THE MONEY WAR INTERVIEW

‘The Money War’ duo first began their journey in 2015 when Dylan and Carmen took a trip to the US. This trip sparked the creation of some demos, which soon led them to continue pursuing their music. Since winning the Triple J Unearthed competition to play the Southbound Festival, The Money War has released their self titled EP and their latest single ‘Right Kind of Love.’ Here’s my chat with them below!

LB: Your trip to the US was the beginning of your journey, were there any specific moments over there that sparked the formation of ’The Money War’? 

TMW: There were a few moments – we met a couple of producers that we really admire. One of those was a guy called Arne Frager who we actually ran into by chance in a dive bar in San Francisco. We just got chatting to him and told him that we were musicians, it turned out that he used to own the Record Plant where Fleetwood Mac recorded Rumours and he’d worked with Prince and Paul McCartney. He ended up taking us hiking up a mountain in Mill Valley the next day and he told us a bunch of cool stories. He really encouraged us to do something with the demos that we’d recorded on the road so that experience certainly pushed us in the right direction.

You guys have made some great inroads in the music scene, like recently touring with HOLY HOLY. What was the experience of sharing new music in front of an audience like?

It was really great – we got to play our music on the other side of the country, in cities we’d never been. It was a total buzz to see people getting into it and even singing along to our songs.

In an environment with other musicians and bands, how did you learn from the people around you and soak everything in?

It was interesting to see how other people deal with the stress and nerves that can come with playing live. We watched Holy Holy’s set at every show and really admired the energy they give when they play.

Your newest release ‘Right Kind of Love,’ is a lovely song that shows optimism through the chaos of the world. Can you talk about how the ideas and inspiration come about? 

The ideas can spark from anything really – like something that’s happening in our personal lives or something that we’ve seen in a movie. Sometimes the inspiration comes from another song and how that song makes us feel. It’s not always clear what a song is about until it’s almost finished – for me personally I find myself writing lyrics that come out of nowhere and then I slowly piece them altogether and see that they’re developing from something I’ve been thinking about or something that’s happened recently. Usually the inspiration comes from feeling certain emotions. ‘Right Kind of Love’ is a song that stems from feeling pretty down and overwhelmed by the bad shit happening in the world, but the song focuses on the optimistic idea that all that bad shit sometimes makes you realise how important other aspects of your life are and the “right kind of love” can be different things to different people – like your family or friends.

Can you describe its evolution from an idea to who takes on the writing and producing? Is everything done collaboratively?

We have our own studio so that means we’re able to write and record simultaneously. So whenever we have a new idea we can start putting it down and we often work on things together from that point – sometimes the idea is fully formed but other times it becomes something else once we start working on it together.

I also really love the music video’s way of documenting your journeys and its simplicity and rawness. Why is this format special to you and how do you think it complements the song? 

We record all of our music ourselves so it made sense for us to create our own clip. The video for ‘Right Kind of Love’ is a compilation of footage we took while we were travelling and just hanging out with friends in some of our favourite places – which complements the message in the song.

Now after this release, do you guys have any goals for the future, maybe touring wise or related to the growth of your music? 

We’d love to play some festivals on the east coast and tour internationally in the near future. We also plan to collaborate with some other producers and musicians like Matt Redlich (he produces Holy Holy, Husky, Ball Park Music, Emma Louise) – he mixed our song Right Kind Of Love. 

Congratulations on your successful year, with plenty of new releases. After releasing a range of new music, is there still plenty of inspiration to make new music? Has it changed you musically, maybe giving you new learning experiences? 

I think there will always be inspiration to make new music and to make something that feels new to us – we’ve had a lot of cool experiences in the past few months since we released the EP including travelling with the last tour and that always sparks some ideas.

Lastly, can you tell us if there are any up coming tours and if you’re working on any new music? 

We’re working on new music as we speak and we’ll have a new single out in the next few months. We also have another tour happening soon so we’re really looking forward to getting back on the east coast! Keep an eye out on our socials for the tour dates 🙂