Rabbit Interview With Steve From IVY

We got to chat with Steve from Central Coast band IVY, the 3 piece have been playing music since they were just grommets but have really turned up it in the last few months and it's definitely paying off for them. IVY are supporting Yes Sir Noceur this Friday night, the 28th at Elsewhere along with Mighty Psylis.

Can you tell us about IVY, when did you start creating music?

The band has actually been around for 10 years and it was initially a bit of a hobby, we started out as ‘Stolen Memory’, the band just sort of progressed throughout high school and then last year we went for a bit of a name change to IVY and started to really knuckle down taking it really seriously, and it has been going really well for us so far.

You guys are currently on tour, and you kicked off your first show in your home town of the Central Coast, How did that go? And how are you feeling for your Elsewhere show this Friday ?

Yeah, we played in the more south end of the coast and it was a full sold out show, so yeah was incredible to see the turn out there.  We’re really excited, it’s our first QLD show ever, sort of last minute we got asked by the boys from Yes Sir Noceur to come up and support and it turned out we had the whole weekend off. So we’re real excited to head up and spend the whole weekend up there.

So you released your Self Titled E.P earlier this year, how did the release go? And are the 3 tracks on the E.P older tracks that you’ve remastered or new material you had been working on?

Incredible, we sold around 300-500 copies, but it’s been great we’ve had Rabbit Radio playing it and Triple J, we’re really happy with how it’s all been going so far.  I guess you would class the tracks as older ones, we do still smash them out at shows but we’ve been writing together as a collective for 5 years and at the time those were the 3 tracks we were liking, but right now we’re writing a lot more and I guess you could say they’re a lot more mature than the tracks off the E.P.

So you guys have been playing with some pretty cool bands like The Snowdroppers and Eddie Boyd And The Phatapillars (winners of Bluesfest Busking Comp 2014), had you heard of these guys before playing with them?

We’ve been massive fans of The Snowdroppers since we were younger and it just turned out we were under the same management label which we’re so stoked with, we’re still sort of fan-boying a bit because we love them so much. But Eddie and the boys, that's probably the biggest bromance we’ve had with a band, we met them at a show at the start of the year in our home town, we just love their vibe so we did some shows together, about 5 so far this year and a couple more coming up.
 
With the crew heading along to your Elsewhere show, what can we be expecting, crazy crowd surfing perhaps?

We’re pumping out some big keyboards, which is a bit different because we’re pretty much a straight up three piece rock band but the style we’re writing sounds like we need a bit on synth in it. For the crowds up north it’ll be the first time for them seeing it so yeah real excited, we have a lot of friends who have moved up to the Gold Coast so they’ll be heading along, including my mum who’s known to do some crowd surfing herself.

So what's next for IVY?

We have a brand new single coming out towards the end of this year, we have a couple of really cool festivals too, can't say what ones at the moment but they are some pretty decent festivals that we can't wait for.

Catch IVY this weekend:
Friday 28 August | Yes Sir Noceur + Ivy + Mighty Psylis | elsewhere

Sarah McEwan