CREATIVE CONVERSATIONS 082: WAAX ON BEING FREE, TOURING, AND THE NEW ALBUM

Words by Patrick Staveley.

Exciting Brisbane rock band WAAX are back with some new music, collaborating with producers Nick DiDia and Bernard Fanning again for their second full-length album, At Least I’m Free. It is an honest album loaded with raw vulnerability and contrasted by the high octane energy WAAX prides itself on seen in such songs as the hit No Doz. WAAX have also announced a huge national tour covering 22 dates from October to December. FMM’s Pat interviewed WAAX’s key songwriters, singer Maz DeVita and guitarist James Gatling to discuss the new album.

FMM: You’ve just wrapped up a tour supporting The Amity Affliction across Australia. How much fun was this tour?

James: It was great. We were playing to a completely different crowd. It was a lot of fun, really great to be on the road and see the country again.

FMM: Congratulations on the release of the new album. Can you talk me through the inspiration behind the album title, At Least I’m Free?

Maz: We went through a number of different iterations of the title and I think James was like “why don’t we use a lyric?” which I thought was genius.  I kind of landed on ‘at least I’m free,’ which is actually a lyric from one of the songs on the album called Jeff on the Streets. I just felt like it encapsulated everything – there’s a sense of freedom on the record, there’s a new lease on life, there’s a new chapter and I went through a lot of stuff and left a really bad situation and thought, ‘at least I’m free.’

FMM: So it’s your second full length album as a band. How would you compare this experience of songwriting and recording on this record in comparison to the first album?

Maz: It’s completely different. We started working on this record at the end of 2019 and kicked off with a trip that I had to LA. I went there and did a few co-writing sessions and I ended up writing with some really incredible artists – one of them being Linda Perry who’s written with Christina Aguilera, Pink, etc. and I also wrote with K. Flay who’s an incredible artist in her own right. We had this batch of songs then James joined the band and James and I became the primary collaborators in terms of songwriters in this band, so the whole song-writing process changed. We went into the whole thing without any rules or parameters around it – we wanted to see where we could push ourselves. With the last record, it was just a good rock record and this record – we wanted to make it a full immersive experience; we wanted it to be dramatic, theatrical, have lots of samples, harmonies, tracks. I’ve matured as a person, as a songwriter, as a lyricist and I think that reflects in our next record. We’ve all grown up over the last few years – it’s a completely different ball game.

FMM: For all your diehard fans that love all your music up until now – what are they likely to experience when they hear it for the first time?

James: I think that there’s a lot of Waax’s history in this album – I think it’s interlaced with the history of Waax. What it does do is push forward sonically and thematically and spread us into different areas of song-writing and musicality. We think it’s a very eclectic album. It works together as a whole and there’s definitely bits of old Waax in it and plenty of the new stuff.

FMM: Teaming up with Nick and Bernard again for this album, what do you guys learn from those two? They’ve been in the business for a long time. I’m sure they have a lot to offer.

Maz: Yeah I think above all else they support us. They truly support us and our ideas. I think they’ve taught us a lot about musical language in the studio as well. They communicate a certain way that makes things more efficient and I think that’s definitely rubbed off on us. They’re just naturally always mentoring us and guiding us from lyric point of view to production point of view. (They’re) a powerhouse of knowledge and we’re super lucky that we got to work with them again.

James: Walking into that studio was like walking into their world or their house. You were instantly taken to a space where they’re running the show but they were so welcoming. It felt like we were being guided by mentors as well as being recorded by some of the best in the game.

FMM: With the song Most Hated Girl, the band did something dramatic like pretending you’d left the band. Is that something you’d thought of because it’s harder to differentiate yourself from everyone else in the industry and you want to get your own attention in a way?

Maz: Everything I guess has been done before. I don’t know…I’d always thought about what my life would be like if I didn’t have the band because it’s all I know. As soon as I was basically an adult I was doing it so I think I’d always fantasise about what would happen if I bounced out. It was also a joke; we thought it was really funny. A lot of people were genuinely concerned for my wellbeing. A lot of people were like “Is she OK?? Like what the fuck has happened?” Yeah, I guess we wanted to do something different, something funny… we thought it would be funny.

James: I think the idea for the music video came first and then a brainstorming, spit-balling session and then maybe it was Maz (who) suggested “What if I had left the band?” It just worked so well as this almost transmedia event where it took the song from just being a song and a video but turned it into an experience that people could actually live through in a different platform and a different world.

FMM: When I was listening to your album, I couldn’t make it through without listening to No Doz a few times. I just really liked it in particular. It sounds so angry and emotional. You also worked with American singer K. Flay on this. Can you shed some light on the subject matter and what this was like to work on and record?

Maz: It was great. Basically I got into a room with K. Flay and immediately knew we would connect creatively. I picked up guitar and she found a beat and it ended up being what we sampled on the actual track that made the album. She just literally googled rock beat. It was so organic, it wasn’t really thought out or anything. I started strumming some chords. She kind of changed the way I approached phrasing in song-writing. She wanted to do something really rhythmic, she has a hip-hop background as well as a rock background. She (wanted it to sound) like a rap beat. I wrote the chorus. You can hear the difference in song-writing, it sounds like two styles together. It was a step in a different direction, it’s something we want to explore more for our next record like more drum tracks, more experimental melodies and ways of putting songs together.

FMM: As a band you all look like you’re having so much fun, the best time on stage. When it comes down to your hard work in the studio – is it hard to get work done? Does somebody take the reins?

James: I think we put on different hats. When you’re on stage it’s so easy to lose yourself and have fun. In the studio we are quite dogged and we’re all paying attention at all times. There isn’t the same sort of tomfoolery as we get up to in other situations.

Maz: We work hard when we need to and we play hard when we want to. We take our job seriously but not that seriously.

James: Also working with Nick and Bernie, we need to make sure we’re pulling the finger out and doing our work too.

FMM: You’ve just announced a huge national tour in support of the album coming up. How are you feeling ahead of this one?

Maz: We are so keen! It’s a massive tour! It’s daunting, we’re all looking at the calendar in front of us and we’re like ‘holy shit,’ it’s literally across three months which is the biggest tour we’ve ever done.

James: It’s good, we’re going to places we’ve never played before. Places in Launceston, Devonport, Erina.

Maz: I guess you could say we’ve got our work cut out for us but we’ll always pull through.

James: We’ve just got to learn to play the album songs because there’s so much production on the album that we have to work out how to translate it to a live setting.

‘At Least I’m Free’ is OUT NOW!