Not Enough Cooks

It's been five years now since local indie outfit We All Want To started building a name on the Brisbane scene, first attracting attention due to the looming presence of Screamfeeder stalwart Tim Steward in its ranks, but soon forging a solid reputation in their own right as a band to be reckoned with. They've released two strong albums now – 2010's self-titled debut and last year's Come Up Invisible – and are now releasing a second single from the latter record, No Signs, in the form of an eight-track EP. So far, so normal.

Where they've deviated from the standard scenario, however, is that for the Brisbane launch of No Signs they've come up with a novel approach – a night they've dubbed Take The Lead!. They'll be playing Come Up Invisible in its entirety, with a few additional band tracks thrown in for good measure, but with each track sung by a guest vocalist. They've roped in a slew of great names from Brisbane and beyond for the occasion – including Jamie Hutchings (Bluebottle Kiss), Jeremy Neale (Velociraptor), Alastair McRae (Inland Sea), Helen Franzmann (McKisko), Danny Widdicombe (The Wilson Pickers), Chris Dale (Halfway), Sue Ray plus a heap more equally talented ring-ins – all of whom will take ownership of a We All Want To track for the evening. It's a novel concept, and one that fortuitously seemed to arrive from nowhere.

“This guy that we auditioned for the bass player job actually recorded his own YouTube video of him playing I'm Still Waiting – one of the songs from the album – and he was a great singer and guitarist, probably better than he was a bass player. We watching that on YouTube and I went, 'Oh my God, that's amazing!'” recalls Steward. “It was a really good version, so I thought, 'What the hell? Why don't we get someone to do every song on the album and play it live?' In my naive brain that concept seemed easy and doable, and now we're under this Mt Everest of work and amidst this logistical nightmare of sorting stuff. It's not too bad really – Skye [Staniford – vocals] is looking after all of the rehearsal schedules and what songs people are doing, and I'm kind of doing the artwork and the promo and whatnot, so we're on it.”

Steward is adamant that laziness on his behalf has nothing to do with the concept, even though he'll be able to focus more on guitar duties for the night.

“If there's a microphone within ten metres of me you usually can't stop me yelling into it and going off about something,” he laughs. “No, the idea of putting into the [Judith Wright Centre] in this fashion was to try and play to different people, and for all the artists to benefit from playing to each other's audiences, and just spread it out a bit. We've rehearsed with about half the people – just quiet rehearsals – and they've been awesome. [People] have been nailing these songs, to the point where you think, 'Oh my God, this is better than our version!'. It gives the tracks a new lease of life – it's kind of nice having these songs that you wrote and you care about, and then these people have obviously put a lot of care and effort into their takes as well, so it just makes it doubly nice.”

Of course at the outset We All Want To had a wishlist of names they'd have loved to procure for Take The Lead!, and while they were unable to get some of the people at the top of this charter they're still stoked with who's come to the party.

“Yeah we did have a wishlist,” Steward tells. “We started right at the top with people like Bernie [Fanning] from Powderfinger and Quan [Yeomans – Regurgitator] and people like that, Robert Forster and David McCormack, but none of them were in town or available at the time, so we just thought, 'Who do we actually know who's in town and our friend and will do it?' We got quite a rush of people actually, and we couldn't be happier with the line-up as it's panned out.”

Those who watched We All Want To perform at the Big Day Out earlier this year will have noticed that there's a new incarnation of the outfit in play – it's been a fairly fluid roster of players since the band's inception – and Steward seems stoked with the current incarnation of the band.

“It feels really nice, because Mel [Fraser – bass] and Darek [Mudge – guitar], the new members, are just great at remembering their parts and they're mega-cruisy people that it's awesome to be in a band with,” he enthuses. “It's pretty much my favourite line-up really, even though the line-up before with Josh [Thomson] and Ben [Thomson] was kind of cool – this seems a bit better and a little bit easier and more conducive to moving forward, I think. Dan [McNaulty] is a great drummer too – he's really steadfast and reliable – so you bring a song in and they'll just pick it up and do great things with it and you don't have to worry, it just happens and it's great.”

The We All Want To line-up wasn't meant at the outset to be a revolving cast, but it hasn't affected their output one iota over the journey to date.

“No, it's just that every time we'd go to do anything someone would go, 'Umm, I've got a job in Melbourne and I've got to move' or, 'I've got to go to England to live' so we just kept losing members,” Steward recounts. “Each time we did it was, like, 'Shit we've lost so and so, he's going to be impossible to replace!', but pretty much every time we lost someone we got someone better in and someone who was more suitable, and who had their own things to bring to the table, which was really nice. I'd love this line-up to be 'the one' but if it's not I'm not going to cry about it, I'll just see what happens next. But it's really nice – a really easy working relationship.

“We go on tour maybe twice a year and it's going okay, but starting a band these days is really hard. It's like I've got nothing to trade on – it's like starting again – so you're out there with every other band who's struggling to be heard and struggling to convince people of their worth on a one-by-one basis every night. It's hard, but I guess we've all got a lot of experience doing it, which is something in our favour. The feedback we've had on a personal level is great, so it's just a case of convincing people one-by-one really.”

We All Want To will be playing the following dates:

Friday 19 April – Judith Wright Centre, Brisbane QLD
Thursday 25 April – Union Hotel, Newtown NSW
Friday 26 April – Good God Small Club, Sydney NSW
Saturday 27 April – Love The Phoenix, Canberra ACT
Friday 10 May – Edinburgh Hotel Front Bar, Brunswick VIC (Early Acoustic Session)
Friday 10 May – Yarra Hotel, Abbotsford VIC
Saturday 11 May – Public Bar, North Melbourne VIC
Friday 24 May – Spotted Cow Hotel, Toowoomba QLD