Newcastle’s The Tillegra Damned - World’s Best New Band?

by Helen Henry on February 23, 2011

Another Newcastle band has been recognised as one of the best young bands in the world! Jet-setters The Tillegra Damned will compete in the world final of the Global Battle of the Bands this Saturday in Malaysia’s largest performance arena, KL Live. They’re competing for not only a $100 000, but the title of the “Best New Young Band in the World”.

Urban Insider caught up with keys player Jed Rietveld & guitarist Dave Budden to get the inside scoop on the competition, what makes the band tick and how they’ve gone from zero to 100 in 7 short months… (and tell them to break a leg, of course!)

You’re about to head off to Malaysia to compete against bands from all over the world. How are you feeling about it all?

Dave: A combination of things really – it’s really exciting to be travelling overseas and performing on an international stage doing what we love. It’s also my first time overseas and I think it is for a couple of the other guys as well. We’re all great mates so having the experience together is a bonus.

The band only formed in July 2010, right?

Dave: Yeah, actually it’s kind of funny, our local heat for the Global Battle of the Bands was actually our first show we ever played together as a band.

Well you’ve certainly had a huge amount of success in the past months. What do you put that down to?

Jed: We’ve all been in various bands and there’s a lot of sources of creativity because we’re all into very different styles of music, which all just came together. Our drummer is in to metal and then we’ve got our singer who’s an amazing pop vocalist – they’re probably the two biggest extremes! It’s also been a lot of hard work , a lot of time in the studio and a lot of time writing.

Dave: Everyone has been really supportive of us – booking agents, promoters and other bands. Everyone is always willing to sit down and give you their time….it’s been that support and advice that’s helped us get to where we are now.

Jed: We’re surprised that we’ve gotten so far – every step of the way, every stage in this competition and even some of our big shows with bands like Electric Horse and Jerrico. It’s just like wow, is this really happening?! The shock hasn’t really set in because we’ve been so busy playing shows and practicing…

Dave: It still doesn’t feel real!

Jed:…I guess when we get a couple of days in Malaysia before we play, I think it’s really going to set in then!

The band aims to blur the boundaries between musical genres, and as you mentioned, the members have really diverse influences. What is it like writing songs in a band where one member likes Pete Murray & another likes Iron Maiden?

Jed: It’s mostly Jonno and I that wrote most of the songs we’re playing at the moment. We work on the arrangemnent and then the other guys add their own bit. It drummer is horrible to work with! (ed: jokes, of course!). I’ll write some drums and he’s like “these are the sort of drums that someone who has never played drums in their life would write” then scratches them and writes something really technical and crazy, that I could never even possibly think up!

Dave: It’s really difficult to find a middle ground between writing good quality music, in the sense that other musicians can listen to your band and have respect for your playing and writing, but at the same time appeal to someone who isn’t really into that sort of stuff and just wants to listen to something catchy.

What are your thoughts on the Newcastle music scene? What would you change if you could?

Dave: I think Newcastle’s music scene has a lot of potential, there are a lot of great bands out there and undiscovered talent. It’s unfortunately really, when I moved to Newcastle 3 – 4 years ago and would go to an all ages show at The Loft or Secret Empire, it wouldn’t matter who was playing – bands from interstate or a local garage band – there’d be 200 – 300 people there to listen. Now it just seems that it’s really hard to get kids interested these days. Now you put on a show, and it doesn’t matter how big the bands are, people just seem to have lost interest. It’s upsetting and I’m not sure what it (the issue) is…

Jed: A lot of the venues are really supportive but I think the advent of electronic music has had an impact. I like that stuff, and I’ll listen to anything, but it’s a lot easier and cheaper for a venue to put on a DJ and pull hundreds of people than to have a few bands and have to chase after them and pay them up to $200 each. There are still venues out there like The Cambridge and The Great Northern Hotel though – we’ve had the privilege of playing there and they really want to see live original music take off, so it’s pretty much all they put on. The Great Northern has live music 6 nights a week!

Dave: I know there’s only so much one band can do, but we do try and think about what can do for Newcastle because Newcastle has supported us so much. As far as our local shows, we’re trying to keep them on popular nights and keep them free. If we want to make money, there are opportunities to go down to Sydney or travel interstate and have ticketed shows there, but as far as Newcastle goes, when we play The Cambridge we want to play on a Wednesday night when the students are out for their cheap drinks and can see us perform for free.

What are your plans for the rest of the year?

Jed: Our next local show is at East Maitland Bowling Club on 26 March with The Cavalcade. A lot of people don’t realise but they actually put on 3 bands for free every Saturday night.

After that it’s difficult to see where to go – to focus on building a fan base here or to go to Sydney. I think we’ve just got to focus on Malaysia at the moment and think about what to do next when we get back.

The Newcastle Heat for this year’s Global Battle of the Bands comp is on this Friday night at The Great Northern. What advice would you give bands who are entering?

Jed: We saw the first few bands (of our heat) play and the standard was really high. We just thought we’ve got to be different, we’ve got to stand out, so we got up there and it wasn’t just about playing our music but getting a lot of energy and trying to a crowd response. So I think putting a lot of energy in is the first thing and, or course, making sure your songs are polished. Because all the bands are very good, you’ve just got to be memorable in the judges’ minds.

I don’t know if it’s a compliment of advice not to do it, but someone actually said to us after a show ‘geez you guys, it looked like there was a mosh pit up on stage!’.

Dave: Unless they’ve changed the marking criteria since last year, it’s also crucial that the bands bring as many people as possible – anyone that will come and watch them play! Bands are not only marked on crowd response but I believe that for the local heat they have a direct vote that contributes to who makes it through.

Who are some of your favourite local acts?

Jed & Dave: There’s quite a few… Storm Picturesque, Coma Lies, Safe Hands, The Cavalcade, Alice vs. Everything, Berkley Hill (who actually won the Newcastle heat – we were 2nd behind them but luckily 2 bands went through!)

Dave: Actually, for the both the local and the State competitions we came 2nd! For the local round 2 bands qualified, and 3 bands for the State level, and then for the Australasian final there was just the 1, and we won.

Jed: …so obviously there’s been some improvement… (laughs)

Dave: and some luck. I think that anyone that’s had any sort of success in the music industry that doesn’t put luck down as a huge contributing factor would be lying. We’ve had a lot of good luck – with talking to the right people at the right time, playing at the right place. So many things could have gone differently, but everything has just aligned and gone right for us. One of our recordings even, Eliza, which is acoustic, originally it wasn’t an acoustic song, but our drummer couldn’t make the recording day and we couldn’t move it so we did it acoustic, and the response has been amazing. It’s amazing how a really small thing can change your course like that…

Where can we find your music?

Dave: Our debut single, Silver Bullet, is currently on our website. We were going to wait until after Malaysia to release it and start selling it at shows but we thought about it and now it’s available to download for free. We’ve got all the time in the world and we can release an EP or album further down the track. At the moment, we just want people to be able to listen to our music and enjoy it.

It’s also been playing on the radio – it made it’s radio debut last Friday!

Dave: Also, while we’re in Malaysia, we’ll be doing daily Facebook, Twitter and website updates for people who want to see what we’re up to. There’s been 4000 pre-sale tickets sold to the final, so we’re jumping from a max crowd of 500 to 5000!

Here at Urban Insider we wish the guys the very best of luck in Malaysia and can’t wait to hear the outcome!