Interview: Sticky Fingers

Interview: Sticky Fingers



The Pier caught up with two of the four, (and sometimes five piece), group in an interview exchanged through e-mail since 10,000 miles away is where Sticky Fingers calls home in Sydney, Australia. Here is what Seamus Coyle a.k.a Hollywood (guitar) and Beaker Best (drum) had to say… Enjoy!

The Pier: Since the release of your first album Extended Play in October 2010, how has the response been?
StiFi: Great. We’re stoked with it. We’ve started touring and booked a couple of big festivals and we’ve made a few new friends. Now a lot more people seem to be aware of our band. We all think that the record has got legs and will be around for a while. It has been the biggest challenge we’ve had so far to write, record and produce the record. It’s all going really good.

The Pier: Are you touring anytime soon? Maybe a visit for us here in the States?
StiFi: Yes. We are touring again through March and April. Now that we have started touring we love it. Our December/January tour was great!
It’s still the early days for the tour bus. So early that no real name has stuck,
but I think that it will happen soon enough. I’m working on a couple of academically advanced naming ideas regarding lubricants and music…
Or men and women….Or a combination of both. Hopefully our manager, who is one of those farmers that stays out in the paddock on the tractor for way too long (until way after dark), you know the guy that makes his kids do all the stuff that he couldn’t do? He makes them surf until they shrivel because he couldn’t get organized at it. He insists that our band work because his bands didn’t, that kind of thing. Anyway he’s showing us that he has similarities with both an out of control soccer dad and an old school boss who doesn’t think too much about his employees. In any event he’s showing those signs and it looks like he’ll keep us on the road for a bit. We’re happy to do it. As far as the States go, we’d love to tour there, so if you’re reading this and you want to help us, we’re ready and I think we’d go down well right around California.

The Pier: (Laughs) Well put… You guys state that Freddy Fish plays the keys (sometimes). Why is that?
StiFi: We can’t always afford him! Freddy’s a bit like the local younger, slimmer,
and more Mediterranean Elton John. I suspect there are a couple of other differences too but we’ve never really spoken about that and as you can probably imagine that makes him a big ticket item. Because he’s a big ticket item, he’s in demand, so we can’t always get a hold of him. It’s not like we’re all at sea without the fish, (if you’ll pardon the pun) but it’s good to have him on board. In the event that Freddy isn’t playing, Dizza straps on a guitar for a bit longer and away we go. Freddy is looking keener and keener to throw his lot in with us though. I think he prefers the Sticky van-insanity to the solitary lot of a young Elton. I mean realistically, it’s pretty handy to have a band that can play as a four or five piece and not lose anything. We have done quite a bit of playing as a four piece, so we’re pretty comfortable with it.

The Pier: You guys are currently working on new material for the next album. When can we expect the sophomore album?
StiFi: We’re always working on new material. We’re serious about tripping around a bit more this year to promote this release. We’ll have the single for Willow Tree out soon and will have three or four acoustic tracks on it. Then we’ll probably release a single from the new album and by the looks of it, we’ll be releasing our next album this time next year. But yeah, we’re already working on it and we’re pretty sure we know the first single for it already. Even though we’ve already got a lot of songs ready, I think we probably have to come up with another 20 songs or so. That will give us quite a bit to choose from.

The Pier: I know you guys were planning on releasing your acoustic demos. Are they available?
StiFi: They will be! At the moment we’re still working on them. When we release Willow Tree that will feature some acoustic songs on it. We were working on the demos this week. On Monday we took over the floor of our local pub. There’s a little control room upstairs and we set up in a circle downstairs and recorded eight new songs. We still have to put some vocals on them, this way we kind of get to find out what’s really working and keep working on the bits that aren’t. I’m not sure what will happen with those tracks. Quite a few of them will probably mutate a little and work their way onto the album. There’s one song called How To Fly that we think will be the first single. But yeah, the acoustic songs are also lurking. Lurking, that’s what they’re doing.

The Pier: What bands do you guys like to jam too?
StiFi: There’s too many to list really. The Clash, everyone says the Clash don’t
they? Pink Floyd, (Have you heard of Hollywood Coyle play?) Toots, (a couple of
us are big into Toots & the Maytals) The Specials and Paddy loves the Flaming
Lips and Shuggie Otis.

The Pier: Thanks for your time guys! We look forward to what the future holds for Sticky Fingers and if your fans call themselves StiFi’s then consider me one.


Article & Interview by: Chad Hillje

Click HERE to view Chad’s Artist Radar on Sticky Fingers!