[Interview] THE RUBENS – Reverb Magazine Online

The Rubens Interview Transcription FOTSUN
With Sam Margin, Elliott Margin, Zaac Margin, Scott Baldwin and Will Zeglis.

The sun is shining and the music is pumping as Fotsun creeps up to its highest point before finishing up for 2013. Whilst Kingswood has the crowd in a frenzy Louie Smith sits down with The Rubens before they hit the stage. Squished up on a picnic table with their ‘mysterious’ fifth member, the group chat about their experience touring with Grouplove, new ‘material’ and the beginnings of a second album.

So you have just come off tour in America. How did it go?

Zaac – Like this… (Note – notation not accurate…not even a little.)

Group – Hahaha

Elliot – You just wanna see her write that down.
Sam – Haha it’s not going to be audio…

Highlights?

Sam – Highlights, well just Grouplove. They were awesome. They were so lovely.

Zaac – Coolest band.

Sam – So nice and sooo good live. We didn’t get bored of watching them every night. That’s how you know a band’s good because when you’re touring you see them so many times. Every single night at least three of us from the band would run out straight away and catch half of their set and no bands really do that unless the bands amazing you know. So yeah they were the highlight.
Will – There was also an acoustic show and then the rock show so it was good to break it up.

Sam – Two shows per city, that was the deal.

How did the crowd react to you guys?

Zaac – It was actually really good.

Scott – Yeah, I mean we’re quite different to Grouplove but they still responded well.

Sam – It was an underplay tour for GL so it was only like smaller mini theatres or clubs so the people that bought the GL tickets were the die hard GL fans and those kind of fans are the fans that are excited about any kind of music, especially if it’s something that’s sort of a similar genre, which we are in a way. I mean we’re not…we’re still indie and people can relate to our music so I think the fact that it was GL and it was in small venues made it easier for us to try and win over fans. We did at every show you know, we’d go after and meet people at the merch desk and we’d at least have twenty people that would come up and say ‘hi’. That means we can actually go back and play a tiny venue in Seattle or something.

I actually went to your gig at The Entrance Leagues on the Central Coast and I remember you guys doing that…coming out and signing merch and meeting everyone. Is that something you do often?

Sam – We do it at every gig. There hasn’t been a gig yet that we haven’t. I don’t know what stage bands stop doing it. The biggest show we’ve ever done as the headline band was at the Enmore in Sydney.

Elliot – We still did it then.

Sam – Yeah its just a commitment of time because if you’re going to do it, then you’ve got to do it until the last person leaves but it is really fun and I guess I can see why bands stop. We’re so fresh that we haven’t really been jaded by it but I can see why bands after five years don’t do it anymore.

Will – Having to go out all the time becomes tiring after a while. But they’re the things that you want as a band, to see your favourite artist. If I had a favourite artist that came out and toured and I got to meet them or whatever I think that would be really cool.

Sam – I’d like to think we’d never stop.

Will – It was like Sean out of GL, he was one of those dedicated people. He would come out but the rest of them wouldn’t. He would come out every show.

There’s not many bands that do that now, at all.

Zaac – I think it becomes impossible when you’re that big.
Sam – Especially when you’re touring America because those guys are touring non-stop. They got off tour with us and now they’re back on another tour. They’re just touring America constantly. There’s so many states to do and so many cities, doing that every night just adds that extra bit of exhaustion to it. So yeah it’s a good thing to do but I can see why people don’t always. Can’t blame ‘em.

Have you got any new material in the making? An album?

Scott – Zaac does.

Zaac – I’m making some material as we speak. After the next interview I’ll probably go to the toilet and discharge it.

Group – Hahaha.

Zaac – But yeah we’ve got like nine songs that have actually been demoed.

Sam – Ten.

Zaac – Ten songs that have been demoed whilst we’ve been writing small recordings. Elliot and Sam have another 200 ideas locked away on their laptops.

Sam – Three of them good.

Zaac – Oh they’re all hits.

So who predominantly does the writing?

Zaac – Mostly Sam and Elliot.

Sam – Is this a cover? (Referring to song in the background)

Zaac – Sounds like Red House something…

I’m actually a bit devo I’m missing their set, Kingswood are awesome.

Zaac- Yeah so am I.

Scott – You can wrap this up if you like…

Will – Haha.

Elliot – We still haven’t seen them.

Sam – We could just take the interview there.

Haha might not be able to hear very well…

Sam – You can just notate it like you did with Zaacs (Note – still not accurate…at all.)

You’ve got a fifth member now as well!

Zaac – Heyyy Willlll.

Sam – His name is Will Zeglis.

Elliot – And wears half a jacket on his right shoulder, he thinks he’s the godfather.

Zaac – I noticed the other day that he’s not listed on the musician’s part on our facebook yet and I tried to change it but I didn’t know how to do it so yeah we have to change that.

Sam – You’re not on the wiki yet either.

Scott – Will also played throughout the whole recording as well and he’s actually in charge of everything on the computer.

So he’s just decided not to change it, he’s happy being the mystery man?

Sam – Oh he loves being mysterious.

Will – Ahh it’s not by choice.

Zaac – Yes it is.

Will – It’s just who I am.

You must be happy that you’re not the odd one out now Scott?

Scott – Yeah thank god.

Will – Nah he’s still the odd one out.

Group – Hahaha.

Zaac – Only one that can play his instrument really well…

Scott – Hey you show me how to play drums all the time, when we’re at take I’m like “Zac how do I play it again?”

Zaac – Well I’m just like take out the 50 kicks you’ve got in…

Sam – See that other kick pedal next to the other kick pedal, just take that out. Don’t play it. Will’s been in the band since anyone has known us.

Scott – He’s literally done like the whole…you’ve been in since we made our album pretty much.

Zaac – He’s co-written songs.

Sam – He played on the record.

I read that somewhere but I still didn’t see it written officially anywhere.

Sam – It just takes ages because the press works like this – The first ten interviews go out and then all the lazy people just copy and paste everything so it just spreads and that’s the way people get their information and it’s terrible information. Mostly the band members are playing the wrong instruments.

Elliot – Sometimes I’m the singer, sometimes Zaac’s the singer.

Sam – A lot of the time that happens, especially because there’s Margins, it makes it easier for journalists to screw it up.

Are you playing any new material tonight?

Sam – We’ve got one song, we’ve played it for a few months actually. It’s called Cut Me Loose. That was one of the first songs that we actually wrote that we want to put on the second record. When we started writing the second record that was one of the first songs we came up with and I think these are the last gigs we’ll play of this record before we go into the next one and so we figure we shouldn’t really throw in any more new songs because people wana hear the songs they know.

Do you have an estimate of when you want to have the new album out?

Sam – We want it out in September, whether that happens or not…there are a lot of factors that have to come into play and there are labels and management and promoting and singles and all this crap. We personally want September and that’s not just a number we throw out, it’s basically because that means it’s been two years since the last record. We released the last one two years ago in September.

Well it sounds like you’ve got the songs there.

Sam – It’s getting there, it’s a long process trying to do a second album.

Scott – You haven’t heard it…

Sam – Yeah, it’s not there but it’s getting there. We’re not totally scared yet.

Who are you most excited to share the stage with tonight?

Elliot – Kingswood.

Zaac – Yeah definitely.

Sam – To be honest with you it’s because we’ve met them a bunch of times and they’re awesome guys.

Elliot – We still haven’t seen them live, we’re missing out right now…(Kingswood playing Medusa in the background).

I feel really guilty!

Elliot – We would have had stuff to do anyway.

Zaac – Yeah we feel guilty you’re interviewing us.

Sam – We saw the end of Stonefield and they were awesome too.

Will – Did you do an interview with Gang Of Brothers?

No I didn’t.

Will – They’re a really good band. I think they were on really early. They’re a Sydney band and they’re all like session cats.

I didn’t even get to see them.

Will – Yeah they were on early, like ten o’clock.

Elliot – Ten o’clock!?

Will – Yeah ten til eleven.

Sam – And people would have been out last night…

Will – Well it’s a two-day festival.

Sam – Ten am, people would have been like errrrggghhh.

A lot of people don’t even leave their campsite. They actually stay there all day and come here at about seven when the main act is on.

Sam – We came at like five and there was no one out the front really. There was a few of the music lovers but all the psychopaths were all still just out there prowling like zombies you know and like we came back again now and suddenly everyone’s out there watching music. You can understand that it’s hard when you’re backing it up two days in a row.

It’s a waste.

Sam – It is a waste because there are awesome acts. If you go to like a five day festival overseas or even like the three day ones they do here you can understand if you wana have one day where you’re just going to go and see the one act you wana see at the end of the night because you’ve had a big one but if you’ve got two days you should just…

Elliot – Pace yourself.

Sam – Yeah pace yourself then just go nuts you know, finish strong. With us…

Haha, well this is my last interview so I’ll definitely be going strong after this one.

Sam – So will we in about two hours.

I got to meet Gotye before which was pretty awesome!

Sam – We heard his voice and we were like “that sounds like Gotye” and Zaac was like, “that looks like him”. We went back to our hotel and then came back to see him sitting there and I’m like “that’s Wally Debacker…he’s won Grammy’s. That’s weird”.

Elliot – So weird.

Zaac – Very weird.

Sam – How humble can you be when you’ve won Grammy’s. I’ve heard that he drives around in a Toyota Yaris or something still and he plays drums in a band he loves to play in just because he loves music and doesn’t care about anything else. That is ridiculous. Imagine an American musician doing that?

Zaac – Imagine an Australian musician doing it…

Sam – Yeah anyone. I wouldn’t do that.

Scott – No way.

Zaac – I’d love to play drums in a band actually.

Wally was lovely but I have had awkward moments during a couple of interview this weekend…

Sam – I think some bands have gotten to the point where interviews get boring so they just wana make the interviewer feel really uncomfortable and turn it around like “that was weird, that thing that you just did then”. I’d like to do that. Lets choose one interview and just be really weird.

Don’t do it. Don’t do it to the poor person haha.

Sam – Just answer the questions you think they’re going to ask next.

Elliot – So they’re constantly chasing.

Sam – They’re asking the question you just answered. They’d probably get it right if you just kept talking.

Will – Yeah you just keep talking for half an hour.

Elliot – You sit down and say the bibliography.

Sam – Being in a band with brothers is like this…the name came from this…but actually yours wasn’t like that so congratulations.

Elliot – Yours was actually good yeah.

Zaac – Yeah it was very good.

So ahh where did the name come from…?

Group – Hahahaha no no no.

Sam – Actually that’s a good question, um.