POISON OAK // Chasing The Working Class Blues Away

When you think about it, it’s pretty fucked that humans ended up stuck in the rat race.

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With a world of possibilities at our fingertips, we decided on a 9-5 and counting down the hours till ‘freedom’. This is exactly what inspired Poison Oak’s latest tune, Weekend Blues – an anthem for the working class everywhere. Following its release, we caught up with the band’s own James Balthes to chat about how it came together and more.

Hysteria: Tell us about the band and how you came together.

James: It was just a jam session. I live in Townsville, in North Queensland, and there’s a hill up there, Castle Hill. So basically me and my friend Ray Pearson would just go up and play some music together. There was also another mate of mine named Russell West, who worked at the same school I did at the time. Then we decided to record some songs, get a drummer, and play lots of music back in Brisbane. With original music, I started asking friends how to release it, and they were showing me, but I kind of forgot about it. But then we got a few emails from different small record labels saying they liked the first song we tried to put out. So that was a bit of a kick start to take it more seriously. And ever since then, we’ve been recording and releasing more music and getting lots of reception from different companies and stuff. So it’s been pretty good.

Congratulations on the release of Weekend Blues! We thought it was super relatable, so run us through where you drew your inspiration from lyrically?

I basically wrote it on a Friday afternoon after the working day. Essentially, it sums up the start of the weekend. You feel pretty positive, and you’re enjoying yourself, and then it goes through the end of the weekend, when you’re kind of miserable, going back to Monday and back to working again. Musically and lyrically, it defines that cycle. At the very end of the song, it finishes when you hear the melody through the feedback, and it sounds quite sad. That represents Monday coming back around.

We love that; that’s such a cool way to approach the track. Listening to it, we did pick up on a modern, yet retro, indie feel. So, where did you draw your inspiration from?

I guess when I was a teenager, I was listening to more classic rock. But now I listen to a lot of modern music, an amalgamation of both really. We don’t want to sound like a classic rock band now. We’re not trying to be one, but also, I think whatever you listen to in your past sticks with you. I also listen to a lot of The Cure and a lot of modern punk music as well. Even though Weekend Blues is not a punk song, I think it comes out somehow. Ray also listens to a lot of punk music; they love Violent Soho and post-punk too. Lyrically for myself, one of my biggest influences is Paul Kelly. I’m a big Paul Simon fan too. And Powderfinger. I think they’ve all mixed in. But yeah, we never set out to sound like a modern indie band, with a classic retro vibe as well. It’s just an amalgamation of what we’ve listened to and what we listen to now, and it sort of just comes out in that way.

Weekend Blues has a bit more of a pop/rock and melodic feel, but the next one will be rockier with a punky riff.
[ James Balthes ]

Yeah, absolutely. We feel like for many people, it’s kind of like the music you were listening to when you grew up made you decide this is what you want to be doing with your life, and that’s naturally going to bleed into your music.

Yeah. Now I don’t really listen to that music anymore. I do enjoy it when it comes on, but I don’t actively search for classic rock or that style of music, but it’s naturally going to be in there because you’ve grown up listening to your parent’s records, and you can’t remove that. You’ve just got to take that on board and let it be what it is.

For sure. So we do know that this track will feature on your upcoming EP, so can you share any details about that?

We’re aiming to release it next year and then go in to record our first album. We’ve got one more single that’ll hopefully come out in February or March. Weekend Blues has a bit more of a pop/rock and melodic feel, but the next one will be rockier with a punky riff. We’re talking with someone in the United Kingdom to potentially release the EP with us too. That’s still in the works, though.

But with all these tracks, we worked with Mark Myers from the band The Middle East. He’s really good, really specific, and he doesn’t waste any time. He’s great at defining melodies and is very much an expert on making them shine a lot more. That’s what he did for us; he refined the melody and made it more precise.

What’s next?

We’ve got a gig supporting Krave, and then we’re planning to play a few shows around Townsville and North Queensland. And then we’re going to get into finalising our album. We’ve written pretty much all of the tracks for it. We’ll probably stop playing shows when we get to March and just really focus on ironing out the songs for the album.