The Cherry Dolls
Vocals: Joshua Aubry
Guitar: Lachie Gilmour
Guitar: Jakob Kagan
Bass: Mick Byers
Drums: Thomas van der Vliet
Following on from yesterdays review of The Cherry Dolls is the recent interview with bassist Mick Byers.
You guys dropped the debut single Wasted Pearls, about a year ago now. But since then things have just taken off.. What do you think is the reason for the quick success?
It pretty much just came down to putting in the hard yards to promote our band early. By releasing new material regularly and playing a lot of shows, we kept people interested. We also made sure we got as many people as we could to come down and see us play and we make sure we bring our A game to every show.
Seems to be alot of electricity between the band, how’d The Cherry Dolls come to be?
The Cherry Dolls first came about when Lachie and Josh got together late 2013/early 2014 in a jam room. From then members slowly came along until we formed our original 4 piece in early March.
How long have you all been playing music?
Thomas, Jakob and Josh have all been playing in bands since they were young. Lachie has been playing guitar for about 6 years and I’ve been playing bass for a year and a half. The Cherry Dolls is both mine and Lachie’s first band.
Heaps of people dig the sound of The Cherry Dolls including Dom (Alessio) and Nick (Findlay) of Triple J. Who are the influences for The Cherry Dolls?
Our influences range from The Rolling Stones, (early) Kings of Leon, The Doors, Black Sabbath and then also a lot of music from the 60’s and 70’s era.
Your singer, Josh, has a really genuine rock-star persona on stage, and you guys get get the crowd to go absolutely crazy. Where does he draw his inspiration from?
Josh has been a front man for 2 other bands prior to The Cherry Dolls and has developed a pretty unique performing style that brings a lot of energy and character to our shows. He’s always confident when playing in front of people and hates finishing a show feeling like we haven’t performed to our full potential.
There was one show where he jumped off a table onto the stage, slipped on beer and almost got knocked the fuck out. We all freaked out, thinking he wasn’t going to get up but he just laid there and continued to sing. I guess he just likes to make sure people remember us.
In terms of the writing process, how much does the music affect the lyrics and vice versa?
We never write around lyrics, we usually just write songs while jamming in a rehearsal space and let the structure of the music naturally fall into place, from there Josh will write his lyrics.
You’re playing shows left right and center, how do you find the time to jam and write new songs?
It’s been tough to write new songs lately since we’ve had various changes to the lineup over the past 6 months. This consequently forced us to spend most of our free time teaching past and fill in members our set. But this past week we have started to get stuck back into the writing process and are hoping to formulate a new set for the coming year.
Adventure Time or Regular Show? Pink Floyd or Rolling Stones? Pizza or Pasta?
Adventure Time. Pink Floyd. Definitely Pasta.
Whether it be on the way to a show or just doing your own thing, what’s the funniest thing to happen to you?
We took our good friend Dan along to help out with our first interstate trip (in Sydney). Dan ended up getting really drunk and when we were walking home from our show, he thought it would be a good idea to start walking with his eyes shut. He made it about 25 meters before he walked into a 2 foot high brick garden bed. He face planted over the other side and got pretty fucked up. It might be one of those “you had to be there” moments but it was hilarious!
Another story that comes to mind is when we were in Werribee for a show at Mynt Lounge. We had just finished sound check and it was about 8:30 or so and we (me, Josh, Lachie, Sonny (ex- member), James (ex- member) and my girlfriend Holly) were out the front chatting. Streets were pretty busy with families and what not. But anyway, out of nowhere some girl sitting down calls out “guy in the denim jacket! guy in the denim jacket!”. It took a moment to realise she was talking to me. We looked over to see what was up and she yelled rather loudly in this busy street “CUM IN MY MOUTH!”. What a fucking shock that was! No one had any idea what had just happened. We kind of brushed it off after a moment of awkwardness and just thought she was really drunk. Josh started talking to her friend a little later and as it turns out apparently she wasn’t even that drunk. But hey that’s Werribee for you, I guess haha.
Crystal Pistol is your latest release, and accompanying it is a short film clip, what’s the story behind the video?
Going into it we didn’t really have a plan but when we got to filming, it all sort of fell into place. Josh thought it would be a cool idea to dress up as gangsters and have a poker tournament. Basically we all find out Josh is cheating and a big gun fight breaks out (I got to punch Josh in the face which ruled, haha). Josh kills us all, only to realise the dealer (his sister Christina) is still there alive, she kills him and steals the pot of money.
Where does The Cherry Doll road lead to next?
It’s a long road… Firstly, we’re recording our debut EP (with Alex from The Delta Riggs) this Sunday! We’ve then got a run of shows in NSW, including our first festival (Farmer & The Owl) in Wollongong next month. Where we’re sharing the line up with some of our favourite bands like DZ Deathrays and Bass Drum of Death which will be awesome. We’re in the process of organizing a one year anniversary show which should be cool too.
We’re going to work as hard as we can this year to push the band as far as we can and have another solid run!
Thanks for chatting Mick. Good luck for the rest of the year!
Upcoming shows:
14/2 Yah Yahs (Melbourne)
28/2 Ding Dong Lounge
12/3 Frankies Pizza Bar (Sydney)
13/3 The World Bar (Sydney)
14/3 Farmer & The Owl Festival (Wollongong)
15/3 Captain Cook Hotel (Sydney)
27/3 Grace Darling: 1st Birthday (Melbourne)