WIN TICKETS!
Performances on Hey, Hey it’s Saturday and Sunrise don’t exactly earn you ‘indie cred’ in music world, but indie-pop band, Amy Meredith, couldn’t care less.
“We don’t have the mentality of, ‘this is the cool thing to do, or the cool way to sound,” front man, Christian Lo Russo said.
“It’s sometimes a confusing one for our audiences, they see the band, they listen to us and they like our music – then they realise that we’re getting played on commercial radio, and it confuses them. For example, we’ve toured with Cobra Starship, but we’ve also supported Silversun Pickups. I can never really guarantee where or who we’ll be accepted by.”
Amy Meredith has received phenomenal commercial success since they popped up on the scene a few months back. Their debut album, Restless, debuted on the national ARIA charts at #8, following the single, Lying, which made Top Ten of the ARIA singles chart. The current single, Young At Heart, is currently receiving loads of airplay across the Nova and Today networks nationally.
“Life just got really busy, but I’m not complaining, it sure beats making coffees for a living.” And busy they are, the boys just spent August supporting Aussie rockers, Grinspoon, around the country and will spend October heading out as headliners on their own tour.
It may all seem like a whirlwind, but truth be told these boys have been trying to break into the industry for three years, having been dropped by Warner Music back in 2007, and by a Japanese label shortly after. “You live you learn, we’ve done the hard yards and we’re better people and musicians for it.”
Amy Meredith have been vocal in their praise of social networking as one of the keys to their success, regularly posting ‘behind the scenes’ videos on YouTube and tweeting their fans regularly.
“I’ve mastered the art of writing back to fans, and I think that in about 15 minutes I can do about 150 replies. It’s super important, it’s how we’ve built this fan base.”
Being active online has also opened up exciting doors for the guys, “We’ve done some guerrilla gigs, one in particular we played on a train from Cronulla to Sutherland. We tweeted our fans asking them to meet at this train station and played acoustically on the train to like 100 kids. We filmed the whole thing.”
There’s no doubt that these guys are smart, taking their success into their own hands and creating opportunities that seem so hard to come by in this fickle music industry, including getting their butts tattooed on Today’s Hot 30 Countdown. “Yeah it was just one of those things that we did because it was free, and we could.”
With Amy Meredith already on the road, Canberrans can expect a drop in at The Maram on Wednesday 13 October.
What’s in store? “Nudity and debauchery.”
There was even a hint at their freshly inked bottoms making a showing on stage. “You’ll just have to come and see for yourself.”
Want to WIN a double pass to see Amy Meredith? Answer the following question and go into the draw:
Q: What do want to see the boys from Amy Meredith do on stage?
Send your answer to [email protected] with ‘AMY’ in the subject field. The winning entry will even be passed onto the band! Comp closes 5pm, Friday 8 October. Only winners will be notified, via email.
