Artist on Artist: Romanie x Clover
Romanie and Clover
Romanie, tell us a little bit about your upcoming headline tour, and the creative idea you’re bringing along with you.
Romanie: I’ve started a national tour on the 30th of August to promote my second album ‘It’s Not That Funny’. It’s a 3 month long band sleepover with 9 stops around the country, hanging out and playing music with my friends.
Because the record centres so much around my own brain, and loneliness and inner demons; I really wanted to contrast the idea of loneliness by creating a space on tour where we can come together as a community, and be vulnerable together. I’m writing a song with every support act the day before and we’ll do a show and tell in between our sets on gig night. Scary, chaotic and everything I wanted to do with the creation and purpose of this album.
This isn’t the first time you’ve done this, how did you come up with the idea for your show with Clover Blue earlier this year?
Romanie: I actually came up with the idea a couple of years ago. It wasn’t as fleshed out and way more loose than what I intend to do now. I played an artist residency in Naarm at the Wesley Anne for a month that had 5 Mondays and wanted to do something different for each show. I was renting my friends’ studio above iconic Millney’s and would invite a friend who was also free during the day to come play and write songs and then we’d perform together during the evening. It was so beautiful and I have been thinking about how I can implement this into my shows ever since. And here we are now, doing it.
Clover, what did you first think of the idea?
Clover: I thought that it was cool and fun. I really like pressure: when you’re forced to make something work. I love at gigs to look at what people do when something goes wrong. So this is kind of like that: you need to make it work. But it also is fun because Romanie is not putting pressure on it. We don’t have to write the next biggest hit, it can just be a silly verse, or whatever we get out of our brain on the day. It’s a nice way to have a task to do with someone and become closer. A lot of the time at shows it’s “I’m going into the smokers and miss half your set” whereas with this we show up for each other.
Community: loveheart.
Tell us about the process of writing your song together the day before your show.
Romanie: I remember riding my bike to Clover’s house and we had tea in Clover’s small studio space - I don’t want to call it a den but I do - talking shit for the first half an hour and catching up on life. That was my favourite thing.
Clover: The Geese and Cameron Winter shows had just happened and we were talking about the hype they were getting from mostly young men and that every single guy in his twenties was at the shows.
Romanie: And I remember we were going to try and write a profound song about young men being a fan and getting obsessed over something but then we took the silly route and just started writing about Cameron Winter and his fans.
* Clover is standing up on Zoom, showing they’re wearing their Cameron Winter while we do this interview *
Romanie: Oh and I remember that I had to ride my bike back in the rain and I got drenched. My least favourite memory.
Romanie: The process was really just us writing a song in basically an hour and me fangirling over Clover’s voice.
Clover: The big thing was mainly us having fun singing in harmony.
Romanie: I can’t wait to do that again.
What was it like performing it together?
Clover: When I think about that gig, it was mostly chaos and funny. We played in a brewery somewhere on the side of the venue and the main thing I remember was that all of the vocals were going through the PA in this massive space and the guitar was just going through the amp. It was already a crazy environment so it made doing the new song kind of really funny. It’s like “I barely know what’s going on already, and now I have to perform this song that we just wrote.”
Romanie: It was so funny because I was trying to read the lyrics from my tiny phone and try to show you, as well as trying to be present and especially not laugh about the situation that we put ourselves in.
Clover: We played it twice switching who was playing guitar in each set as well.
Romanie: That was so funny. And almost no one came to the show. Was it raining again?
Romanie, have you started workshopping any ideas with any of the support acts for your upcoming tour, or are you keeping it strictly to day-of writing only?
Romanie: I feel like I always have some tricks up my sleeve since I write songs almost every day, but I’m really trying my best not to prepare. I’m tour managing myself so I basically live in spreadsheets right now and my life feels very chaotic at the moment: my car, laptop and guitar broke down the week before tour starts and my lease is up soon, so I’m going to have to move in the middle of the tour. Maybe that’s life giving me writing prompts without me knowing. It almost has to be that, I can’t believe the bad luck I’m getting. Clover, I had to get an Etsy witch to read me a cleansing spell.
* Romanie shares screen with Clover to show the Etsy witch email with proof of spell*
The Etsy witch is going to save us all, I probably should have asked her to get some good songwriting inspiration.
You’re set to write another song together ahead of the Castlemaine show on Oct 25, is there anything you’ll do differently this time around?
Romanie: We’re bringing my friend Young, videographer, along on tour and into the session to be a fly on the wall and document the process. And I guess now we actually have to lock in because there’s gonna be people at the show.
Clover: I guess we’ll take it a little bit more seriously.
Romanie: I still want to be silly though. I had the best time last writing session. Maybe we will write a sequel for Cameron Winter and find out if he actually eats pigeons.
Clover: But we won’t have to cram ourselves time and space wise. We won’t be writing in my mad scientist room this time.
Romanie: I enjoyed that. Felt very close to you in a short amount of time.
If you could have any two artists in the world team up for something like this, who would you want to see?
Romanie: Clover Blue and Romanie.
Clover: That’s a crazy question. I would want to see Cameron Winter and Star Moles.
Romanie: Who is Star Moles?
Clover: If Cameron Winter was a girl.
Romanie: Ok, I’m intrigued. I would like to see that too.. Can we bring people back from the dead?
Clover: Yes.
Romanie: Ok then I would say: Bowie and Missy Elliott. I just want to put people together who would never meet or write together.
Clover: This reminds me of Pavarotti and Friends. It’s this crazy series where Pavarotti collaborates with another artist and they do a song together. My favourite one is Pavarotti and Lou Reed doing Perfect Day. It starts with Lou Reed being uncomfortable singing ‘just a perfect day’ then Pavarotti comes in belting. With a full orchestra as well. You have to check it out.
Romanie: Should we write our song about Pavarotti?
Clover: Pavarotti and his eyebrows?
Romanie: Let’s do it.
Don’t miss Romanie on tour this Sep/Oct at the following shows:
Sun 30 Aug - The Junk Bar - Brisbane w/ Red Hill
Mon 31 Aug - VELVET x REVERIE.AU BIGSOUND PRE-PARTY @ The Brightside - Brisbane
Fri 4 Sep - Some Folk “hide & seek” @ Black Bear Lodge -Brisbane
Sun 13 Sep - Medusa Bar - Geelong w/ Hassall
Sat 19 Sep - The Bird - Perth w/ Angie Colman
Sat 26 Sep - KR Studio Hibernian House - Sydney w/ support TBA
Sun 27 Sep - Floriade - Canberra
Sat 3 Oct - Tanswell’s Hotel - Beechworth w/ Human Noise
Sat 10 Oct - Grace Emily - Adelaide w/ Oscar The Wild
Sun 25 Oct - Taproom - Castlemaine w/ Clover Blue
Fri 27 Nov - Northcote Social Club - Melbourne w/ Chitra
