Last week I got the chance to speak to the omnipotent Tim Rogers of You Am I. His depth and knowledge within everything I asked him was mind blowing. After a quick health juxtaposition between an apricot and a cigarette, we take a left turn into Tim's world and a detour through all things You Am I. Enjoy!

NL: How are you mate?

Tim: Yeah good, hold on a second (scuffles) Sorry I had to put down an apricot and pick up a cigarette, how’s that for a little contrast?

NL: How’s it all going in Tim Roger’s world?

Tim: Absolute fucking chaos. The personal and professional life are fighting each other at the moment. Let’s look at today for an example; just got home from finishing a tour and then I picked up my daughter, drove her to school and had a good talk to her, then went to co-host ABC Radio and interview Warren Ellis, CW Stoneking and talk about them and Muddy Waters, and Allen Wolf and Charlie Patton and Shostakovich. Then I went and played squash with Alexander from Oh Mercy, and then I’m going to play football, all trying to push through a night on the turps last night, now I’m off to rehearse theatre songs for a thing at the Malthouse Theatre on Sunday and start looking at songs for this Christmas show.

NL: That’s a pretty hectic day!

Tim: I guess in the scheme of things it’s nicely hectic and it’s very pleasurable. When you’ve got lots on your plate, everything seems like a hassle, but really it’s all good stuff. We were just talking about it on the radio show this morning on the radio showthat if you put yourself up as being enthusiastic and just a little bit capable, especially emotionally you kind of get offered things and I’ve been offered a lot of things at the moment which have just been from genuinely showing interest.

NL: Would you be able to tell me about your new self-titled album? Being self-titled, does this signify a ‘fresh start’ for You Am I?

Tim: No. The guys just didn’t like the titles that I came up with and they thought they misinterpreted what we were about. I thought the titles had a sense of humor but the other guys interpreted them as being rather final and as we had a real creative head of steam we didn’t really want to get that impression. It wasn’t our intention for it to be self-titled but when it was suggested to me I thought that I exhausted my ‘title book’ and I didn’t want to come up with something that wasn’t entirely appropriate for the record. I guess the fact that our band is a very closed production with us and our producer Greg, who has been our producer for twenty years; we thought that if any record was going to be self-titled it was going to be this one. It wasn’t really a soapbox ‘this is a fresh start’ thing I mean, we’re just not that fresh but we’re enthused and interested and adore each other. But, none of us are fresh out of rehab or something.

NL: Did it turn out as you wanted it to?

Tim: It’s better than I wanted it to turn out; it’s not like my original idea for it. The original idea was maybe a little loftier and grander but we had to really choose which songs worked on the record. I had songs that are at either end; quieter and ferocious. What’s on the record is probably the middle part, the blood and gristle and meat of what we had, we kind of had to take the scum off the top.

NL: Is this album a reflection of your last 20 years in the band like in the song “Let’s Not Get Famous Yet?”

Tim: No. Absolutely not, it’s far more personal than that between myself and someone very close to me and it’s not a band song at all. It wasn’t written with that intention. We’ve done songs about the band like an old song called ‘The Cream and the Crock’ and some other songs that related to the band being on tour and trying to feel some kind of identity out there in the morass, but no, being more famous would be wonderful for the band because that would mean we could tour more and play at the places that we want to go back to.

NL: Do you think that if the lyrical content has happened to you, you play and perform the song better because you have a connection to the song?

Tim: That’s a good question. It’s possible, sometimes if they’re painful ones I’ll kind of not revisit that pain every night I mean, we have to go through something emotional every night, we feel pretty drained at the end of any show but I’m not sure sure how to proportion that to things close to me or just because it’s a physical effort and the showmanship part of it. We want to be entertainers as well as going out there and purging ourselves and supplementing our passions and stuff like that. But, there are times when it catches when I’m singing a song about something personal, it’s normally when I do the shows by myself that they catch me and I’ll get a lump in my throat or in my pants or something. It doesn’t happen every night though, sometimes you just want to disassociate yourself from the subject matter and just perform them. It is a joyous thing we do and I would like to give an audience some type of joy whether it be sadistic or just the joy from dancing and moving, or the joy of feeling like you’ve gone through something together which sounds kind of hippie-ish, I mean there is a confrontational element to what we do because myself up there as a performer, there is something quite hate-able and cocky about someone who looks like me, looking like he’s having the time of his life. I can’t understand why people would want to throw a beer bottle at me and I’m kind of okay with that you know, at least you are getting some reaction.

NL: I remember going to one of your shows in Surfers Paradise and you were telling all the teenagers who were dorks, uncool and awkward that everything would be okay because you didn’t get laid until you were 33 or something. Every show do you have a message you want to convey to the audience?

Tim: No, that’s a pretty perennial one. I mean, I was a very ugly kid and thankfully I didn’t have to wait that long to experience physical love but, any music is an opportunity is a chance to not be encumbered by your physical appearance and being a teenager can be a really awkward experience for people, I know it was for me. I guess when I’m playing a festival or show that is all ages, you see a lot of young kids, the avuncular part of me, the 41 year old, comes out. I hate seeing anyone in pain and particularly kids and so if one kid has had a bad day, got dumped by their girlfriend or boyfriend and everything’s really bad and they get something from my show, I’ve had a really lucky run with making music and it wasn’t because I was the golden child that was so good looking that people couldn’t stop giving us gigs. Music really gave me an opportunity to do something with my life which wasn’t looking great before I started touring and making records. It’s just kind of honest, apart from lying about when I first had sex.
I don’t want to be smug about the fact that I managed to get through to this stage, I’ve got my own little struggles that I have to get through. One thing I did get through was adolescence, it wasn’t a lot of fun but I did have it better than most, I wasn’t in war, and I kind of got through with all my limbs intact and a large dose of sanity and self-worth and most of that was because of playing music. I don’t want to be selfish about that experience and I know it doesn’t mean a lot to many people and I’d like to contribute to any situation and making it better and not being a complete narcissist and feeling like I can have my horribly expensive French wine after the show and feel smug that I can throw my arm around and do windmills and had a couple of No.1 records. I’d like to get to sleep at night thinking that I did something and I wasn’t completely selfish.

NL: You have said to me in a previous interview that if You Am I were a cover band, you’d still be having the time of your life.

Tim: Yeah. The physical act of playing is great and it’s very possible that sooner rather than later my gig as the songwriter will go and I’ll still be writing songs but I don’t know if anyone will be interested. My first love was just playing, whether it was a guitar, a trumpet or a backing singer, but I don’t think that will happen soon. Just playing is what I have loved most and to be held up as a songwriter comes secondary.

NL: What do you think about the Australian music scene and how does it compare to overseas?

Tim: It’s all about hundreds of little scenes really. Overall what’s the template of it? What’s the zeitgeist of it? I really have no idea, there’s really a lot of popular people and friends that are involved in that but then the bands that are performing in pubs in Melbourne where I live that aren’t huge, there are wonderful, wonderful things going on there as well that seem to support themselves. There’s great stuff and there’s absolute pulp. Theres a hundred little things going on and he guys in the bands that live in Sydney; Bed Wetting Bad Boys, or whoever up in Sydney who are great, as an example, a band like Tame Impala can get their record out and kids getting to hear that band who I think we took on their first big tour. They were all such wonderful kids and great songwriters and performers that just got better and better and better each night. Things aren’t too bad, there are hundreds of little bands doing their thing and it’s wonderful to think that they all could be heard.

NL: What is next for You Am I?

Tim: I’m pretty keen to move onto the next thing, I quite like the record but at the moment what we’re swapping around is a lot of dirty, hardcore punk. A very near friend of mine sent me a lot of records and that’s just sort of what we’re listening to at the moment, well Rusty and I in particular and Davey’s sort of off making his own record and Andy’s tour managing. I think there’s a lot of touring coming up for us and we’re probably going back overseas at some stage next year. I’d like to get back into launching some new songs and a record with another band and doing soundtracks and a theatre show and a cabaret show as well. I think there was so many good shows on this last tour that I’d like to get stuck into something new before too long, I doubt that it will be as considered as the last record you know, I’d kind of like to use the energy that we have, we used our brains in the last record. (laughs)

NL: Thanks for taking time out of your busy day to talk to the AU Review mate.

Tim: Oh man! Come on! Everyone’s busy, it was good to speak to you.