Dan Kelly & Alex Gow Talk Sex Dreams, Night Terrors & 'Game Of Thrones'

When you've both Dan Kelly and Alex Gow on a conference call in the lead-up to their Australian Dreamers tour, there's only one line of questioning you can really take.

"Alex is just cursing me for suggesting that we call this [the] Australian Dreamers tour," laughs Kelly. "Couldn't you have called it the Australian singers tour?" whines Gow. He's feeling a little left out — we're chatting about dreams and he "wish[es] I had more to bring to the table," as Kelly happily shares anecdotes about his particular brand of flying dreams and cricket aspirations, while Gow thinks of things to add.

In fact, the most interesting information comes to light from Gow; since he was young he has had a "weekly reoccurring dream since I was a kid that's terrifying — it just involves me floating through space on my own for hours. I wake up feeling really weird and it takes me about half an hour to snap out of it". Various ideas get thrown around, from his potential need to see a therapist, "I think I've just got this thing about the abyss; I spend a lot of time thinking about it," to the dream becoming a source of creative purging, "I reckon there's something we can do musically that represents that dream and make it something cathartic," muses Kelly.

"If there is a God, or God's up there, that is the cruellest of tricks that he could conjure up." "Yeah, I'm just going to make this person paralysed, and say, 'thank me, I am benevolent Lord.'"

Gow is presented with an option to add something to the interview by Kelly himself: "Great dream songs? This will be able to help you out!" before he personally rattles off the most obvious options "Dreams by Fleetwood Mac, Dreamer by Supertramp — fantastic song — Dream Baby, is it the Everly Brothers? #9 Dream, the Beatles [technically John Lennon]," until accidentally letting slip that he's just Googling and "totally cheating". "Oh, what about California Dreaming," interjects Gow proudly, "I wasn't even Googling." On a slightly different tangent we discussed the pros and cons of Mama Cass’ Dream A Little Dream Of Me and had some confusion over the wires. “Did you say Mama Cass is bad?” “No, jazz.” “Oh, I thought it was dad music. That’s a great description for a song, it’s a real dad one.” “But you’re right, it is jazz, it’s got that chromatic ascending line, which is really jazzy.” “Maybe we should put that out on tour.”

Kelly is extremely open about personal details — from the way he sleeps, "I sleep on my front ever since I saw an episode of Monkey Magic when I was a kid where there were these vampire women who leapt on this traveller's neck and sucked his blood, and I can't sleep on my back now. It's fucked up," and his sex dreams, which "aren't very effective. Like, it must be some kind of ex-Catholic thing. I'm always just about to... you know... I don't know the delicate way of saying it. But there will be an earthquake or I'll look down and my legs are made of sweet potatoes, and I can't actually do it." The only thing we can say to that is... just his legs? It turns out Kelly and Gow both have fantasies about Eva Green, "we've got Eva Green things." He also experiences night terrors, a contributing factor to avoiding sleeping on his back, "something shifts, and you feel like there's something in the room. You wake up and you can't move. When I was a kid, because I was religious when I was a kid, I started saying 'Our Father' and stuff. My sister of course told me that Satan was possessing me and I had to say prayers. It's like an affirmation, just saying... " "Help me, help!" Gow jokes. "If there is a God, or gods, up there, that is the cruellest of tricks that he could conjure up." "Yeah, I'm just going to make this person paralysed, and say, 'thank me, I am benevolent Lord.'"

So we’ve got one bloke haunted by a reoccurring float in space, and another who is living with the repercussions of a Catholic upbringing. But as it turns out, they both like cricket, and enthuse about different options to orientate one’s self into the sport, because “If you didn’t get into as a kid" you won't get it. "It’s like watching an episode of Game Of Thrones half way through series five, you would just be like, the fuck? I mean there’s more people getting their heads cut off [than in cricket], but apart from that it’s the same thing,” explains Kelly. “Perhaps you should try 20/20 which only goes for about three to four hours, which on reflection sounds like a fucking long time,” realises Gow. “I like this Game Of Thrones thing,” says Kelly, who goes on to explain his sudden inspiration: to create a 20-minute long Game Of Thrones style cricket innings where everybody has swords “and ice” and kills one other. Kinda like The Hunger Games. “Game Of Cricket… That’s the shittest thing I’ve ever thought of.” He’s working on it.