Megan Washington is on the cusp of something big. Her recently-released first album,
I Believe You Liar, debuted at #3 on the ARIA charts. During her current album tour, she and her band are playing five sold-out shows at the 850-capacity Melbourne venue, The Corner. Successful album tours aside, she’s booked to play (at least) eleven significant music events for the remainder of 2010. Put simply, people are going bananas for Washington.
Most people, at least. One of TheVine’s critics, Everett True, wrote a contentious review of
I Believe You Liar, which was published the day before we spoke. Hours ahead of Megan’s sold-out show at The Zoo, my girlfriend Rachael and I sat cross-legged on the concrete floor of a nearby car park with the singer, who smoked five self-rolled cigarettes over the course of our 50 minute conversation.
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So tell me: what were your first feelings when reading Everett's review last night?
At first it was...I don't think it was a particularly compassionate review. I think that you can state your opinion, whilst not being overly hostile. You know what I mean? It was a bit hurtful, but I guess everybody feels like that about their art and the thing they try really hard to make.
Then I read it again this morning and realised that it makes no sense. It starts by saying that pop's doing fine by itself, thanks very much, ask Katy Perry, blah, blah, blah. Then he said the production is ‘too pop’ on the record. How does that make sense? The production's too pop, and [yet] pop's doing fine.
Do you know what I mean? I guess you've got to be adult enough to understand that people have opinions and even though if I really thought… he didn't even mention the songwriting. He said the lyrics were quirky, without actually discussing any of the lyrics. Why are they quirky; how are they quirky? I thought it was more of a vehicle for him to voice his opinion about the state of the music industry in Australia.
I read it again today as well. It read as though he really likes it, but he wanted to have a bunch of reasons to put a barrier up between just saying "I fucking like it."
Maybe it's really uncool for him to like it because he likes cool music. It's not cool. I'm not going to pretend like I make cool music. I'm not fucking Tame Impala. I don't make cool tunes. I write songs that I like. It doesn't make them cool.
There's thousands of people who would disagree with you, though.
Well yeah sure, but I never set out to make this band a fashion band or a lifestyle band or a scene band or anything like that. It's funny that people say I'm a hipster because I wear glasses. I wear glasses because I have a stigmatism, and my eyes are shaped like footballs and I can't wear contact lenses. That's why I wear glasses. I can't wear contacts. It's not like a fucking statement.
You can't wear contacts?
No, because my eyes are shaped like footballs.
So it will misshape your eyes if you wear contacts? I’m fascinated, because I wear contacts.
No, they don't fit because – I asked my optometrists and they were like "You can't wear contacts because your eyes are shaped like footballs." They're not like basketballs, which is kind of funny. I'm like Arnold; remember "Hey Arnold?"
Yeah. "Hey, football head." [laughter]
Maybe he liked it, maybe he didn't. People have agendas and that's fine. He's entitled to his opinion. I think that if you are going to be critical of something, you have to be really careful about how you write it. It has to be really well written. Criticism has to be exceptionally articulate and witty, and on the money. I felt like as a piece of writing it was a bit confusing.
The haters are going to be pissed off that you're not just wearing glasses for show.
Well, they can come and put my glasses on and see that they are real. Whatever. It's fine. It's been something that I've never really thought about. You know it's really funny how Everett said "Why do Australians get all supportive of people who have some success and say 'Good on you mate for getting up there.'" That does not happen. The opposite happens. You do anything even moderately that works and people chew on you. It's called tall poppy syndrome. It exists. The whole thing was backwards.
Do you always read your reviews, Megan?
No, I try not to read them, but my mother actually texted me. My mother is like a hardcore Internet – I think she just likes to find me in places. She said "Have you read that interview?" I was like "What?" Of course I found it and I was like "bummer". What would you do if you read a review like that?
If I was an artist? I would read it. There's no way I could stop myself from reading it.
Would you just go “easy come, easy go, someone didn't like it”, or would you –
I find it hard – you need kind of thick skin and I think initially it would hurt. You'd be like "Fuck, got me," and then you'd be like "What does it matter? I'm doing what I love." Would you say you have thick skin?
I have a deep conviction, but I don't have thick skin. I really believe in making music and I really believe in the music that I make, but being an artist is like that awful dichotomous mix of narcissism and deep insecurity. I think that's true for every artist. On the one hand, I have very deep conviction that I really want to do this and I really believe in the music that I make, otherwise I wouldn't make it. That's why it took me three years to make this record, because I wanted it to be the best I could do. I didn't think it was. At the same time, it hurts.
We're talking to you at a pretty ridiculous point in your career. You kind of have become ubiquitous, across every media I read it's like "Washington, Washington". Your booking agent must be the busiest man in the industry.
They've got this really great saying in dance land - I did a lot of dancing. They said "It takes 10 years to be an overnight success," which for me – I don’t know what I am. I don't really read the paper or anything because I'm always touring. I don’t own a television. I don't really plug into that kind of thing.
For me, it's just been the last three years; I've been this busy for the last three years. In my personal life, there's not much difference except the gigs I'm playing now are bigger. I'm doing more press and less writing. But it's the same amount of industry, not industry like the music industry but like industrious activity.
Washington - 'Rich Kids'
In a recent interview with Undercover you said you haven't written a song in three months.
Hadn't written a song in three months. I wrote one. I'm going to play it tonight. It's called 'Plastic Bag'. It's about touring. Thanks for nothing, Bob Dylan. I actually realised that because it took so long to make the record, and we did it so cheaply, it was a labour of love for us for such a long time. It actually stops becoming an activity and became a lifestyle.
That sort of worked itself into my creative process. I would write a song knowing I could record it in four days. I would get it finished for the recording date, and then it would be done and out of my brain so I could write again, and again, and again. It was always just being recorded properly as I would hear it, as I was writing. You know, as it was going. So the recording process was part of my writing process as well.
When the recording process ended, my writing stopped because there was nowhere to dump it. I just had one song I couldn't finish because I had no deadline. I rang John and said "We've got to go back in." He was like "Please, for the love of God, no!" I said, "No, we have to. Otherwise I won't be able to write," so we booked in for a week later and I finished one fucking song, and the band learnt it so now we're going to play it tonight, record number two. Kill me.
You also said that the album release process is less like giving a birth than having a tumour removed. You’ll spend the next six months or so playing these songs, week in and week out - or day in and day out in some cases. Is it enjoyable?
Yeah, for me there are two sides. Like making the record was its own thing. Then the live show is its own thing as well. For a long time, about 18 months ago, or even two years ago, we would get really good EP reviews and shit live reviews because we sucked live. We weren't good live because we hadn't really played as a band [for] very long and it was hard to get the band thing down. We weren't very good and we're new and someone still had lead sheets on the floor. It was a bit hokey and lame.
I really enjoy playing the songs live because we have no intention of making it sound like the record. It just can't. There are a bunch of vocal tracks and two drum tracks. There's no way of recreating the record without employing another 10 people. I can't afford that. I don't hate the songs. I really enjoy playing them live. It's good to relive it a little bit.
Megan outside the Zoo during our interview (Pic: Andrew McMillen)
I saw you for the first time at Splendour. That was before or somewhere around the time I got the album. I was like "Wow, these guys are great!." I must have missed the shittiness.
That live review thing was actually an example of criticism that can actually be really good, just going back to the original thing. We got so many bad reviews for our live show that I actually realised that it was right. A stereotype is a stereotype because there's enough truth in it to make it real. Then we had a serious band reshuffle and we changed a bunch of shit and stopped acting like wankers, and I sacked a bunch of people from the band and did all this crap. We toured for three months solidly. We did three tours back to back. We did Oh Mercy, then Kate Miller-Heidke, then Sia at the end of last year and that was really hard for us, but it was so important because we actually learned to play like a band.
I imagine you tighten up pretty quickly if you're doing it every night in front of people.
You stop giving a fuck as well. You stop worrying about "Am I singing pitch perfect?" That doesn't matter. No one gives a fuck about that shit. I had to realise that. The boys had to realise no one cares about their chops. They care about the sum of the parts.
One thing I want to return to, from Everett's review, is his discussion of the album’s production. He felt it was geared for radio.
That's funny to us.
Why?
'Cause it wasn't. There are so many out of tune guitars and so many crappy drum edits, and I think the production – and so does John, because I talked to him about that review just a minute ago, before you guys got here. He hadn't read it and I showed it to him. He was like "If I thought that our intention was to make a radio record, then I would feel sort of exposed, I suppose. But because we didn't…" I mean, ‘How To Tame Lions’ is in 6/8. How many singles on the radio are in 6/8? None. Train [the band] is made for radio. Washington is not made for anything. We're not a rock band. We're not a party band. We're not a novelty band. We're not like an intense emotional, like “my period and my menstrual cycle” band. We're none of those things. I don't think we are. I certainly never wrote with the radio in mind.
You don't identify with being a pop band?
No. It's so funny. Everybody says this is a pop record, and I understand - sure it has hooks, totally. But to me, when I hear this record it just sounds really sad. I haven't listened to it in months, but when I listened to it, it sounds really sad to me. To me, it has the same sentiment as
Oh by Damien Rice; a real sad, fuck you, breakup record.
But the songs probably have a different meaning for you than to the general audience. You mask it with metaphor, as every songwriter does.
Sure, that's what songwriting is. If I was like "I broke up with this guy, that was really fucked," that wouldn't be a song.
That's like two lines. That’d be lame.
I know! That'd be a haiku. I don't identify with "pop". I don't think it's pop.
I’ve heard and read you use ‘vaudevillian’ to describe it.
Yeah, I think that's something, a device that's exploited a lot in musical writing. "Jaunty melodies", like "tip of the hat" kind of stuff, with usually quite a dark, thematic content. That's something that really resonates with me, and I guess innately, I ape it, Badly. [laughs]
The strings in the final song [‘I Believe You Liar’]. Any regrets there?
[Immediately] No. Nup.
That's your conviction that you mentioned earlier.
Yeah! No, that's one of my favourite songs on the album. Just because it came together too quickly and I sent it to Daniel Denim, who I loved, and he wrote the strings and he sent me the demo of the strings, and I was like "I love it," and from writing the song to having it mastered took ten days. It all happened at once. And I'm a die-hard Rufus Wainwright fan. I love saturated, widescreen, camp...I love that. I don't have regrets, fuck no. Why? Do you hate them?
No. I was trying to rile you up here, trying to get something out of you.
I've been talking for ten minutes straight! [laughs]
I must say I really enjoy the vocal overdubs in ‘Cement’.
Oh, that little [sings] ‘da-da-dada-da’ – the backing vocals.
Yeah. Did you imagine it like that or was it someone else's idea?
No, I wanted it to sound exactly like the 'Monster Mash', like those girls who go [sings] "They did the Mash, they did the Monster Mash, the Monster Mash…" That's what I wanted.
I wanted it to sound like fucked up doo-wop, you know?
Every time I hear ‘Underground’, I wonder how your parents feel about that song. (The song describes how her parents and siblings might feel should Megan pass away - Ed).
So do I. I sent that song to my parents. I recorded it for this thing called
Shoot The Player in Sydney. My friend Amelia runs that and I'd just written it, and I didn't really know what Shoot the Player was very much. I've since come to realise it's fucking awesome, but I had to do those videos in between sound check and the gig at a show in Sydney that we were doing, so I just played it and I got a text from my mother when it went up. Because my mum, she trolls.
Washington: Underground from shoottheplayer.com on Vimeo.
She's got a Google Alert on you.
I bet she does. She gets "Barack Obama in Washington…" all the time, every fucking five minutes. She said that the song was really beautiful but if I die before she does, she's going to kick my ass in the afterlife. My mum's pretty funny. There is no difference between my mother and I. Not that I'm saying I'm funny, but she called me a "little cunt" the other day. She's like that.
Now, how does that come about? Why did she call you a little cunt?
I don't know. We're such a close family. We're super tight, and we just don't have any – I guess a lot of families are different but we are all similar in our personality, my mother and my sister and I. And my dad is just this other being from another planet. He's like Peter Pan. My parents camped at Splendour. My dad is 70. He went to two Splendours and camped. That's a pretty good example of what my parents are like. They fucking loved it. They had their maps and their fucking compasses. It's like they were going on a trek through the Himalayas. They had their wellies and their backpacks and their bottles of water and they were ready to go. My mother loves Mumford & Sons and she saw them at Laneway. She called my agent and asked for a ticket for Laneway so she could go see Mumford & Sons.
Were they camping in general admission or the reserved area?
I think they got laminates. But that's really indicative of our whole crew. My agent, my manager, and my parents, and my label manager - like my label manager and my mother have a wager together on who's going to get me to quit smoking first. My mother's going to use guilt and the label manager wants to use – I don't know, like something else. Everyone's really tight, and I'm so glad of that because I really wanted to be able to talk to my manager like he's my family. And my dad calls my manager and asks him questions. My parents feel part of everything. That's really important to me. I don't believe in elusive "Mum you can't talk to him, he's my..." that's fucked. We're all doing the same shit, right?
Going back to ‘Underground’, have you considered becoming an ambassador for the organ donation registry?
No I haven't, that's a marvellous idea.
I'm surprised that no one in their marketing department has thought of that because there’s that line about donating your organs.
“Give to medicine”. I'm sure you've read this in other interviews if you've read all the other things that you've quoted. I started that song as a gag because I thought it was funny to write a song about when you're dead. It's pretty funny. I also wrote a song about wanting to sleep with the only single guy at a wedding that I was at, even though he was bald and old, just because he was the only single dude. It was the same kind of thing, but as I was writing it, I realised you can't joke about that stuff. You can't make a joke about that.
I didn't see it as funny at all. It was a little confronting.
It turned into a really serious song. I don't cry when I sing it, but fuck I'm sure my parents do. I thought really long and hard about whether it would be appropriate for me to put that on the record.
And so high on the track record, number three or something.
We put it up there because the record opens with three songs that are pretty catchy. Layered, kind of grandiose almost, in a really hokey way. I wanted to quickly bring the focus to the words - I'm a songwriter, not an arranger. I'm not Phil Spector, so I wanted to really try and put a really honest, gross moment right up front.
Gross?
Yeah, it's pretty gross.
Macabre?
Ghoulish, I think.
At the same time, you've got the balls to take it on. It's a difficult subject.
Like I said, I didn't really think much when I was writing it, but I thought a lot after I wrote it. I thought "Will I ever play this?" It's like writing a really frank and candid breakup song that names names and names events. Do you put that on the record? Is it fair? It was the same kind of thought, is it fair to put this on the record? Is this the right thing to do? I know that 13-year old girls listen to my record. Should I be making them interrogate their own mortality? Yeah.
It's one of the most fascinating songs on the album to me.
Thank you. I'm glad you like it. I'm glad it's a sticky-outy one.
You've become a bit of a multi-media celebrity. You've done Good News Week, RocKwiz, Spicks and Specks. Do you fear overexposure?
No, because after Good News Week, I got all these messages from people going "Never heard of you before, loved you on Good News Week darlin". So no, not really. And I think the only people who think about overexposure are people who have any sort of interest in the music industry. I did worry about it a lot but I also did a lot of stuff before the record came out.
For all of the EPs before the album, I had a meeting with Universal and I said to them "I don't want any marketing of any of my EPs, nothing." So we just put them out, no parade, no fanfare, no nothing, just put them out. I know it can be a trap with major labels that they just want to promote the living shit out of everything. And I didn't want that. Because I didn't feel ready and I didn't feel like those EPs – whilst I'm proud of them, I just wanted to give the music a chance to actually make its own way. I wanted the music to actually do whatever it would do without any sort of artificial slam. When the record came out I went on Good News Week, RocKwiz, and Spicks and Specks and all that kind of stuff, but nothing ever happened before that.
(Strictly speaking, this isn't true. Megan appeared on Spicks and Specks in Oct 2009 and RockWiz in Dec 2009, both clearly part of the How To Tame Lions EP (Sep 2009) promo period. I Believe You Liar came out July 2010. - Ed)
I'm interested to know how [the TV shows] come about. Do you ask to be on there? Do they ask you? Does your agent book it? Does the label book it?
Marketing and promotions at the label have relationships with all of those people and I guess they act as kind of pimps; they call it talent, like "You need some talent for the show."
How do you feel that term, "talent"? It could be anyone.
Fine. “I’m the talent! Great!” So they go "We need an act," and Universal would say "well we have these people whose records are coming out so let's put them on." But RocKwiz is different. RocKwiz pick you, the same with Spicks; Spicks pick you. They don't give a shit about nothing but I think the major channels, the networks –
That's funny because Channel 10 is Good News Week, whereas the others are SBS and ABC.
So SBS and ABC get to pick their own talent and I think the bigger stations have more of a relationship with them.
You've had a few hit moments on the show, like the Substitute bit [where Megan covers Radiohead’s ‘Creep’]. Did it affect you to have Alan Borough say to you that it moved him to tears? Does that ever affect you?
I do get that sometimes. People say 'when you sing I feel something'. To me, that's really good because when I sing
I really feel something. I really love to sing but I could never do a show or gig – maybe I haven't done enough gigs – although tonight is my 100th gig this year. Isn't that amazing? Troy my manager called me and said "You know tonight is your 100th gig this year?" I was like fuck, it's just gone September. Fuck.
So that makes sense to me, because I really love to sing. When I sing it really means a lot to me to sing. I really love that I can and I love that I'm allowed to – this is my job.
Allowed to? Like, 'Will you let me sing, please? Please may I sing for you, five hundred people who are paying to be here'?
Well, there are so many great singers who don't have gigs. That's what I mean by ‘allowed to’. I'm in a position where people come to my show and that's so great. For me, it's really rewarding and wonderful when people say that because it means they feel what I feel. I really love it.
Good. Five shows at The Corner, what the fuck? I was going back through your Facebook posts today and a while back you were like "second and final show at The Corner, on sale now!”
Well, I don't know, Melbourne love to go to shows. There's nothing else to do. It's fucking freezing down there. [laughs] I don't know, man. The Corner thing's pretty great. The last gig we did in Melbourne was at The Toff, which fits 200 people in it, if that. Now this.
I don't know anybody who got into music for money or fame. Everyone just got into music because they couldn't help themselves. At the same time, you want to be able to do it for your life, and the only way to be able to do that is to have people want to come see you. So for me, that Corner thing is so great because it means we may actually be able to do it again, because we want to be in the hole and not have to go and do something like 85 corporate gigs.
You mean like Big Sound? [Megan headlined Big Sound Live this year].
No, I mean like the Dairy Farmers Association of New South Wales’ annual Christmas party.
You’ve done this?
Fuckin’ oath, man.
As Washington?
As ‘Jazz Face’. That's all I did when I was at uni, was sing at fuckin’ casinos and corporate events on the Gold Coast, like singing jazz. I was the classy option. You could either have the ABBA cover band or me singing Billy Holiday.
You mentioned no one gets into it for money, but once you cross over into fulltime artist territory, which you're in now, does it become a stress point, like "shit I have to keep the ball rolling?"
No, I don't feel that. Let's lay a few things down on the table. I live in a two-bedroom terrace house in Fitzroy that I rent. I've been renting for four years. I have in my personal bank account right now, like, four grand. So I don't know when you’re meant to get heaps of money. [laughs] I don't know when that happens. Like, do you ring somebody about that or what do you do? You've got to understand, my band is my band but I pay them. John made the record for three years; neither of us had any money. No one's got any money. I don't feel like some fucking amazing, “let's just go and buy a house in Bondi tomorrow” kinda… it’s just the same [as before].
But you're laying the foundations for a career.
Yeah. Yep. Sure. But I don't need a lot to live. I've got to pay my rent, feed myself, fix my keyboard, be able to fly the band around and do shit with them, and smoke. It's really expensive now.
It's gone up, like, $3 a pack now.
Three bucks? That's a coffee. That's one coffee I can't have.
Your manager would be watching the books and saying "What are you spending each week in cigarettes now? We’ve gotta it cut out of the budget." [laughter]
Maybe you should get in on this fucking deal that they have. But I don't feel any pressure to sustain it. What did you say?
The stress like "Fuck, I'm a musician. I've cut all ties to my past life. I have to do this and earn a living."
No, because for me I've always been a musician. I studied music and before I even started Washington I was making a living as a musician playing in other peoples' bands and singing jazz and doing a bunch of different shit like that. I've been a full-time musician. I haven't had a job since 2007, a proper like, superannuation job since 2007.
So for the last three years I've just been doing this. And the other prong to your question is that I don't feel like being a musician is any different than my personal self. I feel like that's evident in my really close dialogue I have with everybody on Facebook and stuff. I want to be accountable. I don't believe in that celebrity thing. "I live in fairyland with Julian Casablancas." I don't believe in that stuff. Everyone is just a person who sits on the toilet. It's just the same shit.
I do think that being an artist has a transcendental element but that's not quantifiable. That's not something you can measure because obviously some people don't like what I do. That's cool because I'm just a person and I don't like the coffees at that other coffee shop. Do you know what I mean? That's okay with me, but I don't feel like there's any separation between who I am on stage or who I am in interviews, or who I am on TV, and who I am sitting with you guys...wherever the fuck we are [laughs]. With a fucking generator, in the gutter, getting dirty.
Washington - 'How To Tame Lions'
I have to ask you how you feel about the Parklife booking. Were you ever like, "I don't play beats. I'm not a beat maker”?
Yeah, but I sang at Parklife two years ago when The Bamboos played, and they were the weird band then. The Bamboos are a funk band, a retro fucking funk band, soul band or whatever. I kind of already went through that when I sang with them at Parklife, because we were like "Everyone's going to hate us, everyone's going to fucking hate us." But if I went to Parklife? Maybe I'd get sick of [beats]. Maybe I'd get sick of the same kind of music. Also, I was like "fucking sweet, we've got a gig!" [laughs]
Are you still like that?
Yeah! [laughs]
Even though you’ve got 11 festivals lined up over the next few months?
You know,
that thing – I read that. I don't know about half those fucking festivals.
What?! Is your booking agent just going nuts saying "fuck yeah!" to everything?
No, I've been so busy for the last four months, touring with The Beautiful Girls, or whatever, that I can only really think of my life in six-hour blocks. Really, I'm like "Okay, for the next six hours I need this, and then that, and then that's cool so I'll bring those shoes, clothes." I can't think about next week. I gotta get through this week. It's actually a really kind of Buddhist way to live, totally in the now all the time. Eckhart Tolle would be very proud of me.
So I don't know about half those festivals. I was like, what the fuck, we're playing that thing? Really? What is that thing? Google it; "that seems cool, great."
"I'm glad we're on that bill."
Yeah: “That’s cool, I like that guy, I want to meet that guy.”
You just reminded me of something. There's a book called Playlisted which came out last year by Criag Mathieson. He has separate chapters for a bunch of acts, and he was talking about INXS, when they at the peak of their career, like ‘world conquerors’. He equated them at that point to existing in the ‘womb’. They’d get their nutrients, and moved around the world being shielded from the outside world. You're not quite at that point yet, are you Megan?
Well. kind of, because I don't know about a bunch of shit that's happening to me. But no, do you believe in numerology?
No.
I do. And I'm a 2, 3, 5. Like 2+3=5 is my equation. Five – it's not a good thing or a bad thing, it's just like your karma thing that you struggle with, is dependence and independence. What will get fives into trouble their whole life or redeem them - it's like their thing - is being too independent – finding a balance between dependence and independence.
That is very true of me, I think. I'm an extremely, fiercely, almost – definitely to a fault independent person. But at the same time, my life has evolved in such a way that now I'm extremely dependent on the people around me, like the tour manager and my band and my booking agent and all these people. I just don't have the space to deal with everything myself.
But I ran this band by myself for a year and a half, booking tours, doing the posters, doing all the shit myself. And that really suited me. So no, I don't live in the womb but I can move around where I am but there are a lot of people in my life that I'm dependent on now. I suppose that's why I'm extremely selective about the people that I have in my life. I just recently cleaned my house because I was away for ages. There were people just living there. It was a big fucking mess.
People squatting in your house?
Kind of. My house was like a halfway house for touring musicians. There’d be shit everywhere. They find a TV on hard rubbish night and bring it home because they were drunk, and I’d be like “fuck, what is this fucking old TV?” I had this epiphany because I was cleaning out my house, and I got a skip. My parents came down from Brisbane, we had this weekend mission and we threw away all this shit. I found in my house thirty-five mugs. Just think about that for a second. Coffee mugs; 35, crappy, shitty, tacky, awful mugs that had just accrued somehow in the house.
They hold liquid. They're useful.
I realised the mugs were a metaphor for people.
You'd accumulated too many people?
Hollow, poorly, unrewarding people that are empty, just waiting to be filled. When you drink from these mugs, there's no satisfaction because they're not heavy and comforting.
Rachael: I know what you mean, a good mug. I have two at my house and I love them.
Yes, they're good mugs, this is why people have favourite mugs, not because of how they look but because of the way they're made. A great mug is thick and the way that it sits in your mouth.
Rachael: I totally agree with this.
It's just like people. There are some people who just in their very innate being are really rewarding and wonderful and comforting and great people to have around. There are other people who are just… aren’t. So I chucked out the fuckin’ mugs!
Did you smash them?
No, I put them in this skip, I went out and found six really wonderful mugs. I know I sound like a crazy person, but you understand! [grabs Rachael] So I'm not crazy. I just have six, and they're all terrific.
So do you horde them all to yourself? Do you get pissed if other people drink from them?
No, no, because now if someone is at my house and drinking from my mug, it is because they are a good mug. And they deserve a good mug. Do you know what I’m saying?
Rachael: I understand that. I understand the human relationship to a mug.
You can explain it to him when he's writing it going, "She's fucking nuts!" [laughter]
My final question, how do you keep your health on tour? You smoke like a chimney; you seem to drink pretty heavily as well. And your job relies on your voice. How do you do it?
Well. How do I keep my health or how do I keep my voice?
Mostly your voice.
I could gargle acid. I feel like I could gargle acid and still sing. I don't have that thing where people can't drink milk or they have to drink this special tonic or whatever.
Rachael: Like Cedric from The Mars Volta, drinking 27 cups of tea during his set.
We watched them and counted it. This guy came out, with this boiling kettle [from] behind the stage replaced his hot water, every three to five minutes.
I don't have that. I've never had to worry about my voice. To me, singing is really like a thing that I love to do that loves me. I love it and it loves me. It understands. It doesn't like it but it understands. It's like a great partner. Singing goes "You're smoking, it shits me, but I love you. It's okay." I go to singing: "I love you, I'm sorry, but I have to do this because of my brain," and it goes "Okay."
My health is a different story. I get really tired and crazy and skinny and then fat. I get really fat and then skinny all the time. My body, the rest of me hates my lifestyle, but singing and me, we're good friends.
That's an anomaly to me, because you don't exactly have a tiny vocal range. You have to hit some pretty crazy notes. A lot of singers would be envious of that.
It may catch up with me at some stage, but if it does, I'll just quit smoking.
Your mum's going to win, then, isn't she?
Yeah, like if it does catch up with me and I feel like I can't sing what I imagined - like I imagine I'm going to hit this note before I sing it and then I can't hit it - then I know I'm in trouble. But it hasn't been a problem. If anything, I might just – when I came out of The Con [Queensland Conservatorium of Music], I had great technique and I was a really healthy singer. They call it vocal hygiene. My vocal hygiene was immaculate. However, I had the voice of a nine-year old boy whose balls hadn't dropped. It was this pure, crystalline, really trained within an inch of itself, trained to fuck voice. And I hated it.
I hated that I sounded like that because I would talk and I'd sound like this, and then I'd sing and be like...and I just hated it. I just realised I had to forget everything that was external. It's like how actors have to learn their lines to forget them, so they can react honestly in the character. I realised I had to forget all that shit and just find the ‘me’ in me, in my singing. So I just didn't give a shit, really, and just did whatever I wanted.
Andrew McMillen
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myspace.com/meganwashington
WASHINGTON - UPCOMING SHOWS 2010
Sep 16 - Karova Lounge - SOLD OUT Ballarat, VIC
Sep 17 - The Corner - SOLD OUT Richmond, VIC
Sep 18 - Northcote Town Hall Northcote (Melbourne), VIC
Sep 18 - National Hotel - SOLD OUT Geelong, VIC
Sep 21 - The Corner - SOLD OUT Melbourne, VIC
Sep 22 - The Corner Hotel - SOLD OUT Richmond, VIC
Sep 23 - The Corner - SOLD OUT Richmond, VIC
Sep 24 - The Corner - SOLD OUT Richmond, VIC
Sep 25 - Parklife - Gold Coast Gold Coast, QLD
Sep 26 - Parklife - Perth Perth, WA
Oct 2 - Parklife - Melbourne Melbourne, VI
Oct 3 - Parklife - Sydney Sydney, NSW
Oct 4 - Parklife - Adelaide Adelaide, SA