featured artist: an afternoon with auxilla

One Thursday morning, I was innocently picking up my couchsurfing guest from the airport when I received a text message from Auxilla guitarist, Bob Hookway, demanding that I come to their rehearsal space that afternoon for an interview and photo shoot I’d approached him about some days earlier.

Some might interpret this as hostile but in a world of over-politeness and pandering to other people’s convenience, Hookway’s just plain efficient.

So after some harried rescheduling (I wish) and speeding to collect trusty photographer, Laura McClaren, we rocked up to some sort of warehouse structure in the backstreets of Adelaide, where front man and keyboardist, Lukas Freer, and guitarist, John Langdon, seemed to be doing not a whole lot out front.

A few happy snaps later (including a memorable set on a wall that you could not pay me enough to climb up on; also a good lesson for bands not to joke about what might make a good photo if there are photographers/pseudo-journalists/couchsurfers around who are mean enough to make you do it) and percussionist, Mark Fonz, had to dash off, and the rest of us sat down to a chat amongst their instruments and that rugged manly sweat stench.

Although I hate to gloss over the hilarity of this conversation that would likely be conveyed from a direct transcript (because I do actually manage to bring my voice recorder along to interviews far more frequently than my artist articles thus far might suggest), extrapolating how the band came together is rather necessary for the sake of concision.

As with many bands, the formation of Auxilla arose out of friendship. Childhood friends Hookway and Freer had long since been jamming together, and were eventually joined by bassist, Matthew King, a friend of Hookway’s from uni. A character called Ben made a brief cameo in the outfit, though apparently his only lasting contribution is the fact that they still have his amp, and a boyfriend of a friend ‘wanted to be cool and be in a band’. Namely, Caleb Williamson, the current drummer. However, this is not as straightforward as it may appear.

Hookway reveals that he doubled up the drummers because he didn’t think Williamson would show, asking Fonz to come too and leading to some confusion as to who the nominated drummer actually was. And finally, Langdon overheard conversations about the band between Fonz and Hookway at work and eventually revealed he played guitar, bringing the band member total to six.

Somehow, that explanation is far more succinct than the one they gave.

Anyway. As much as I wanted to be able to tell my couchsurfer that I spend every afternoon hanging out with cool bands (at least in demeanour if not in profile [yet]), the banter amongst this tight knit group made them a pleasure to be around. Enjoy.

Dunja Nedic: How would you describe the band stylistically, or the genre?

John Langdon: Oh trying to pigeonhole the genre, I can’t.

Lukas Freer: That’s one of the things that’s quite interesting about the forming of this band is that we all have our own set genres. I come from a background of pretty much sappy pop. Caleb’s pretty indie and really creative with his beats –

Caleb Williamson: No I’m not.

LF: Mark’s pretty heavy, classic, big into his Baroque style and John loves the metal kind of shredding. So a lot of our songs are like this massive fusion of genres.

JL: The style has changed a lot but basically it’s alternate prog-rock/indie electro. That’s the best way I can put it.

CW: But to put it simply, we’re very happy dancing rock.

DN: Who are some influences, either collectively or individually?

CW & Bob Hookway: This will destroy you.

JL: Don’t even know who that is.

CW: Instrumental bands. Explosions in the Sky.

BH: Sigur Ros. The Decemberists for me – that was the earlier stuff we were doing.

JL: I don’t know if any of my influences apply to what I play here. It’s very different. I just feed off what these guys are doing and just jam out basically.

LF: Westlife and Backstreet Boys.

JL: Enya.

BH: The Lion King soundtrack.

JL: The Lion King always pops up. Rage against the Machine, Chili Peppers come into it a bit.

CW: The Shiny Brights are one of my biggest.

BH: The Shiny Brights are well up there and the 20th Century Graduates; I wish I could produce their sound. Just, wow.

DN: And your songwriting process, where have (looking at setlist) ‘newbie’ and ‘claps’ come from?

JL: Lukas writes a song every 5 minutes. It’s mainly Lukas, Bob –

LF: But they definitely build from there. I’ll just come in with, ‘oh this’d sound good as a chorus and this’d sound good as a verse’.

CW: And then we tell him, ‘no actually it doesn’t’.

JL: And there’s the John song that really rocks but we don’t play anymore. What happened to that? That awesome instrumental.

BH: I walked out into the crowd and everyone was crying.

CW: People were actually jumping into the bonfire.

JL: There was a bit of a sort of Pied Piper effect causing them to do that.

BH: Subtle, satanic vibes.

JL: Let’s move on to something more serious, like our contribution to cancer research.

DN: Or contribution to the music industry?

JL: Lack thereof.

DN: How long have you actually been playing together?

JL: It’s been about a year and a half.

CW: But only writing in the last six or seven months.

DN: But you’re quite a new band in terms of actually playing to audiences, have you just had the two gigs?

JL: So far, except for our rockin’ surprise gigs at people’s houses.

BH: We were on MTV a couple of times.

JL: Still finding our feet.

BH: And Caleb developed a heroin addiction.

DN: Well I mean do you have some sort of direction in mind? Is there anywhere you want to go with this band or is it just for shits and giggles?

LF: I would love to make it big. I guess that’s everyone’s ultimate dream.

JL: I’m keen for that.

LF: But it’s just the steps leading to that – most of us are working or studying so one of the biggest challenges starting off was finding time when we could all practice together and it’s hard for everyone to be there because of the sheer size of our group. People are working and studying and everything else. But we’d definitely love to start playing much more regularly.

BH: We feel we could make it quite easily in Adelaide.

JL: We will own this town.

CW: The music that we started doing is really happy kind of fun stuff so as soon as the mood of this band starts becoming less happy and less fun, then I’m pretty sure I’m gonna quit. Just a warning.

BH: The cost of being in a band though. It took us quite a few years to get all this gear. It’s not cheap.

CW: It’s not like we all went to some private school.

LF: Which is one of the things we have against a lot of Adelaide bands whose parents will buy them amazing equipment when they’re in year nine and they don’t even know how to use it.

DN: In a place like Adelaide and particularly with bands starting out, I’ve found that a lot of them talk about how important networking is – how important is it to you? I know Bob’s going around telling everyone how you’re going to be on iTunes by September –

JL: Really?

BH: That’s when I’m drunk, Dunja.

LF: Bob has to have a curfew from now on.

CW: We’re just picking up gigs. There are enough bands that need supporting acts in Adelaide so if they like our sound, they’ll get us to play with them.

JL: I’m pretty reluctant to bring up that I’m in a band, even with people that I know are in bands themselves.

DN: Do you find that girls start treating you differently?

CW: Bob still has the fact that he’s really unattractive.

DN: Well we might leave it there on that note.

Auxilla will be playing at the Ed Castle on Currie St in Adelaide this Thursday, October 21st, with special guests Moonwaves. Doors at 9pm.

Auxilla are (L-R): Mark Fonz, Bob Hookway, Lukas Freer, Caleb Williamson, Matthew King and John Langdon.

(Image credits: 1, 2.)