Entitlements
Vocals: Connor Bailey
Guitar/Clean Vocals: Chris Morrish
Bass: Cody O’Brien
Drums: Dylan White
I recently sat down and chatted with Connor Bailey, frontman of Warrnambool hell-raisers Entitlements, about the future for the band, the back stories to their debut EP and breaking into the larger music scene.
What’s the underlying story to the tracks in your EP, The Change In Me?
So Alone and A Sense Of Purpose both have sort of a sad story behind it about being in a dark place and not knowing how to resolve the conflict within yourself and driving yourself deeper and deeper into the negativity before finding your way out of it, through means of self worth, love and the simple pleasures of life. Boundaries and Leave Me Be have a completely different persona behind them with a kind of defiant attitude with regards to people’s expectations of you throughout life and their wishes for you, I guess Boundaries especially has a message that this life is your own to make what you want of it and no matter what people tell you to do it’s up to you whether you do it or not. Calloused Hands is entirely about the human population and the corruption we’ve caused the Earth, growing up we’re unknowing and ignorant to the idea of impurity but as we grow we realise the world isn’t as innocent as we first thought.
Being from Warrnambool, a regional town in South West Victoria for those who don’t know, it must be hard to break into the bigger scenes such as Melbourne, Adelaide, etc.
We’ve put in a lot of effort since day one to try and get our name out there, we have also had a lot of help from our good friend and manager Liam Saunders, as well as a lot of other friends from around the the country that have helped spread our name and music.
What do you think the biggest hurdle was to overcome being a band from a small regional town?
Being relatively isolated from bigger cities proved to make it difficult to spread our name, but once we established a few friendships and connections, we gained interest from a number of different places that we never really expected to be possible.
How did you guys manage to do so in such a short period of time as a band?
The four of us have shared the same goals, dreams and vision of where we want to go as a band since the day we started and combined with our strong work ethic and passion for music, it was possible to break out of this little town quite quickly.
What do each of you tend to do in your spare time?
I myself am studying fitness and personal training, Chris and Cody spend a lot of their time working and Dylan does a bit of photography work in his spare time while he’s not playing Don Bradman Cricket 14.
You’re heading out on tour in a couple of weeks with Hindsight (Adelaide) in support of their recent single titled ‘Hole’. What shows are you looking forward to most on that tour?
In all honesty we’re really excited to play all of the shows on tour, but we always look forward to playing in Melbourne because we get to catch up with a lot of our best friends. We’re also excited to kick off in Adelaide because it’s Hindsight’s home town show.
Entitlements consists of only 4 members; one guitarist/singer, one drummer, one bassist and one vocalist. What happened to your old guitarist?
Without going into too much detail, we just felt it was beneficial for the band’s future and wellbeing that we parted ways. Both parties are happier now that we’ve made this decision and the band is going better than ever with a stronger relationship between the 4 of us.
Do you plan to bring in a 5th member in the near future?
We have been working on bringing in a new member when the time is right but as for now Entitlements will remain a 4 piece
You guys have a fairly unique sound for the most part and the EP seems to contain a large array of musical influences. Who would you say influenced the way you write your music as a band?
As a band we aspire to write music that has a good amount of both energy and atmosphere. We draw influence from bands who focus on these two aspects such as Hundredth, Counterparts, Crooks, Sierra (RIP) and Napoleon
How does the writing process work for Entitlements?
Chris will sit down and write/record a demo and after we’ve all sat down and had a listen we each contribute our own ideas to reconstruct and make the song into something we’re all keen on. Then I take it and write lyrics and send updates on the progress of the song to make sure everyones happy with the direction. After that we’ll jam it and make changes if needed, if no changes are needed then we’ve got ourselves a song
If you could tour the country with any 3 bands, who would you choose?
Hundredth, Crooks and Capsize.
Would You Rather: Burrito or BBQ Food?
Burrito fo’ sho’
Beers or Shots?
Why not both??
Boobies or Booty?
Booty all day
Are any of you in other bands or following other musical dreams while pursuing the career that is Entitlements?
Chris and I enjoy jamming on the acoustic a bit and Chris is also a part of a newly formed Indie project as well as his own Electronic side project
The EP, the tour, is it at all possible you’re working on something else?
There is a 100% chance you’ll be seeing a music video in the next few days
Thanks mate!