do it that way. You’d be in a boat on a river and the eeriness and the magic from the trees had influence on the songs, whether you liked it or not. You’d be in New York in a friend’s apartment and the buildings and the buzz of the people had given it the vibe that was there. But still the songs don’t seem so far apart.
Austrade: You also recorded your own version of “You’re the one that I want”. Why did you choose that song as a cover?
Julia Stone: We grew up with so many different musicals! And I think I got this from my mother. She was always walking around singing songs all the time. And I often break into singing musical theatre songs out of the blue. And this was one of the moments where I just had a guitar and this song just came into my head and the chords and I recorded it just as a fun thing to do. And then we started to play it live and that is a real fun song to play. And it also feels representative of where I am at in my head in terms of men: I know what I want and I am putting it out there, like I am waiting for that person, raise the bar. You better shape up, because I know what I want, and if it is not that than it is not going to work!
