CREATIVE CONVERSATIONS 107: JOSH FAHY WALKS US THROUGH THE MAKING OF THE GOOD LEKKER SOUND
Interview by Mark Griffin.
I hate Good Lekker. Not really. But, if you’ve ever been to Wollongong’s iconic music venue La La La’s, then you’ve probably read those words above the bar. However, after selling out six shows in three days at that very venue, the truth is Wollongong loves Good Lekker.
The band has kicked off 2023 with a killer new single, Show I Care, and we were lucky enough to sit down with guitarist and singer, Josh Fahy to find out all about it and get a surprise announcement about their upcoming EP.
FMM: The first thing I noticed about the new single is the cover art is really similar to your last single, Pretty Boys.
Josh: Yeah, well actually, I’ve taken both of those photos. I do a bit of photo stuff on the side. I’ve been into it for years. And the EP art is kind of similar as well. It builds from the two of them. So yeah, we’re going to have an EP coming out soon. Guess that’s putting the cart a bit early. But yeah, we thought let’s have a really, you know, set of releases that are tied up to each other visually in that kind of portrait style.
FMM: Yeah it’s a really clean, neat look. I really like it.
Josh: Yeah, they’re just like photos, portraits of kind of vulnerable looking subjects.
FMM: Well, we’re really keen for the EP, and I also noticed that Pretty Boys and Show I Care are sonically similar. They’re both a little bit dancier than maybe some of the stuff you’ve done before.
Josh: Yeah, I mean, Pretty Boys is probably the outlier on the EP, because of stuff that happened with the recording process of that song. So interestingly, on the EP, of all of the tracks on there, I’d say Pretty Boys is the outlier if there is one. It was recording a little bit earlier along with one of the other tracks, and it ended up being a little bit more 80s.
FMM: I was gonna say, there was a real new wave thing happening in the opening of that one.
Josh: Yeah, a hundred per cent. Whereas the rest of the EP doesn’t quite go all the way down there, but you’ll still hear like Junos and Pads filling it out, that kind of thing. There’s a fair bit of percussion in the production, that kind of stuff. So yeah, there are similarities but I’d say if there’s an outlier it is probably Pretty Boys.
FMM: So you’ve got a few more tracks coming that’ll be singles first and then the EP?
Josh: No we’ll be… I don’t even know if I’m allowed to announce all this, but we’ll run with it anyway… The EP, we’re aiming to get it out sometime in March, so these are the two lead singles for it. I guess, yeah, after these singles we’ll jump straight into it.
FMM: And with Show I Care, is there anything really deep in what the song’s about? I noticed you said in your press release that you were looking to keep the lyrics kind of vague so people could hang their own meaning on it.
Josh: Yeah, I mean, the way that the song was written, it was Mal [our guitarist Malachi] who had the idea of the riffy bit there. He sketched out a demo of it and then when he came in with it, we jammed it out. So first of all, we have three guitarists and one of them also sings. So I thought, you know what, I’m leaving the guitar down for this, it doesn’t need any more production. We didn’t go too heavy on the production, and when it came to putting lyrics down to it, I thought, yeah, I’m going to keep these pretty simple, poppy. It’s just a kind of fun dance-y, poppy track. I’m also at a point right now, this is kind of a just a personal thing, where I don’t want to explain all this kind of stuff. I just think it’s nice to have people interpret a song or piece of art how they will. But, it’s kind of nice for people to interpret the meaning of a song and lyrics and embed their own meaning and what it means to them.
FMM: Amazing. And you mentioned for production, you worked with Daniel Willington and Steve Smart on this track. Is this the first time you worked with these guys?
Josh: Steve’s mastered pretty much all of our stuff, I think from the start. And yeah, Dan’s done most of our stuff. He did, I think, our second ever single in 2018 or 19. We’ve worked with one other guy, Jack Nigro and then we kind of came back to Dan and we’ve been working with Dan for every release since 2019.
FMM: Do you find having the same team really helps hone the sound?
Josh: Absolutely. Dan’s such a joy to work with when it comes to anything musical. Mixing, coming up with ideas, and he can tolerate six of us in the studio which is a bit of a tall order sometimes
FMM: And so with the songwriting, does everyone have their own input? You mentioned that your guitarist came up with the riff for Show I Care. Is it often just one person or is it more collaborative?
Josh: Well yeah, Mal pretty much wrote most of the song. I think he came up with the riff and then slapped it into a demo. It’s often been pretty collaborative in the past, we like to jam stuff out in the room together, someone will come up with an idea and we’ll flesh it out, we’ll often change it, and we’ll go back and demo it. But even the other day, I showed a good mate of mine a demo I’ve written recently and hew was like it’s insane you guys can all write a song completely on your own and it sounds similar.
FMM: So everyone’s always putting out stuff that sounds like Good Lekker no matter who wrote it?
Josh: Yeah exactly. The other day I was putting this demo together and I thought, oh what would Mal play? What’s a very Mal part? So I put down a lead part with certain tones and stuff that’s very Mal. So, I was writing it thinking, ‘how would he go about this?' What would it sound like?’ So I think that feeds into the writing process a bit. So yeah, even when different people write their own song sand bring them in, or whether we jam out a song together, we have an understanding of what the Good Lekker sound is and it migrates back toward that in some way.
FMM: That’s really cool. And what would you say, if you had to sum up the sound of Good Lekker. What would you say it is?
Josh: Oh, dancey Brit-Pop maybe? Yeah.
FMM: Sort of Wombats-y?
Josh: Yeah, definitely. Gray and I, the two main vocalists, have pretty different voices. Hamo, our bass player, he contributes backing vocals quite a lot. He has a very different voice as well. So, it kind of depends on who’s singing. Sometimes, we merge different sounds. There’s a few different sounds on the EP coming up. But, I think if you reduce it all, you come back to that like dancey Brit-Pop, pretty, simple production, kinda like pentatonic riffs, but with that classic Mal sound over everything. So yeah, it really comes back to a structure that doesn’t change all that much even if a lot of elements of the song do change.
FMM: And obviously you’ve kicked of 2023 early with the release of Show I Care. Have you got big plans for the rest of the year?
Josh: Yeah. It’s going to be hard because we’re all working and stuff as well at the minute, because, you know, the band’s still pretty small-level at the moment. But, we really want to write something longer, like maybe an album, just a big continuous piece. So, we’ll see how the EP goes. We want to be on tour as much as we possibly can. Get out there, get our songs on the radio and you know, the new Kingmaker, Spotify playlists and all the rest of that. Just trying and get out there, writing music, doing all the same stuff.
FMM: Any big gigs coming up that you’re excited for?
Josh: Yeah. We’ve got the tour we just announced. So, in May we have a headline tour that’s just keeping it simple. Sydney, Brisbane, Melbourne. They’ve been the three kind of core markets for us, especially Brisbane. Brisbane actually goes hard. Love playing Brisbane. They know what it’s about there. It’s one of the best places to play in Australia, I reckon. The crowds are always really into it. We always sell heaps of merch there, so we really like Brisbane.
FMM: Do you find that, with the different cities, you notice that the music scenes operate differently? Is there something that you struggle with in your local scene say, that’s different in Brisbane?
Josh: I mean there’s always those kind of platitudes about a certain music scene right? Like people go ‘oh you know, Melbourne crowds just stand there and Sydney there’s all these stereotypes.’ You see it, but I don’t think a random snapshot of 100 odd or 150 odd people who go to a gig is exactly reflective of a whole wider culture and attitudes about music. But yeah, if I’m generalising, Brisbane crowds are really a lot of fun. I don’t know if our sound just works up there. There’s also a lot of cool indie-rock bands that come out of there, of course like Ballpark Music and the list goes on and on. I dunno if the sound just works well up there. Sydney, I think Sydney is a hard one to crack for a lot of musicians, actually.
FMM: Do you find it’s related to the lockout laws and all that?
Josh: I dunno, I’m probably too young to have a comparative understanding there. I think Sydney’s just hard to crack unless you’re really grinding the scene. You gotta work connection and stuff. Or obviously get flogged on Triple J or something like that. That would be helpful. Where are you from?
FMM: I’m in Wollongong, but grew up in Sydney.
Josh: So Wollongong, obviously we cut our teeth there…
FMM: I was going to say, I did have a question. At La La La’s [an iconic venue in Wollongong for indie acts], there’s a sing up behind the bar that says, “I Hate Good Lekker”…
Josh: So, that’s a joke from Harry Phillips who’s previously done a lot of our artwork for us. He’s the bar manager there. Harry’s been in at least one of our music videos. I think he’s in the Something Better music video. But man, I get sent it all the time (laughs), like midnight, I wake up in the morning to Instagram DM’s and someone’s like, “Hahaha”. I’ve seen it loads of times.
FMM: You ever tempted to just get up behind the bar and rip it down?
Josh: Nah. It’s Pretty Iconic at this point. There was a photo of us on the wall there for a while as well. I think it’s been taken down now, but that came after we sold out like six shows in three nights during Covid.
FMM: Wow.
Josh: Yeah, they had a cocktail named after us there too. Briefly.
FMM: Speaking of the big C word… How did that affect you guys?
Josh: Yeah. It came at a bad time. It wouldn’t have come at a good time for any band, but we felt it came at a particularly bad time for us. We’d just done that Australian tour. We were like yeah, 2020’s our year! We had all these plans, we’re still kind of in uni or just finishing up so we didn’t have as many commitments. We’re like 2020’s gonna be it! And then it came down hard, but we did our best. We recorded a bunch of songs through there, which kind of just came out as singles. They weren’t on or first EP and they won’t be on the second one. They were just the singles through the time there.
We played a little bit and tried a tour, I think we went to Canberra and then the lockdown came. So, we had to drive home on the night we’re meant to play a gig there. That was pretty hectic. We played some extra large shows, we played the Landsdowne show. So yeah, we did okay. We followed through it, but it was frustrating just continuing to cancel shows. Our Yours and Owls set in 2021 was stopped four songs in because the police thought all the small stages were getting to rowdy. We were headlining one of the small stages. So, that definitely impacts.
FMM: Yeah, that sounds rough. I guess you’re just hoping to make up for lost time now?
Josh: Yeah, absolutely. The music industry doesn’t wait around obviously, so you gotta throw yourself at it, try and release and try and do everything you can while you’re still young and have the energy and the motivation to do it.
FMM: So if you had any advice, you guys started in 2017, so if you from 2023 had one bit of advice for the boys starting out back then, what would it be?
Josh: I think we did a lot of things pretty well. So, just throw yourselves out there, try and network with people, try and just be that annoying prick that’s hitting people up to play their gigs. I would say maybe put more time into actually writing and curating and finishing songs and trying to release songs. I think it’s hard right now. We always prided ourselves back then as a live band, and we were. We put on a good show. We got really into it. But, the way you get to the top these days I think, is by not just grinding the pub scene or the music scene or whatever, it’s by actually releasing it, really good songs people wanna listen to. So I think the advice back then is try and curate the writing process, write more, record more, put out more songs and that’s the thing right? That’s how you get people to your gigs, sell merch, which is how you make money and stay viable in this horrible industry we’re in.
FMM: Great advice. Thanks so much for your time, and just to wrap it up, is there anything you want everyone to know about Good Lekker in 2023?
Josh: Yeah, I want people to listen to the music we put out. We’re really exceptionally proud about this EP we’ve recorded. We think it’s probably the best music we’ve put together as a band. Every single song on there is about as strong a release as we’ve had I think. So yeah, I really want people to listen to that and go, ‘that’s a really cool collection of music’.
FMM: Well thanks again Josh.
'SHOW I CARE' TOUR
SAT 20 MAY | THE LADY HAMPSHIRE, EORA/SYDNEY NSW
FRI 26 MAY | THE WORKERS CLUB, NAARM/MELBOURNE VIC
SAT 27 MAY | O'SKULLIGANS, MEANJIN/BRISBANE QLD
