In celebration of their latest single ‘Point’, The Creases recently announced a five-date headline tour around the country. The Brisbane four-piece’s stage skills will certainly be well-honed by the time the headline dates roll around, as they follow their month-long tour with The Preatures.
The band’s new single ‘Point’ has been met with positivity across the board and you can currently hear it warming the airwaves of triple j and community radio stations nationally, garnering acclaim from fans and from critics alike.
We recently caught up with the Creases boys to find out what the upcoming headline tour will sound like, i.e. what’s in their rig, why it’s in there, and how do they use it. So without further ado, here’s the guitar gear The Creases couldn’t live without.
Back To Basics
Haha well unfortunately that’s the reality of touring for us (and most bands), we’re usually always crammed inside a hire car with our gear tetris’d around us. I’m not sure what we could really part with, we already bring the bare minimum with us on tour.
We could probably get by with just a few guitars with our clothes and effect pedals squished inside each case with them and borrow whatever else we need from friends in each city.
Evolution
I’m not very good at guitar so I feel a bit silly buying really nice guitar gear and still use cheap guitars whenever we play but we’ve all evolved our setups a lot since the beginning.
We’ve gone from having nothing and borrowing most things to almost having too much gear and now our trouble is trying to slim everything down into exactly what we need.
Our next step soon is to start incorporating some synths into the live show, but currently our setup is still the same two-guitar, bass and drums setup we’ve always had, just with shinier guitars and larger pedal boards.
Hitting The Studio
We usually record using different guitars and gear and pedals we find around the studio so often the hardest part for us is finding a way to translate how the recordings sound into the live show rather than the other way round.
It was easier with the EP tunes because it was very simple and effect smothered but all our new songs require a lot more thought and planning behind them which is why we’re holding back on playing too much new stuff until we can properly nail it live.
Back In The Day
The first bunch of gear I bought was a lil crappy usb audio recording interface, a used fender squier from cash converters and a Line6 multi-effects pedal. I bought them all in the same week to get started with music and I still actually use them all nearly every day now.
I’ve tried upgrading a lot of my stuff but ended up selling it because I’m too attached to all the stuff I bought and recorded all our first songs on.
Gear Vs Song
I think to a certain extent, I know whenever one of us gets a new pedal or a synthesizer we just want to use it on everything and there have definitely been a handful of times where buying something new has sparked a new idea or song.
Developing Style
I think the only people who really care too much about musician’s gear are other musicians. In the beginning I used to just look at bands I loved and buy gear according to what they used and try to match their sound but as you learn and get familiar with what you own and you develop and move into your own sense of opinion and sound with things you buy.
And rather than trying to match someone’s guitar sound like you did in the beginning, you are more so trying to find ways to make yourself sound completely different.
Getting Weird
My friend Charles from Babaganouj built a pedal for me that replicates the ‘Repeat Percussion’ effect that were built into a few really old crazy Vox guitar models back in 60s.
It sounds like a tremelo mixed with a sequencer or something. It’s very cool and wild but I haven’t found a place for it in our shows yet.
Getting Obscure
Probably my Domino Phantom copy. They aren’t that obscure but the one I found is a pretty strange model and it has heaps of pretty shapes, words and colours painted all over it in nail polish that is probably decades old like the guitar.
I’d love to find out the story behind it. I sadly snapped it on tour with DMA’s last year though so until I get it properly fixed I’m back to a a trusty squier again for now.
Ol’ Faithful
Aimon & Jarrod have both been buying a lot of new guitars and pedals over the past year (Jarrod just got a beautiful brand new red Rickenbacker bass for his 21st this week) so there’s nothing that we use anymore that’s too old. Probably my guitar again or Gabes bucket sounding drums.
Solving Problems
I use a couple of synth reverb pedals on my guitar that you’ll hear on nearly every track of ours that covers up a lot of my sloppy guitar playing. Our gear usually causes the problems though rather than solving them. I can’t remember a time where we haven’t had at least one thing break right before or during a show.
