From Stockton To Brisbane, The Origins Of An Indie Rock Legend's Love Affair With Australia

Since his very first forays Down Under with a then-fledgling Pavement in the early '90s, Scott Kannberg - better known to indie rock connoisseurs by his musical nom de plume Spiral Stairs - has felt a strong affinity with Australia, a relationship which blossomed to the point that he recently spent a few years living in a beachside community north of Brisbane.

Currently residing with his Aussie wife and young daughter on Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula, he's on the eve of returning to his adopted homeland to celebrate his new album Doris & The Daggers, which was released to much acclaim earlier this year. That record marks his first new collection of music since the massive 2010 world reunion tour by Pavement - the band he founded in Stockton, California in 1989 with his school friend Stephen Malkmus - which itself took place the year after the previous Spiral Stairs solo release, The Real Feel, came out in 2009.

But as a person who has family ties here as well as friends all over the country - and who even keeps close tabs on the cricket and AFL scores from afar - Kannberg's mainly stoked just to be heading back down to familiar shores, a faraway place where he feels completely at home.

"Basically it started when Pavement started playing down there," he recalls of the beginnings of his romance with Australia. "We first came down in 1992 and Steve Pav [Pavlovic] was our promoter, he was like this hip dude and we played like a show in Sydney and then all of a sudden we were in Byron Bay for five days, hanging out and eating vegetarian food, because that's what he was. It was, like, 'Wow, this is kind of a cool scene!'

"Then you go back and you play the shows, so from day one it felt like we were immersed in Australia. I went to my first footy match during that tour, it was at the MCG and I can't remember who it was - it was like Richmond versus Hawthorn maybe - but it was before the ground was renovated to look like it does today.

"But we did that and then we came back in '94 - every record we'd come back and play Australia - and it was always like this amazing place to come to and play, and the people who'd come tour shows were really psyched so we'd meet all these super-interesting people. And then of course the Australian music was a big part of the whole thing: you'd walk down the street in St Kilda and you'd see like Rowland S Howard and be, like, 'Woah! That's kinda cool!'

"So that was the initial appeal, and then later on when I started doing my solo stuff I'd come over a lot more and then I started meeting people in bands and making friends, mostly in Melbourne. I'd come and stay for like months at a time and that's what did it, from that point on I just said, 'One day I'm going to move here, this is my kind of vibe.'

"Then of course then there was the sport, which was a big part of it for me as well: I'm a big golf fanatic and Australia has the best golf courses in the world, then obviously there was the footy and the cricket. They're kind of the weirdest sports ever, but I love them.

"The very first time we came to Australia when we were in Byron Bay for those five days and I got super sick because of jet lag or something, so I was stuck in a hotel room for like two days and all there was on the TV was cricket! I just sat there and I was, like, 'I have no idea what this fucking game is!' And it was Test cricket of course so it went for days, and I just figured it out, it's similar enough to baseball in a lot of ways.

"Now I've got Hugh Cornwell from The Stranglers telling me at one of the recent UK shows, 'You've got to go and hang out with [cricket commentating icon] Jim Maxwell at the Adelaide Test, he's expecting to hear from you!' I was, like, 'Are you fucking kidding me?' Now they just need to use my songs on the broadcasts so I can get some money."

Doris & The Daggers itself is rife with Australian connections: the title was taken from a memorable interaction in a Sydney pub, Trams (Stole My Love) is based in Melbourne, and the Oz version has a bonus 7" single containing two songs Pig City and Vultures Of Caboolture harking back to his time living in the Deep North, to name but a few.

"Yeah, I agree," Kannberg concurs. "It's weird because the last record The Real Feel had a few of my Australian musicians on it and I actually made up quite a few of those songs in Australia, so it's funny to me because that record to me was the more Australian record originally. But I lived there and I just soaked it in, and maybe living in Brisbane I just started writing songs like people in Brisbane and Australia."

There's a definite Australasian vibe sonically as well, evident on album tracks as well as the bonus material.

"Pig City was definitely based on The Go-Betweens for sure," the singer continues, "but Vultures Of Caboolture was more looking at Beasts Of Bourbon - I wanted it to be more like a Beasts Of Bourbon song, which isn't miles away from The Saints, although obviously I can't pull it off because that band is awesome. But that was my idea.

"With AWM that to me was always like a The Clean song, and then there's Trams, which more has to do with the lyrical content - it's just a bad Fleetwood Mac rip-off musically. I was living in Seattle and I'd split up with my wife, so to deal with it I just ended up coming to Melbourne and hanging out for a couple of months. I was staying at friends' houses and they all had jobs so during the day I'd be, like, 'Alright, what am I going to do?'

"And I love public transportation - I love trams and I love subways and stuff - so I would just ride the trams around. I think I rode all the way to the end of the line on some of them, it was kind of cool - it's a cool way to see a city and experience it, and deal with boredom at the same time. Or a hangover."

The tour also includes a couple of New Zealand shows in Auckland and Hamilton, a completely appropriate detour given the long-acknowledged influence that Kiwi bands - particularly those from the impeccable Flying Nun stable - had on the early Pavement aesthetic.

"Most definitely," Kannberg enthuses. "It's funny I've done some New Zealand interviews and they always mention this stuff and it's cool, that music was a huge part of our lives. I don't really know how to explain the importance of the New Zealand Flying Nun stuff, it was just like something completely new.

"In America on the college rock front you had bands like REM and The Replacements and before that it was like Husker Du and Black Flag, and then the Pixies and then it went back to England with My Bloody Valentine and that sort of stuff - this was all pre-Nirvana obviously - and you had all these different kinds of great bands, and they all kind of came from The Velvet Underground.

"Everyone was trying to do what The Velvet Underground had been doing but in a different sort of way, but for some reason the New Zealand version of The Velvet Underground just popped with us. The songs were a little poppier and there was some more mystery about it, I don't know, but it was really cool. And, God, do you hear that influence in new bands today! I heard a podcast the other day and every single new band has a reverbed guitar on it from like 1987. Hopefully the Kiwis are getting some residuals off this."

To date Kannberg has really enjoyed dusting off the Spiral Stairs moniker for Doris & The Daggers after years away from making music, although the touring side - he's already completed extensive North American and European runs - comes with its share of existential baggage.

"It's been really fun," he smiles. "The shows have been really cool, we did the US tour, which was a west coast run with the guy that produced the record Dan [Long] playing guitar so it was a much different vibe and kind of became looser as time went on, so I was kinda happy about that.

"But the shows have been really good, although of course it will a different band for Australia with the Gersey guys, but I've played with those guys for years and they're totally cool, and then I've got Matt [Harris - bass] and Tim [Regan - keys] coming from the band I've had this year.

"I dunno, it's weird playing shows at this point - sometimes you kind of feel, 'Why am I doing this?' kind of thing. It's not when you're playing a show that that happens, it's when you're dealing with, 'How many people are coming to the show tonight?' side of things, it's easy to get disgruntled or a little depressed and think, 'This is going to be kinda weird'.

"But then before the show starts these people come up to you and talk about how important my music has been for them and that kinda gets you in a better mood, and then you play the show and it's, like, 'Yeah! This is what I remember and this is why it's great!'

"So it's kind of like I haven't really missed a step in all the time I've been away, but you still go through all those random emotions, which I don't like, then when you get through them it's a great feeling."

Which is essentially just indicative of the human condition, with putting on a rock show by nature very much akin to having a party and wondering whether anybody's going to come.

"It is kind of that way," Kannberg chuckles. "At this point I've never really thought about it, like, 'Alright, these people are coming to see me so I have to entertain. I don't have to be funny, I don't have to tell jokes, but I have to make sure that these people who are coming get what they want.'

"I saw Lloyd Cole a couple of years ago and he's a really great entertainer, but he's really dry and he plays these songs and you kinda feel that people in the audience connect to those songs and get this great feeling from them, so I've been trying to channel his vibe during this tour. Maybe it's because I'm older - although I don't feel older - but it's been kind of cool."

After years away from the coalface was Kannberg relieved when the reviews started coming in for Doris & The Daggers and were overwhelmingly positive?

"Yeah, I was pretty relieved," he concedes. "I'm older now so my relationship with reviews is pretty different: I'll read a review by some blogger who's obviously like 25 years old and has no sense of my history and they don't get it, but I'll kind of laugh those off.

"But I was pretty relieved - it has been a long time and I put a lot of work into the record, and I thought it was a really good batch of songs. And it meant a lot to me - this record was the most personal and emotional to me, and although it wasn't the hardest to make it was pretty hard to make."

Which was largely because the genesis of the album was mired in tragedy. Originally envisioned as a looser, more garage rock affair to be recorded in Seattle in one week-long burst, the entire trajectory of the record was knocked off its axis when Kannberg's long-term drummer and good friend Darius Minwalla - also of The Posies, who was scheduled to play on the sessions - passed away suddenly in his sleep prior to the project commencing.

Not only did this shock loss require a change in personnel and locale - Broken Social Scene's Justin Peroff eventually stepped in behind the kit, the sessions eventually taking place in Los Angeles - but it also prompted a new slew of more reflective, mature-sounding songs and changed the entire tone of the album irrevocably.

"Yeah, basically that's what happened," Kannberg sighs. "I mean I had some other songs there that I hadn't really had fleshed out yet at the time, but with all of that stuff going on I went back to those songs and made them into what was going on. And also it kind of made me maybe mature a little more as a songwriter. I mean I'd say that I wanted to do a garage rock record and do it really quick like I did in the past, but in reality I'm kinda glad I didn't do that because in the end I put a lot more care and effort into it."

So while you won't find any replicas of classic Kannberg-penned Pavement songs from yesteryear such as Two States, Hit The Plane Down, Kennel District or Date With Ikea on Doris & The Daggers, it still sounds defiantly like Spiral Stairs. Only these days his tastes have spread well beyond the '80s indie rock that informed his earliest writing.

"You know I might have listened to '80s indie rock a little bit in the '80s and I fucking loved it," he laughs. "But I just saw something on REM's Twitter feed where they did this show - their only show for the Automatic For the People record which came out in '92 - and they did it at the 40 Watt Club in Athens, Georgia, and I started watching it and it was pretty cool and all the songs from that album sounded timeless. But then they started playing some older songs which were timeless as well, but then I started feeling like I couldn't listen to that right now, like I would rather listen to something older or different.

"Maybe it was because I listened to so much REM at the time that I'm over it, but the newer songs were more classic rock sounding and I felt more into that - I was, like, 'Hell, this is kinda weird, why would I be into that song Me In Honey [from 1991's Out Of Time]?' which is almost like a classic rock sorta song. Then they played Begin The Begin from one of their earlier records [1986's Life's Rich Pageant] - and I loved that song - but suddenly I was, like, 'This song sorta sucks now? It sounds weird, I don't like this'...

"But I digress, I'm sorry. I was thinking about this the other day - the music I make is always based on part of my record collection - a part of what I grew up listening to - but then I'm always influenced by bands who have come into my orbit since then, like The Go-Betweens or Roxy Music or Paul Kelly, and there's things that slip in that complement what my upbringing was all about, of which '80s indie rock was definitely a part of.

"I was never really a '70s dude: when I was growing a lot of my friends were into Led Zeppelin or Grateful Dead and that stuff, and I just never dug it. I was into The Clash and Devo and to me that music was old, but now it's maybe seeping in a little bit. There's some good Led Zeppelin records."

Speaking of outside influences, while some big names such as Matt Berninger (The National) and Kevin Drew (Broken Social Scene) lend their voices to songs on Doris & The Daggers, it's actually Kannberg's long-time friend - and respected solo artist in his own right - Kelley Stoltz who ended up having the biggest impact on the end product.

"Yes, Kelley's been a friend of mine for years," Kannberg offers. "I went to Kelley originally with all of this because at that stage I was going to do the record with him, but he ended up getting a job with Echo & The Bunnymen of course - my dream job - so he couldn't do it. But I did do some pre-production there with his drummer and bass player and stuff, and we kind of fleshed out some songs.

"Then I went on to do the stuff with Dan and afterwards I went back to Kelley's to do some horn stuff - there were these dudes in San Francisco who I'd worked with one of them before - but Kelley's sax guy was there and I said, 'I want these guys on the record and I want this to sound like Springsteen meets Van Morrison meets Roxy Music.' So these guys came in and we did like a day of horns, and then Kelley said, 'Leave these songs with me I want to put some keyboards on it'.

"So a song like Dance (Cry Wolf) has this weird David Bowie-esque part in the middle where Kelley put this amazing keyboard part that just made the song go in this different direction. So he's a big part of this record, and in January I'm actually going back to San Francisco to record the new one with Kelley. I don't know what it's going to sound like, but I told him that I can't have any '80s keyboards around."

Has he started writing for this new album yet?

"Yeah, I've got too many songs," Kannberg grins. "There's about four or five songs that I actually recorded for the last record that we never really fleshed out - or we fleshed it out, we got the song, but I never really put vocals to them. So we've got a few of those and then I've got a bunch of new songs, and I can't really figure out what the direction is going to be because I've got some songs about my mother who passed away recently, I've got some songs about life in general... I'm still trying to figure it out and waiting for a theme to come.

"Every day I write three Steve Earle songs and two Paul Kelly songs and three Robert Forster songs and then I'm, like, 'What do I do?' But it will make sense in due course, it always does."

DISCLAIMER: Steve Bell is co-owner of the label Coolin' By Sound, which released Doris & The Daggers in Australia/NZ, the pair's friendship forged by years of shared interviews and consolidated during the singer's Brisbane sojourn.