Died Pretty reformed after a lengthy absence to play their classic album Doughboy Hollow at the Don't Look Back series of concerts in 2008. Since then the band have played Homebake, will appear on the Big Day Out bill have recently had their acclaimed debut album treated to the deluxe reissue treatment by Aztec Records. We spoke to Ron Peno to get the dirt on the re-release of Free Dirt and the 'Big' summer ahead for Diet Pretty.
yourGigs (YG): How has the time that has passed changed your perception of the Free Dirt album?
Ron Peno (RP): It's just like listening to a first album, but 20 years later. It was our first album and everyone was really excited and loud. It just sounds like a first album to me.
YG: Listening back to it now with the experience and knowledge you have had since then, are there things you would want to change on it?
RP: There are a couple of things where I cringe a bit, there are a couple of vocal things and some lyrical things, and I just think, "Geez, what was I thinking?" But it still sounds quite powerful, I think. It's still good, it sounds fine ... it's lovely, but it was long ago and far away. I listen to some of the songs and they're still great, it's just one of those albums, y'know. I have other albums that I much prefer over Free Dirt to be honest, it was a nice enough album for the time, its aged quite well I think, the re-mastering went really well and everything sounds really nice.
It's not going to go top 10 - it's not going to change the world or anything - I'd love it to crash in top five in the ARIA charts and stay there for three months and if it gradually went up to number one after six months or something. But it's important for people who missed it the first time being able to get it the second time around. I don't have any perceptions about it whatsoever; really, it's a lovely honour to have it re-released.
YG: What was it about the Don't Look Back shows that made it attractive enough to reform the band?
RP: Well Doughboy Hollow is our most loved album I think, in the general scheme of things. Most people seem to really love that album and it was a very popular album at the time and the recording process and writing the songs all came really effortlessly; it was just a pleasure to perform, write and produce the album.
So when we got an offer to play the album live, we just thought that was really cute; the whole Don't Look Back concept was great in that you play the whole album from start to finish. Then if you want to do an encore you can then do some non-album things, so Brett [Myers] and I both liked the concept of that and that we got our own shows ... you aren't going to be touring around for ages flogging some album you recorded 20 years ago, it was just those shows - that was enough for us. The rehearsals came together really quickly for that, everything fell into place very, very quickly and it was a very pleasurable experience.
YG: Did you have to do much to adapt the band's sound for playing in a festival environment?
RP: The only thing we've had to do it to take out some songs from the set as we've got a shorter set at Big Day Out. Obviously there's songs that we did at DLB that we can't do on the festival: 'Out in the Rain' and those ambling sort of songs that don't really suit a festival, they're more for an enclosed area, not an outdoor sort of festival thing. We are going for our more up-tempo songs, for the 45 minutes we get we are doing lots of fast-tempo songs - we'll do 'Sweetheart 'and 'Doused' at the Big Day Out and that will be enough of the slower songs.
YG: Did revisiting these songs allow you to reconnect with the feelings you had at the time you wrote them?
RP: You just try and renew them a little bit I think, and put a new slant on them. I mean they are eternal songs; we try not to think too much about it, we just do it. There's no having to change too much about them, we just rehearsed them and then played them, the same way we did back in 1987. Nothing much has changed really except the hairlines and the waistlines.
I enjoyed the songs then, and I probably enjoy them a lot more now being a bit older and a lot less 'lubricated' ... I am enjoying performing them a lot more now, just from being older and looking after oneself a bit better and probably delivering them more enthusiastically than I did back then. You give them a breath of fresh air and a bit of a kick-start; it's not something we really think about, we just do it.
YG: Do you think there is any potential to record any new Died Pretty material?
RP: God no! Y'know we'll do this and promote the Free Dirt reissue and we'll do the Big Day Out and then after that ... we'll just have to stop it once and for all. It's getting a bit silly really. We had been split up maybe five or six years when we got the Don't Look Back call and that was nice; Brett and I discussed that and decided it would be a nice way for us to get together as a band and just do Doughboy Hollow ... and new people would want to come along and listen to that again and it just sort of snowballed from there.
There's got to be a line where you go that's enough now, it's too much. There [are] other types of music and things to discover. I'm running around in Melbourne collaborating with all sorts of people and that's what I want to do - just collaborate with other people and maybe do a solo thing.
I've got an idea of a Ron Peno solo thing I'd like to do. I've put out a call for other musicians who want to write with me, and there are some songs I'd like to write with Brett and others with somebody else. I want to keep a creative hand in it, but still move on. But as for this reformation thing: after the Big Day Out, it's over.
Andy Ryan
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