A Quick Chat with smartcasual
Can you tell us what Cashies means to you and what you want people to take away from it?
"For the last 2 years I had been working as a labourer to support our dream of playing music for a living. I loved it for a time - working with my hands and being in rough environments has always felt raw and real for me. It's where the stories are. But the cash jobs aren't always consistent and at some stage between punishing my body and only bringing home enough to keep some meat on my bones the story of 'Cashies' came to life.
To me this song speaks to the inherent push and pull of survival and ambition, chasing a dream and barely staying afloat in the process. It is a story which is distinctly Australian, but universally understood.
Whatβs the creative process for you, from writing through to recording?
Starting the creative process is a really sudden and uncompromising experience for me. A line or a melody will come over me like a shadow passing through my body. I really feel it in my body like a call to attention. By chasing that feeling wherever it needs to go I'm generally left with the majority of a song or an idea. It's important to me to chase it while it's there. I have a really hard time writing something authentic to the feeling if I try and come back to it later.
Once it comes to the band we all bring our own colours to the track. Watching an idea grow into a synthesis of bigger and bigger feelings is probably the most satisfying part of the process for me.
Our live show is really important to us so any new track has to pass the 'crowd test' before we bring it to the studio. If it translates to listeners in a live setting we know it's
What do you think makes a great song?
It sounds cliche, but I think all of the best songs have managed to bottle lightning. They take some universally shared intrinsic knowledge and boil it down to its simplest and most beautiful form. They take moments or things we all know and make us feel like we're meeting them for the first time. It makes every line equal parts familiar and unexpected.
It makes for really impactful and addictive listening.
What else do you have planned for the year?
This year is really exciting for us. We're releasing our sophomore EP with TEAMWRK Records in late May alongside an East Coast Tour with stops through Brisbane, Sydney, Wollongong, Canberra and Melbourne. We're lucky to have a smattering of other shows around the tour, some I can talk about and others I can't. I'm actually writing this from the studio, we're in the first week of recording an album and the music is really pouring out of us. We're feeling really grateful for everything that's been coming our way
Who is your dream artist to collaborate with? (dead or alive)
I'd love to share the room with Stevie Wright. He's had a real chokehold on me since I found a CD of Hard Road when I was 10. I know some of it hasn't aged the best but I think his tracks have a unique ability to make both joy and tragedy feel invincible. His music never takes me we where I want it to go, but off in a direction which always manages to teach me something. I don't mind conceding that in these little internal disputes as to who's right or wrong, I often lose.
We have a lot of stories which gto lost somewhere along the way and never made it to the live show. I would love to sit with Stevie and see where he might take them.
If you could go back in time and give a younger you some words of wisdom, what would they be?
I actually think the younger me had it sorted. He was calmer, more observant and was hungrier to care only for what matters and none of the fluff in between. Given my chance to go back I might just watch him, take some notes and try to bring some of it home.