1. *Interviewed by Troy Culpan
   

It’s always great to talk to new bands and even more so when in only a few years of existence have managed to get signed to a major label in Sony BMG, support bands such as Cobra Starship, Owl City, Shinedown and more and release their debut album.  This is just what Amy Meredith have done, a 5 piece band out of NSW have taken radio by storm with their single ‘Lying’ and if that song is any indication of what’s to come then the boys will deserve every success they receive.

Drummer Kosta Theodosis took some time to tell us about the album, touring and just who Amy Meredith actually is.

For starters, the first time I saw you was opening for Shinedown earlier this year, I remember seeing ‘Amy Meredith’ was supporting and thinking, oh, I wonder what she’s like, then 5 guys hit the stage.  So tell us, where did the name come from and how many times a day are you mistaken for a female folk singer?

Well basically the name was, our lead singer had a babysitter when we was about 5 years old and he had the biggest crush on her and her name was Amy Meredith so basically he decided to name the band after her as a little tribute to his first crush.  It’s actually really confusing with the name, because unless you’re aware of the band clearly everyone just thinks we’re some female acoustic act, so we’re trying to get the message out there that its actually a band of 5 guys.

Your sound can be explained as electro, pop, rock, synth, I mean pretty much every word you can think of.  Who would you sight as your main influences in your sound?

Well all of us in the band have a lot of common influences and I guess that’s come out in the music, bands like The Cure is a big one, The Killers even, The Smiths a bit, even current bands like Phoenix we love so there’s a lot of new wave type stuff, post punk stuff and a lot of newer stuff as well.

Where were you the first time you heard one of your songs on the radio?  How did that feel?

It’s always in the car, I’m always in the car when I hear it so I do a lot of driving around, I’m basically the Taxi driver of the band always picking everyone up so we would’ve heard it in the car driving the boys around somewhere, its really exciting actually, we’re used to it now as we hear it a few times a day.  It’s a great feeling and good to know its getting out to a larger audience

You’ve been lucky to support some big bands coming through Australia, who has been your favourite and given you the best piece of advice?  What was that?

That’s a good question, I guess touring with Cobra Starship and Owl City, that was probably my favourite tour because we got to play to a lot of all age audiences, some of the younger kids we don’t normally get to play to and they were all very excited and playing to big full houses on that tour so it was really great.  Haven’t really got any advice from the bands, we all just have a good time and go out a bit sometimes after the show, but no really great advice.

Was there anything they were doing that you thought ‘oh I should do that?’

Not necessarily one thing but its just really great seeing some of these bands that are constantly touring and how slick and tight their shows are, you know they’re playing hundreds of shows a year all around the world so just seeing the consistency of their shows night to night and how they put it together, its just really interesting to see how bands that have been doing it for a lot longer put the show together.

After the show are they supportive and love what you’re doing?

Yeah definitely a lot of the bands are really great and come down and check out our show from side of stage or whatever, we’ve been really lucky to tour with some great bands, especially Cobra Starship again, they were really encouraging and really good to us, because they were just telling us how they’d been there before and that every band has been in the same position and doing the opening slots and stuff but there’s always a good camaraderie between bands and us so its cool.

The video for your current single ‘Lying’ is a great concept, who came up with that idea and how much fun was it to make?

We really love it, our director Mark Alsten he actually just presented the treatment to us and we all loved it from the moment we saw it, we all just put in a few ideas and changed a few things to our liking, some of the boys had preferences of what they wanted to do in the video but it was a lot of fun to make turning up to the studio that day, we had a lot of fun, it was tiring actually for the performance part of the video, for me especially because I was in the back of everyone’s shot, so while the other boys were just hanging out with the girls, I was stuck playing for probably 3 hours, the song over and over as hard as I could so it was actually quite tiring. But once that was done it was a lot of fun.

The single has also reached number 7 on the iTunes chart which is no small feat these days, are you blown away by the reaction and reception you’re receiving with the single?

We really are, it was such a surprise because we saw it, we were a little bit nervous about the track, because I remember when we released it we were in Queensland and we were in the tour bus just checking out the iTunes chart on our iPhones and yeah it wasn’t doing too well and it was such a slow build.  We thought it had its time and it just kept building and eventually, into the 30’s, 20’s, 10’s and up to number 7 which was amazing for us and it got to number 10 on the ARIA charts just last week, its really exciting and blown us away, especially for a single, its very difficult for especially a new band to get a top 10 single so we’re very, very lucky and happy.

With some major radio support too, I’ve heard it a lot

Yeah, definitely we’ve got a lot of support from radio, so we’re lucky I guess and people are liking the song which is nice

So tell us about what we can expect from your debut album ‘Restless’ due on July 2nd?

Basically if you’ve heard the singles it’s a similar vein to that, a bit of history of the band the first song on the album is actually the first song we ever wrote together so its from our earliest stuff to stuff we wrote just specifically for the album.  It’s a lot of fun, it’s a great up beat album and I think it’s a fun album and people can enjoy listening to it in their car or dancing around to it at home, I think people are going to like it.

Being your debut album, how hard was it to pick that batch of songs to represent how you want the world to be introduced to Amy Meredith?

Yeah it was really difficult actually, we had a lot of discussions about it actually because there were so many songs, even coming in to recording the album there were about 60 songs written that we had to cull down to songs we wanted to record and from the songs we recorded then we had a bunch of extra songs that we had to cull down to the 12 that were on the album so there was a lot of discussions and I’m sure there are a few favourites that everyone had that didn’t make it on to the album as well, it was difficult, but they’re good for B-sides and might make an appearance on the next one as well.

In only 2 years of existence, you guys have done more in this time than some bands take 10 years to do.  What do you put this down to?

It’s been a few years I think the band, well not long, 2007 the band started, everyone in the band has the same idea of what we want, every one works very hard to make it happen, no one wants to have a normal job, we all want this band to be our job, so we’re putting in 100% effort and working as hard as we can to make it happen I guess.

Was the recording process fun?  Was it different to just doing an EP at home?

Yeah it was a really great time actually, the boys had a lot of fun down at The Grove on the Central Coast working with some great producers and it was big, it was over a couple of weeks, lots of fun, all the drumming was done over the first day or 2 basically so there wasn’t a lot to do there, so we had a lot of fun down there.

You’re very interactive with your fans, particularly those on facebook and from that continue to develop a major following.  How important is the social media as a tool for the band?

I think quite a large part of the bands success, being able to keep in touch with our fans and have them be able to ask us questions and just talk about anything its just really important to our success and we appreciate our fans a lot and we wouldn’t be here without them, so we just love having a chat with them and I think it’s a big part of our success.

You have dates set until the end of August promoting the record, how long do you plan on being out on the road?

Basically once the album comes out, we’re going to go non stop, we just want to get the music out to as many people as we can, we’re doing a big regional run with Grinspoon actually through August and September and straight after that we’re heading into our massive national headline tour which is the big one I’m looking forward to and that’s through the end of September and October and we’ll be going everywhere on that tour and I’m very excited about that one, there’s a lot of plans.  We’re planning on heading over to the US in that time and just playing as many shows as we can, so it’s really exciting.

Have you got some interest from the US?

Yeah there is actually, we’re heading over as soon as possible cause there’s some good things happening over there for us so we just want to get over in the next couple of months and do some showcases and get some management together and we’ll see how we can go over there.

So that’s what’s next for Amy Meredith, all album and touring, all full steam ahead?

Yeah exactly as soon as the albums out on Friday, we’re doing a few local shows at the moment which is good, we played the ASTRA awards last night and there’s a couple of shows around Sydney, we don’t always get to play around Sydney we’re always touring so that’s exciting, yeah just basically full steam ahead for the rest of the year.