PEACH FUR INTERVIEW

From the Gold Coast, four mates, Denny, Ben, Liam and Mikey came together to form their band ‘Peach Fur.’ Together, they have combined elements of rock with hints of surf and reggae into their EP ‘Pleasure and Necessities’ and their latest single ‘Rough as Guts.’ Check out my chat with vocalist/guitarist Denny below. 

LB: First of all, could you guys please introduce yourselves and tell the readers a bit about yourselves and your formation?

PF: The band consists of Liam Ward on bass guitar and BV’s (backing vocals), Ben Crichton on lead guitar, Mikey Woodworth on drums and myself (Denny Hilder) on guitar and lead vox (vocals). I have been friends with Mikey since grade 3 at primary school so I feel like I’ve known him a lifetime… we then went to the same high school in grade 8 where we met our lead guitarist, Ben who actually ended up teaching me how to play my first couple of songs on guitar in grade 9, 2012, which is when I found my love for music. Music has always been a big part of my life but that was the start of a new chapter in my life where music started to take precedence over everything.

Myself, Ben and Mikey are all self taught musicians who haven’t had any professional lessons on how to play guitar. Although Ben taught me my first green day banga, I took it upon myself to learn guitar off youtube and reading tabs while listening to songs. After getting a bit better on the guitar (we were still shit though) we ended up starting up a couple of different bands through high school consisting of Ben, Mikey, myself and another lead singer. They all ended up falling though because we got lazy and lost interest, that was a period that I thought to be the end of ever playing in band again. Until, I decided I wanted to start singing one day. So I practiced and practiced and overtime I started to develop these songs that were written about coinciding events in my life, as a way to vent, I guess. This was the start of Peach Fur… we went through a couple of months of struggle trying to find a bass player because our sound was lackin’ hard until one night we met Liam over at Stradbroke Island and asked him to come over to the jam room and from that first jam we had, we knew it was the start of something special.

That was back in 2015, we have now played over 50 shows together playing all throughout the Gold Coast, BrisVegas, Sunny Coast and Byron to recording a 5-song EP, 2 singles and just in the process of finishing off a 7-song EP with a world class producer in the hills of Byron Bay at Rocking Horse Studio’s. We feel in the short time we have been together we have achieved a lot beyond our expectations so its only up from ‘ere !

The ‘Pleasure and Necessities’ EP and the ‘Rough as Guts’ covers both follow an animated theme. What do you give aim to achieve with this aesthetic, how does it reflect the song? 

Shoutout to our good friend and artist Tiff Curtis for the designs !! Love em, I came up with the main idea for the EP cover and Tiff interpreted it her way which I really love about it. It’s really original and feels like us in a way. Rough as Guts was written and recorded not long after we recorded our first EP, so there was this connection we had between the similarity of styles in the single and EP, as the music we were writing around the time of the release of ‘RAG’ was much different, we decided we wanted to tie them in. I guess the covers reflect the fun, light-hearted attitude and simplicity of the songs.

Being from the Gold Coast, how do your surroundings influence the type of music you guys make? Is the mix of rock with reggae and surf something that comes naturally growing up in Gold Coast?

I do believe in a way thats where the surf element in our songs is derived from especially with Liam’s beachy vibe to his original music but there has been a bunch of different influences to our music that have come from outta town also.

Can you tell us about your latest song ‘Rough as Guts,’ how did the idea come about and is the process of writing and taking it to the studio all collaborative or are there any aspects that only a couple of you focus on?

Rough as Guts was one of the songs that I had written based on personal experience as a way for me to let out how I was feeling at the time when I got dogged hard.. LAWL but it was actually the quickest process out of all our projects, as I wrote the lyrics and structure/arrangement within a couple of weeks and it took a day to record. Although I wrote the ‘guts’ of song XD, the other boys did have significant input into their parts of the song, ultimately putting in their individual flavours.

You have gotten to play some exciting events like the New Years Eve Festival with the Delta Riggs and Shakafest with Drapht and Dune Rats, how do these experiences improve you guys as a band and as performers?

I believe all gigs we play improves us a performers from playing shows to 5 people in an empty bar to playing on a stage with over a couple hundred people, we learn from all experiences, although it’s definitely great to see the stage presence of these international level bands.

Apart from having loads of fun with all the other performers at those kinds of events, do they teach you anything valuable for your own band?

I think that’s the biggest thing we get out of it, is to have fun. Don’t get me wrong there is a time and place for everything, and when enough is enough, but we’ve learnt to not take ourselves to seriously, although we are choosing it to be our career path and take the business side of it quite seriously. To us, the music we create is meant to make ya dance and smile, so we want to remain humble however far we end up taking it.

Are there any goals you have tour wise, any dream places or festivals you’d like to tick off your bucket list?

We have lots of dreams and goals!! to name one of my personal goals, I want to play a live set on a Seattle Radio station called ‘KEXP’, Triple J like A Version and basically tour all around the world pretty much, from the States/Canada, all through Europe and Asia.. will probably leave out North Korea though.

Finally, congrats on ‘Rough as Guts,’ can we expect any releases or new projects soon?

Yeah definitely!! We have just finished tracking all the instruments for an upcoming 7 song EP to be released around September/October time. We are yet to record vocals at the studio but you shall be able to get a little taste of the new music when we release a single off the EP in the not too distant future. The release of our new EP will be followed up with a tour down the south-east to Newcastle, Sydney, Melbourne and hopefully Adelaide.