Clip Art

"Some videos are becoming too much like short films and the context of the video doesn't even relate much to the song,” says Tyron Shaw, double-bass player for Melbourne trio The ReChords. He's talking about the band's debut video clip for their soon-to-be-released single, Don't Know Much, and, much like the band itself, the video is offering something different from everything else out there. “There's not enough clips of bands performing – not live, but just performing, so you get to see the band members and the instruments, so we thought, 'Let's keep it simple and do that'.”

It's been a crazy couple of years for Shaw and his bandmates, Leo Francis and Felix Potier. They've released two albums (one being a split with WA's now-defunct – due, sadly, to the death of singer, Tyson Feifar – Salt Flat Trio), worked incredibly hard setting up a solid following here, have toured Europe on the back of Spain's High Rock-A-Billy and Belgium's Rockabilly Day festivals, with an invitation to play Spain's Screamin' Weekender in 2013, and recorded a number of tracks in Germany. “This band still surprises me to this day. I've never been in a band that's accomplished so much in three years,” Shaw exclaims.

If that wasn't enough, they also recently recorded four tracks with renowned producer, Lindsay Gravina, including their impending single. The ReChords are known and loved for being a drummer-less trio, but with the band's sights set on taking their music to a wider audience, Gravina's advice, while sage, did make Shaw, Francis and Potier think. “He said that, realistically, competing in a wider market, where we'd be played between dance and rock tracks, without the extra force of drums behind us might be pretty hard. It was his suggestion to introduce drums, which was a really hard decision for us to make as we thought it might be going against what we're doing. We used Sue Shaw [The Exotics] and she nailed it straight away. She was already a fan of the band, but felt awkward about the whole thing because she loves the band without drums and was almost fighting herself taking on the job of being the drummer on these tracks. She pretty much wanted to keep it simple and laid back, which is exactly what we wanted.

“We mixed the song in a way that the drums are not as prominent as you might expect them to be, so that the double-bass can still be heard and you won't miss them when we perform live because we will still play as a three-piece.” It's now that Shaw ties the song with the video. “That was the concept behind the video – we didn't want to have a drummer in it, so that's when Leo came up with the concept of using the snare and having each of us hitting it, because you can't hide the fact that the snare starts the song, but once it gets going, you don't really notice that there's no drummer there.”

While in Germany, the trio recorded ten songs at the Lightning Recorders studios in Berlin. “There are four songs we're really happy with, that are in a totally different style of recording [to the Gravina-produced tracks], so you've got two ends of the spectrum in terms of recording styles – one extremely vintage and stripped-back style and one that is higher-end production. Hopefully they still sound the same in that you'll still hear the ReChords sound. We wanted to release a seven-inch from these recordings before releasing this single, but we've had problems with one of the pressing plants – one of the machines broke down, then things were backlogged, then there were issues with some of the tracks not fitting on before they worked out a way to do it, so it's all been one hold up after another. I'm hoping we'll have it some time in October.”