Some Of Angus Stone's Mates Don't Even Know He's Dope Lemon

"I just got home off the highway. Went for a little hike with some friends for a little getaway and now I'm just unpacking the car," Angus Stone, the mastermind behind Dope Lemon, shares. 

He's now "back at the ranch" and if you wanna get an idea of the landscape surrounding his property – a sprawling 120-acre farm just outside Byron Bay – look no further than the music video that accompanies the lead single from Dope Lemon's new Smooth Big Cat record, Hey You, which was directed by award-winning cinematographer Stefan Jose. "It was shot in the Billinudgel Hotel," Stone reveals. "It's such an amazing pub, like, it's one of those old rickety — it looks like a haunted house upstairs and stuff, it's all warped, and a beautiful piece of history, that pub." 

So did Stone have to bribe the regulars to vacate the premises for the shoot? "Yeah, kind of," he allows. "They were really cool. The pub didn't charge us at all and all the punters moved out into the beer garden, and they had eskies set up with all the bottles of beer on ice, so the punters could keep drinking whatever beers they were drinking, and they gave us the whole inside of the pub."

When asked whether any of the locals wanted to get involved and don a mascot cat head, Stone laughs, "There was a few blokes that wanted to get involved, for sure. I think some of them even made it into the clip." 

We suspect old mate wearing a Bluey singlet, who is given a featured role in the video could be one such bloke and Stone confirms, "Yeah, yeah!"

As for the other cat 'characters' in the video, did Stone divvy out the mascot cat heads in accordance with the personalities of particular friends? "We did, actually, that's cool," he chuckles. "Some of them are so spot on." 

To source the mascot cat heads, Stone "just looked up 'Cat Mascots'" and enlightens, "There was thousands, hey!

"So I had them all custom-made in America and they just came in – there was 17 boxes and they were huge, yeah. It was, like, a pallet of mascot cats." 

After finding out Stone had the pallet delivered "to the property", we can't help but wonder whether a specific truck was dispatched for this delivery. "There was, yeah." 

Was the driver really curious to know what was inside? Stone laughs, "We pulled one of them open and I think everyone's pretty tripped out by the idea, they're like, 'Holy shit! That's insane!'"

His Dope Lemon alter-ego definitely allows Stone to express a side of his musical personality that's different from both his solo and Angus & Julia output. "I love doing fun things, you know. I think you've only got so much time on this earth to not have fun with it all... This project, for me, is I get to express a bit of that side of me and, yeah! It's been awesome."

Although Stone's Dope Lemon project is now one EP and two albums deep, some people still don't connect the dots and realise he is the man behind the (Lemon Head/Smooth Big Cat) mask. "It's cool like that; even some of my friends, man," Stone marvels. "For some reason they just never knew and they're like, 'Holy shit! I love Dope Lemon and, like, it's you!'

"I had this kid, also — Julia and I, we were playing a show and he was backstage and, I dunno, I said something about something and we were talking about music and he was like, 'Yeah, that's kind of like that band Dope Lemon,' and I was like, 'Oh, yeah, that's cool. I am the guy! I'm Dope Lemon.'  He's like, 'What?' Like, 'Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's my project.' He was like, 'What? That's crazy!'... I think there's something really sweet about — if people are connecting with the music that are outside of your fanbase with other projects, it's a really cool thing to have."

Stone reflects on Dope Lemon's beginnings. "So it started at a little shack on the beach, just a few friends kickin' around and different musicians from around the world dropping in and playing music, and then it sorta grew to taking the recordings to the property – I've got a little studio here. Over time it just became its own sorta thing. I dunno how it sorta happened; it just grew, it just flowed, you know? Like, I went away – I stopped working on the Lemon for a few years – and during that time I was getting lots of messages and people writing in saying, you know, 'When are you guys gonna go on tour again?' And people were starting to get tattoos and it sort of became this really underground following, and it was getting really strong, and for me I felt really, like, humbled by that. It sorta energised me to wanna create more of what it was."

But on Smooth Big Cat, Stone played every instrument. Has he done that before? "I've sorta touched on it, but this record was 100% me on all the instruments. And I was talking to a friend earlier today, actually, about how you can apply your skills that you have on your main instrument universally, really, to anything, like, all instruments, you know? It just comes down to your ability to drop into a mood and, you know, feel it and then the rest will follow. I mean, I'm constantly learning as I'm going along, but for this record that was one of the things that I was just really stoked to figure out.

"But the drums were something new, for sure; like, that was fun. I think what makes this record unique is [that] I produced and mixed it as well so, you know, it was a very hands-on record. It's kind of like if you were to say it was 100% my brushstroke and when I listen back to it I can fully feel all the different moods that I was expressing through the different songs, and it's cool like that."

Throughout this new album, some unexpected hooks come courtesy of less conventional instrumentation such as marimba; one main melody in the title track edges towards The Cure's Close To Me. 

"I called up the engineer and he has lots of strange things lying around, and he has this old marimba," Stone tells. "And he brought it in as a sick sorta orchestral thing from the '60s, and I started playing it on the different songs and it was just so cool. It reminded me of, you know, those cartoons where the skeleton, he's sorta dancing around and he's sorta playing the drums with his own bones? That sound reminds me of those old cartoons; it's, like, really shake your bones, sort of. It's got a really cool visual to it."

Stone's been penning tunes "for as long as [he] can remember" and he admits, "It seems like it's been a sorta lifetime gig. You're constantly shoeboxing little trinkets of ideas but, yeah! I guess it's a labour of love – if you find something you love and it makes you feel good, just keep doin' it, you know? And I guess I'm on that path."

If you're attending one of Dope Lemon's upcoming shows, here's a hot tip if you fancy trying one of those mascot cat heads on for size: "So we wanna do this competition where with the preorder people can also win backstage tickets and they can jump up on stage in a cat head, and hang out – something fun like that." Best of luck, Lemon enthusiasts.