Gunning For More
News posted Friday, February 27 2009 at 12:00 AM.
Related: X, Even, Rocket Science, Gun Street Girls.
It’s the stuff rock’n’roll dreams are made of. Six dates with The Who around Australia, including a show in front of thousands of screaming revheads and an audience of millions at the Australian Grand Prix. But if Dallas Crane’s Dave Larkin is excited, he doesn’t sound it.
“I’m putting my energies into Gun Street Girls at the moment,” he says of his new three-piece. “It’s funny cause we [Dallas Crane] could’ve done with that gig 18 months ago when we really needed it I guess.”
A Melbourne supergroup of sorts (how many times have you heard that recently?), Gun Street Girls also features Dave Buttworth and Callum John Barter from the Double Agents. The trio decided to form after a brief sojourn in Europe.
“I spent three months overseas last year, the first playing bass with the Double Agents. To cut a long story short, I fell in love with at least two of them. When I got home I decided I wanted to start a band with them … just a little three piece.”
Essentially a solo outlet for Larkin – “I just wanted to have a small band to take around,” he says – Gun Street Girls isn’t necessarily a departure from Dallas Crane’s rough-and-tumble rock approach. If anything, it’s an abbreviated form of the band “minus the fluff”.
“This is a lot more straight up,” he explains. “We tended in Dallas to really, for lack of a better word, overwork the songs.”
So how do the Gun Street Girls keep things in check?
“If we get stuck on something, we’d be like, ‘What would Crazy Horse do?’” he jokes.
The band are performing at a bushfire benefit at Melbourne’s Corner Hotel on March 1 with Rocket Science, Even, The Casanovas and X. They are also busy recording songs for their debut long player, which will be out on Matterhorn – the band’s own label – later this year.
“At the start, trying to get things off the ground, it was really humbling and 10 percent frustrating as well,” Larkin says of the Gun Street Girls’ tentative first steps. “A lot of hours and effort went into getting Dallas off the ground too. So there were moments where I thought, ‘Oh my god. This is a massive mountain to climb.’ But the phone has started to ring after our first few shows, so it gives me confidence that things are going to be okay down the line.”
As for the future of Dallas Crane – the band he formed with guitarist Pete Satchell, drummer Shan Vanderwert and bass player Chris Brodie (replaced by Pat Bourke) in 1996 – Larkin isn’t so sure. Their shows with The Who in March will be the band’s first in nearly a year.
“I don’t know what’s going on there,” he explains. “I’m certainly not writing anything off, but I’m not on the radar with everyone at the moment. Everyone has new projects with Dallas. Still, we haven’t officially called it a day or anything.”
So what prompted the break?
“We just burnt ourselves out basically on every level. We work pretty hard on the road. Three out of four of us have been together nearly 15 years. We’ve never had a break in all that time. We just decided, for health reasons and everything, to step back, look at the painting from afar.”
If Dallas Crane were going to bow out, however, a show with rock’n’roll icons The Who wouldn’t be such a bad way to go. But Larkin isn’t writing off the band just yet.
“If it was the last thing we did, it would be a pretty good farewell. I’m not saying that it is, because I don’t think anyone wants it to be. But at the moment, there’s nothing on the table for the future.”
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BUSHFIRE BENEFIT
Sunday, March 1
Corner Hotel, Melbourne, VIC
X + Rocket Science + Even + The Casanovas + Gun Street Girls + The Basics + The Pictures + Hot Little Hands
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Keen to see how these guys are on sun
Same! Love Larkin.