Dom Kirkwood of Tennis has kindly donated his time to answer a few of our questions. Thank you Dom.

Read on to hear all about playing their first gig in a Surry Hills strip club, writing music together in a one bedroom cottage in Orange, and their upcoming release on Canyons‘ very own Hole In The Sky label…. and more…..

I heard you guys went on a writing / bonding trip out in the country, can you tell us a bit more about what went on? Where did you go? What was the writing process like?

Si! We went to Will (drummer) and Rick’s (singer/guitarist) uncles place in Orange. He has a really beautiful property out there with a one-bed room Cottage. Our days and most nights were spent jamming away writing new material. I think it was the ideal situation for us because were able to really focus on the music with the luxury of having time up our sleeves and no distractions.  All of us came in with a few rough ideas for songs, which we would jam on and build from the ground up or we would just play and see where the music would take us. From there we recorded rough demos of the ones we liked and then used those as references in the studio. As far as bonding goes we’re pretty much all welded at the hips, if anything we had a few ‘disbonding’ moments!

I’ve also heard the new release will be all completely new material…correct? Has there been much of a departure from the existing songs? Any drastic changes in the sound / direction?

Correct it’ll be all new material. I don’t think our sound has changed dramatically. If anything it’s matured drastically and is way more refined. With the songs we’ve recorded some of them are darker in tone, ala My Bloody Valentine guitar fuzz and heavy drum reverb, one track is even a calypso/tropical number. The sound is varied but tied together with the golden string of pop.

Are there any plans for a release yet? Will you be releasing an EP or a single, or both? Also, where and how did you record, and who produced?

We have a single coming out on A Hole in the Sky, which will most likely come out early February. As far as what the track sounds like you’ll have to keep your ears peeled! At the moment we haven’t got an EP coming out perse but we’re aiming to have something out early 2010, we’re playing the music industries version of musical chairs at the moment.

As far as the recording went we did a session at East Street in Five Dock, that was mainly bass and drums. The rest of the tracking and vocals was done at 301 in Alexandria. We were so lucky to have the amount of time we did to record and really think about the songs, which was really helped along by our producer/engineer Tim Carr who did a magnificent job. And what’s more he put up with our shit…Also Canyons have tweaked our single into a smouldering hot comet.

How did the 2 brothers / 2 cousins thing go during this process? Were there any sparks flying, or was it all campfire love? Surely there had to be some tension at times?

I’m not going to name any names but lets just say when you get five live wires together you’re going to have an electrical storm.

I’ve always been intrigued by the “debuting in a Surry Hills strip club…” line on your myspace…Can you explain in further detail? ha ha

Um ha ha indeed. Fortunately I wasn’t in the band when this event occurred, however I did give them a sterling introduction before they graced the stage. Basically Tennis was asked to play at an after party for the Surry Hills festival, with no prior gigging experience mind you. It was at a strip club that used to be near the corner of Elizabeth and Cleveland and they had relinquished their main room for one night to make way for the party. It was pretty hilarious; there were plenty of private booths with curtains and a pole on stage. It was a fun night and cemented the band in strip club history I suppose.

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