Here are some answers to a few questions submitted via the website...
What is the best part about writing the band diary?
When we're on tour, about twenty-two hours of every day are spent not doing a gig. There are several ways to fill this time; you can play Xbox; you can watch TV; you can sit at the front of the bus and watch the scenery; you can ponder how semicolons work. When I started doing the tour diary I thought, "Brilliant! This will eat up heaps of time!" It has also proven useful as a way of remembering what has actually happened over the last five years.
Does Ryan ever put his camera down?
Yes, unfortunately. As soon as I can get the R&D dollars together to develop a head-mounted thought-operated digital camera that automatically blogs its photos when I take them, I will be able to take photos during gigs. Until then, I have to keep putting the camera down during gigs, other than those few bits where I'm not playing, or can get away with playing one-handed.
How often would you say you practiced?
I've never been a big practiser until this year. Unless there is something specific I want or need to work on (ie. something I'd like to play but can't) I'd rather have time away from the instrument when I'm not doing a gig. However, I've dug out some tedious left-hand exercises recently and have been going pretty nuts on them.
Instead of letting Ryan loose as he usually is on the tour diary, we asked him to answer some rigid, yet interesting quesitons... here is what he came back with.
How do you keep up with writing the band diary, do you ever get bored of it or not want to do it?
Well I can always write about things that have happened, and occasionally things that haven't happened. Honestly I'm more worried about the readers getting bored. You can only read, "I woke up, did a soundcheck and a gig, then got on the bus," so many times. That's why I'm starting more and more to avoid mentioning any of the gigs, where we are, or indeed what happens. As you can probably imagine, that doesn't leave room for much else. But I love a challenge.
What did you want to be when you grew up?
I think I wanted to be an astronaut or a musician. But I always thought "cosmonaut" was a much cooler word than "astronaut" - mainly because it translates to "sailor of the stars". I thought that sounded cool.
Imagine being a sailor on flat two-dimensional water for years and then finding out that you can fly into space and do the whole thing in THREE dimensions! You can sail UP! But unfortunately the band Starsailor soon made that seem less cool. Also, there's some hazards on the job.
The main one is you have to go into space. That's just dangerous. And if you think it's smooth sailingI tore up my Russian citizen application form, picked up a guitar, and I've been there ever since.
Stupidest thing you were taught at school?
That you can't start a sentence with the word "and". That's just lazy.
Or maybe that was just a test to see if we'd experiment and find out how to use it correctly. But I doubt it.
MySpace or Facebook?
Both. For different reasons. If they were children's books, Myspace would be "I Need All the Friends I Can Get", whereas Facebook would be, "Nah I Don't Really Know Half of You People, Get off My List". That second one doesn't exist, and I don't imagine it would be a very good seller.
Alien or Predator?
Alien. Predator seems really goddam scary and tough but it's got two legs and isn't much bigger than a human, and therefore more likely to have its ass kicked by humans. But Alien's blood can corrode right through a spaceship hull. Alien is so unlike anything on Earth, it plays by different rules.
Coffee or tea?
Both. It depends if you want to relax and broaden your horizons, or feel agitated and think you're more creative than you are. Both are equally desirable.
Double bass or electric bass?
I played electric bass first. Then after I started playing double, I thought, "Woah this is awesome, I can do anything on this!" So I abandoned electric bass for a while. Then I realised I actually couldn't do everything on upright, and that some situations call for electric. So I got back into that. Then I got sick of lugging the double around, and worked out how to make the electric sound more double-y, so I figured I could do everything on electric. I even did a tour without the double bass. But then we tried to play "Hello", and that just sounds crap without double bass. So now I'm using them both.
Why don't you use any pedals in The Cat Empire?
I've got enough to worry about with Will and Ollie throwing scary musical shit at me from both sides. Plus, there's so much going on musically and sonically in this band that I feel like the "bass player" texture is the only one I really need to contribute to what's going on.
The same goes for other bass techniques like slapping and harmonics and tapping and all that fun stuff. I don't think there's much room for any of that in our music. That said, I've started using a few pedals lately, but mostly as "finishing moves". I.e to do something really freaky to the last note of the song. It's like pulling off a really badass combo in Kelly Slater Pro Surfer and then flipping off the back of the wave and landing on a dolphin and diving through a flaming hoop.
Why don't you use a five- or six-string bass?
I can't count that far. Seriously though I sat in at a jam session about seven years ago and played someone else's five string, because I thought it would be about the same, just with an extra string that I could ignore. But I accidentally played everything a fourth down from where it should be. So I'm still not ready to go back. I can only work in multiples of four. Four string, eight string, twelve string...
What's with the lampshade?
Hahaha...yeah well my double bass has a magnet on the end, and I occasionally stick things to it.
Why do you guys keep saying you're a non-guitar band, and yet you or Harry have played guitar on everything you've ever recorded?
That's a good question. Guitars are just fun and we can't resist it sometimes. It's our number one weapon of choice for sitting on the couch in the studio. Then we play back a song and someone accidentally does something cool with a guitar, and then everyone says "That's awesome! Let's record that."