The concerto is quite an ambitious project, why something so huge on the eve of your album release and tour?

The Queensland Orchestra were looking for a few different things for their music program this year. They heard about the concerto and I think initially were looking at trying to get Deep Purple out to do it but couldn’t get them. Someone had heard of George and thought what about these guys. It’s been good to work as George but not on our own music, although we are doing about 9 of our own songs as well with a smaller 12 piece mini orchestra.

With the album coming out, do you have any feeling whatsoever on how it might go?

No I don’t mind. I’m just glad to get it out there finally after how ever many years we’ve been talking about. As a band we are all happy with the product that we’ve come up with. We have come up with something, for me anyway, that sums up the last three years that I have been in George. You’ll find some of the songs are there for the fans that have been with us right from the start and some that we haven’t even played live yet.

Did you have a certain sound or feel in mind for the album or take it track by track?

We took each song on its individual merits. We worked really closely with our producer David Nicholas (Pretenders, Elton John, Pulp) and he said we’ll go through every song. We had about 40 songs to begin with and culled the list back to 18 that we worked on, then back to 13 for the album. When we come up to album two a lot of the songs that didn’t make album one will resurface, and we’ll rework some of them.

You recorded at Mangrove Studios, how did you find it recording there?

It was great. The gear is fantastic, more than enough for us and the setting is great as well. It was really important to find a place we were comfortable with. We didn’t want to do it in Brisbane and we have so many friends and everyone would pop in to wish us well and you end up not getting anything done. We wanted to focus as a five piece for this album. There are some great studios around Sydney and Melbourne but because they were inner city we struggled with the traffic, sometimes the vibe can get a bit heavy. Mangrove was great because it’s out in the hills in Gosford.

You went into the studio with songs demoed and rehearsed but how different have they turned out?

We worked on whatever we could play live then we recorded them live. So whatever we would play at a concert is what we recorded at Mangrove. We did that for a few weeks. While that process was happening you always get fresh ideas for different things, so we made mental notes. Then we went to Byron Bay for four weeks and that was for the overdubbing sessions. In between that we took two weeks off so we could sit with the basic song structures that we had. Then at Byron Bay we hired a mobile recording rig. We set up in a friend’s house in the hills, and all the extra guitar parts and percussion and strings and brass and marimbas, everything, we just threw into the songs. We ended up having this huge range of sounds to choose from . When it came to mixing with David we worked out which parts needed to be there. Obviously all of those sounds didn’t make it into the songs but David’s idea was that you throw anything and everything you can think of into the songs and see what it sound s like. You can always hit the delete button and get rid of it but you can’t visualise it if it’s not there.

How did you go recording your drums, did you play around with microphone positioning etc?

Yes. I had a different set up for each song. David really wanted me to use whatever drums I was using for that song, so if I normally use 4 toms, David would say just set up the two you are using in this song. I went through a lot of different set ups. A friend of mine in Brisbane called Greg collects drums and he gave me a lot of vintage snare drums to use. I had 11 or 12 snares that we rifled through and they all had different sounds and characteristics. So we found the perfect sound for each song and tuned all my drums into the key the song was played in. So I’d go in for an hour and half before we started, just tuning all of my drums into the key of the particular song we were doing that day. Then we’d get a sound and check the sounds with the bass, snare and rest of the kit, and the guitars until we had the whole band sounding good, and recorded through the afternoon. I found it a real challenge tuning each drum for each song because it’s not something you do often, and certainly can’t do live because you are playing so many different songs. You don’t have the time to tune and retune . But David said the drums sit in the mix better if they’re tuned into the key of the song, and on listening to it now it’s actually true. The snares are ringing in the key basically.

What does drum kit consist of usually?

22" kick, snare drum which is about 14 x 5, then 8, 10 and 14 inch floor toms, and for some songs I also use the 12 inch tom. And my friend bought a 24 inch bass drum for the recording. But the basic kit is like a five piece. Couple of rides, hats, couple of crashes, and that’s basically me.

You all have eclectic musical tastes, there’s some jazz in there, is there much room for improvisation in George?

Yes, at any given point we go off on a tangent. Quite often, and we’d like to keep it that way. It keeps us interested and gives some different to the crowd. We usually improvise the most at the beginning of Polyserena and Spawn. We definitely have a bit of a jam before we get into the songs.

How are you going to go replicating the album live?

The record company has given us a touring advance so that we could go and buy some new gear. We’ve been touring on the road for 2 or 3 years with the same gear and it’s starting to show. Festival said it will help your live shows, which is basically promoting your new album, so we’ll help you out. So I’ve just bought an electronic drum kit and I’m getting a sampler. There are a lot of extra loops and percussion that I play that I’ll be triggering to bolster some of the songs. There are some we can’t play because most of the rhythms are made up by different hand percussion things I played. So I don’t have enough arms to play everything. We’re looking at setting it up so that I trigger all the horns and strings as well. We decided to go with triggering so that we can keep that spontaneity in the set. A lot of bands play to backing DAT tapes for that sort of stuff but you then have to follow a set arrangement. Then if you get out, it all falls apart. Whereas with triggering you still have to keep in time, same with a DAT tape, but if we decide to go off on a tangent I can turn the samples off.

What gear did you buy?

I actually have an endorsement with Yamaha drums, which I recently picked up. I bought DT Xpress, not the new one, the Xtreme because for what I’m doing I don’t need the top range drums, I’m just using the pads to trigger off things. And I think I’m going to use Ty’s old EMU sampler because he’s just got a really good deal for a new sampler through EMU. It will be good because he knows how to work his sampler, so we don’t have the worry of working it all out. I’m very new to the world of electronics.

Does the band have a masterplan?

Just to keep making music that we like initially, and that we are happy to send out to people. If they keep liking it, we’ll keep making it. And that’s it. As a band we’re looking to do things like the Jon Lord concerto to keep things interesting and down the track doing films scores as a group. At the moment we’ll get through the three album deal and see how we go.