Interview: Thalia Zedek (USA) & Ned Collette (AUS) - Aotearoa New Zealand Tour

Icon of Boston's alt-rock / art-punk underground, Thalia Zedek (Live Skull, Uzi, Come) is playing in Aotearoa for the first time ever next month, joined in Tāmaki Makaurau and Pōneke by Berlin-based Australian / NZ avant-folk artist Ned Collette, who also has a solo date lined up for Lyttelton. Just released on Friday, open your ears to Thalia Zedek Band's new album The Boat Outside Your Window (Thrill Jockey Records) and scroll down to read their recent conversation together — considering how gig culture has changed over the years, the value of musical collaboration, Zedek's recollections of touring with Kurt Cobain, and more...

Thalia Zedek (USA) and Ned Collette (AUS)

Wednesday 18th June - Unitarian Church, Auckland
Thursday 19th June - Vogelmorn Upstairs, Wellington
Friday 20th June - Lyttelton Coffee Co, Christchurch (Ned Collette only)*

Tickets on sale HERE via UTR
*Christchurch tickets on sale HERE via UTR

Ned Collette: Thalia, I first met you when we played together in Melbourne in I guess 2004? I was pretty young then and had a deep sense of wanting to belong to a lineage of Australian music. I remember being struck by how much the TZ Band could have fitted in with that, though you were all from the other side of the world. I now know you had moved in the same circles as people like Dirty Three, but was there a conscious influence from Australian (and New Zealand) stuff, or was it just one of those moments in time where similar frequencies were at play everywhere?

Thalia Zedek: I had been a big fan of the Dirty Three since very early on. There was a Boston connection there, because their very first record was released on the small Boston label Forced Exposure (now a pretty big indie distributor). Come were friends with Kristin and Jimmy who ran the label and the Dirty Three played here at small clubs like the Middle East fairly frequently, so we became friendly with them as well and at one point toured with them and Pavement. They were definitely an influence on me musically, as was the Birthday Party, the Bad Seeds, These Immortal Souls, Crime and the City Solution, and The Go-Betweens, so the Australian scene was always something that I found fascinating.

At some point in the '90s I started becoming more aware of the NZ scene, a friend of mine, Mark Shaw, made me a mix tape called KIWIS 4 T.Z. with 100 minutes of music on it which I loved, Double Happiness, Shayne Carter, The Stones, Nocturnal Projections, Tall Dwarfs, Peter Jefferies.

There was kind of an influx of Kiwis to NYC in the late '80s and '90s, with Dean Wareham, Dean Roberts, Hamish Kilgour, Stu Spasm, Bailter Space among others that I was lucky to meet and share stages with.

Oh man, I wanna listen to that tape next time I’m in Boston. You’ve never played NZ / Aotearoa before right? This is going to be a bit of a whirlwind visit. Do you have a sense of what to expect?

I have no idea what to expect and can’t wait to find out. We’ll have a couple of days off in Wellington to relax and check out the scene, and I’m also looking forward to Auckland. I wish that I would have more time to hang, out but I have some tours happening in the States that I have to get back for. But I’m thrilled to play in NZ for the very first time and get to meet some new people. I've read that you've spent some time in Wellington in the past? What are your connections to New Zealand?

My mum was born in Canterbury and grew up in Wellington, and I spent a lot of time there as a kid — it did sort of feel like a second home away from Melbourne. Actually the venue we’re playing in Wellington — Vogelmorn Upstairs — is about 300 metres from my grandparents' old house. It’s an area I’m very fond of and familiar with. As I got older and started playing music I gravitated back towards Wellington and played a lot in the scene around The Space in Newtown and Happy, connected with a lot of people from the experimental and improv scenes like Jeff Henderson, Leila Adu, Anthony Donaldson, saw early gigs by Connan Mockasin, Lawrence Arabia etc, did a bit of touring with A Low Hum in some very wild and remote places. Dean Roberts of course became a friend, though that was later in Berlin really.

You've lived and worked in several different countries. Has each place that you've lived affected your work? Where do you feel most at home?

Berlin is definitely home in the emotional and practical sense. I’m not sure if it has really affected my work by its being Berlin, specifically. But moving anywhere creates a whole set of new influences — new people, new books, new environments and perspectives — so that I’m pretty sure if I’d stayed in Australia I wouldn’t have made exactly the same music. I mean of course not. But I definitely feel that Australia is still hugely my spiritual home, and actually New Zealand too. I don’t get there nearly as often as I’d like, but whenever I do I feel the deepest connection to people, to my family and just the way people are there. There is a big difference between Australians and New Zealanders – it’s hard to articulate, but a lot of the time I feel more comfortable around people in New Zealand, or more naturally myself or something. Maybe it’s the maternal connection. It’s kinda fascinating.

Actually the cover of my last record is inspired by my vivid memories of Lyttelton, which is the town my grandfather grew up in, and which I’ve only visited a few times. I’m doing one extra show there this time after you fly home. It’s a port town with a dramatic harbour that at night kinda feels like the end of the earth, but connected with the rest of the world through dark twinkling waters and shipping. I guess you might find a feeling like that in remote Norway or Canada too. I love it. I’ve noticed a distinct maritime theme threaded through your lyrics — I’m really enjoying becoming familiar with some of your work as a player for these shows we’re doing together. A lot of boats, a lot of water. Is this conscious? Is it a New England thing?

There definitely is a maritime thread. I’m not sure why, though Boston is a coastal city. I’ve just always been very drawn to the ocean, I’m sure that there could be some kind of subconscious, archetypal explanation for it but I don’t know if I want to get into all of that. I think the ocean can be symbolic of a lot of things.

The first single off your new album, 'Tsunami' — there’s the ocean, again. “This time the kids are not alright.” What’s it about?

This song was written prior to the 2024 election in the US, during the campaigning. It was a very strange and stressful time and I had a lot of apprehension about the future. There were wildfires and flooding and droughts and the environment felt pretty apocalyptic generally. I would frequently think about how it must feel to be young and growing up in these times. 'The Kids Are Alright' is a famous Who song from the '60s that’s become a bit of a catch phrase for youthful resiliency, but I feel that a lot of young people these days have been really traumatised by the events of the past decade and I’m not so sure that we can blithely say or promise them that things will be alright.

This is kind of complicated, but I guess related to that… As I’m someone who has only relatively recently started touring the US a lot, I’d love to hear your impressions of how things have changed in terms of that. It seemed at the time like college towns, for example, were kinda the lifeblood of touring, but now kids don’t really seem to be heading out to shows. Byron Coley recently told me he thinks it’s just yet to re-situate itself, whether the new thing be in cellars, or clubs, or outdoors, or galleries or whatever. I personally think that’s optimistic. My impression is there’s a bigger picture problem, which I certainly notice in Europe and Australia too. When we were kids, we’d always go out and see older bands, bands our age, really old bands, all of it. Now I very rarely see people under 30 at any gig (except interestingly, in Italy, where audiences seem remarkably and refreshingly mixed). In the US it seems like music people are acting in defiance of that, and still believe strongly in the importance of being out there playing, but it’s really tough.

A couple of years ago I played a band show in Berlin and twenty kids, like maybe early 20s, happened to walk in very much without meaning to. They went completely berserk! It was like they had never even conceived of live music jamming like that before — actually a couple of them told me they’d never seen live music before. And they loved it. Any chance of a new dawn coming? Or will we have to blow up the servers?

This is kind of a tough one. I definitely agree with you that touring has changed, but so much else has changed as well so it makes sense. When I started out in the '80s the national scene for non-commercial music was pretty small. There were only a handful of labels releasing the stuff, a handful of “underground” record stores in each city selling it, and the regional college radio stations and fanzines playing and writing about it. There were certain clubs and promoters booking the bands and everyone on the “scene” went to see all of the shows.

The way people get their information is so vastly different now obviously, but to circle back to your question, I think one of the issues these days is that there are so many sources for information and so many ways of finding out about music, that trying to figure that all out in terms of promoting a tour can be overwhelming, but I do believe that hearing live music is still important to many many people.

We met again and became friends on one of your US tours. When did you start touring in the US? How did that come about?

My record Old Chestnut came out on the great Feeding Tube Records in 2018, and that kinda bust open the door for me in the States. Til then I just had no idea how to even start putting shows together there. I’d really wanted to from the beginning though. I guess I always had this problem that I naturally gravitate towards experimental and improvised music scenes, but what I make isn’t that, so I never knew who to approach. Then the guitarist Jules Reidy introduced me to Feeding Tube and I met Ted and Byron, and they were putting out all this stuff that really straddled the experimental and song worlds, so it was like I’d finally found my people.

Is there a particular town in the US that you feel most attached to? You seem to have connections with the Louisville scene, how did that come about?

So because Feeding Tube put out the last State Champion record around the same time as mine, Ryan Davis and I started noticing each other popping up in each other’s press. I think we were both like, who is this dude I’ve never heard of that people keep comparing me to? We got in touch, and that really changed everything for me. He took me on my first proper US tour, just the two of us, and I just fell in love with the whole thing, and with him and the whole crowd he introduced me to. Like, oh here are my Americans, haha.

And yeah he came up in the whole Louisville scene, ran the insanely amazing looking Cropped Out Festival which I missed but I believe you saw, and has put out my records on his equally amazing Sophomore Lounge label. So that kinda became my base, and I very gratefully became a member of that kinda little family they have there around the band Equipment Pointed Ankh and Ryan’s own wonderful songwriting. People like Jim Marlowe and Dan Davis, and through them also the violist Elisabeth Fuchsia who you know, and who I often tour with there. And then through her and Ryan I met Will Oldham, who is just a wonderful ray of sunshine and supported my last album a lot with his kind words and deeds. And he’s like Louisville bedrock.

Is collaboration with different artists important to you?

Historically I always thought not — perhaps as a kinda defence when I moved away from the Melbourne scene and everything I knew, like I had to just believe I could do it all myself like a lonely painter or whatever. But I always at least ran everything I did past a few people, Joe Talia in particular who mixes all my stuff. And I would always get the odd guest on an album. Then for Old Chestnut I managed to convince Chris Abrahams, who is really one of my musical heroes, to come to my place and put down some piano for a song I had basically written with him in mind. Since then it’s become more of a case of “gee I’d love it if this person might be interested in contributing their thing to this song”, and now collaboration seems to have become massively important to me yeah.

Which is why I’m so excited and moved by what we’re doing with the New Rampant Optimism Roadshow in Australia. And the fact it involves Mick Turner from Dirty Three is this kinda lovely circular connection back to you and Boston. I wish we could tour that to New Zealand! But I guess at least we’ll know some of each other’s songs by then and can play together on them.

Hey you mind being asked about Nirvana? A few years back I hung out with Lori Goldston, who was the cellist on Unplugged and the In Utero tour, which I believe was the tour Come was involved with? After a couple of beers I was uninhibited enough to ask her about that time, and of course what she imagined Kurt Cobain might be doing musically now, had he lived. It’s a banal question but the answer she offered wasn’t — that she thought he’d be just as likely to be playing pretty weird, almost avant stuff now, rather than singing old, or even new, songs. They got so huge, but I guess like a lot of the real ones he was just as interested in hearing new music as making it. Was that your impression?

Though Come did a week with Nirvana and The Breeders on the In Utero tour, I didn’t have much contact with Kurt during the tour nor had I met him previously. We knew from our manager who was good friends with Nirvana’s manager that he was a big fan of Come’s and had specifically asked for us. On that tour Kurt was travelling with his baby daughter Frances on a separate bus from the rest of the band and didn’t hang out and party with us after the shows, like Krist Novoselic and the Breeders did. They had just recorded the MTV Unplugged concert and their whole team seemed really excited about how that went. Kurt was polite, always said hello, etc., but seemed pretty withdrawn in general. So I didn’t get to know him well enough to answer your question about what music he might be doing if he still was alive.

Yeah, fair. Well, we’ll never know...