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Australian Musician Issue 16 Summer 98

Even by Stephen Andrew

There's something refreshing about getting back to 'pure' music, returning to the source or the basis of a genre. Even are a band that unmutate pop. Their influences (mid-period Beatles, The Kinks, The Small Faces, etc) are not just worn on their sleeves, but emblazened in big swirly letters across their tie-dyed chests, metaphorically speaking. They are not a retro group or a 'tribute band,' but a trio of musicians who recognise that the sounds of the late 1960s are as potent and emotionally powerful as they were thirty years ago. Singer, songwriter and guitarist Ashley Naylor is not coy about where he and the band draw their stylistic inspiration.

It was an evolution. My big band when I was a teenager was Led Zeppelin and I slowly gravitated to their earlier material. I then found out a lot about The Beatles and The Who, slowly discovering it myself. A lot of the bands I liked as a kid, like The Hoodoo Gurus had sixties references and I guess I have a romantic attachment to the era because I never lived through it. My favourite bands in general are from that period but I still like a lot of current music.

To capture the spirit of these influences, Even, not surprisingly, use equipment that often dates back to their favourite era.

I'm using a Hi Watt amp at the moment and up until recently I was using it through a Marshall box but I've recently acquired this beautiful Vox speaker which I've been taking out on the road. Unfortunately I didn't record through that. We recorded "Come Again" at Woodstock, which is owned by Joe Camilleri and he's got a wonderful array of old amplifiers. So I was using old Fender amps and Wally played his bass through a Fender Bassman. Steve Hadley from Paul Kelly's band lent Wally a Hofner violin bass and he also used his own Gibson which sounded a treat on the record. Matt's got a '63 Ludwig Pearl drum kit. We're traditional in the sense that we like instruments that sound good! At the moment I'm playing an Epiphone Casino, but it's a re-issue so I can't lay claim to finding a great vintage guitar. It's a '96 one but it's got the old P-90 style pick ups which really sustain.

" Come Again" is Even's second LP. Compared to their first album, Less Is More, Ashley says that the new disc has more texture and variety. The first album, although it's pretty strong song wise is a little one dimensional sounding. With Come Again every song in some way sounds a bit different from the preceding track.

The problem of capturing and reproducing the sonic details of Come Again live is something this three-piece tackle with a different attitude when outside of the studio.

You rev it up. Although people think we are a pop band we do actually rock live. I think we probably gravitate to the songs that lend themselves to the live sound and there's probably three or four tracks on this album that probably don't work that well live. We choose songs that aren't going to fall in a heap.