Old Mervs on the way
Wending their way down the east coast are west coast lads Henry Carrington-Jones and David House – best mates since the age of five, Henry and David grew up together on farms in Kojonup, a tiny town approximately halfway between Perth and Albany, in WA, converting an old stable into their first jam space.
These days the pair are playing bigger venues and are very pumped for their only New South Wales show at Stone & Wood’s 11th instalment of the Festival of the Stone, on June 14, before heading to Victoria, Tasmania and the US.
We caught up with Henry in Kojonup before he took to the road …
Are you and David always just you and David?
It’s just the two of us, always a two-piece. So on stage we have a guitar amp and a bass amp and that sort of fills it out, and we’re able to turn the bass amp on and off.
Do you feel like you need a bass player?
No, we’re very happy at the moment – I guess it’s always been our aim to keep it just the two of us. We’re pretty determined. It’s a very good way to tour and we enjoy it most the time.
Are you touring new music this trip?
We released our debut album, Old Mervs a couple of months ago. The funnest part of it is always going out and playing it for the first time, and seeing the fans again, which we haven’t seen for a while. Mid tour we have the Byron show so that’ll be good. We’ll stay there for a few days and have a big time off and then play the festival, which everybody’s excited for.
With just the two of your touring, do you have to arm wrestle a lot? You’ve got no one else to take your side – what happens? Do you fight?
No one has asked that before and it’s 100 per cent the best question a journalist has ever asked me! Because yeah! The biggest struggle about it is you’ve got two people. There’s no democracy, and it can be a pain in the arse, and creatively, it can be a real, really big struggle between the two of us, because one person wants something that they think’s right, and the other wants the other, yeah.
That’s the one time that it becomes a pretty hard thing to deal with as a two-piece, because everything else is so great, so many benefits and good things.
You know, it’s cheaper to tour. Absolutely, it’s always good. Sometimes having less people involved and less people to have to work around. But the downfall a lot of the time is when you both have an idea, whether it’s like a management idea or arts creative idea, a marketing idea, like it can be anything. And if one doesn’t want it and the other wants it…
And I’m certainly like a fairly stubborn character, yeah, it can be a detriment. But I think majority of the time, we’re able to sort of, have a good outside perspective on both of us.
Were you guys mates before you were musicians?
Yeah, yeah. It’s a pretty funny story. We were like childhood best friends. We grew up in a regional town called Kojonup in WA – it’s a sheep farming area. Both of our old boys were sheep farmers and sort of, that’s how we both ended up in Kojonup. Our dads were mates back in the day, back in the ‘80s, like, played in the local footy team together, and rode motorbikes, drank a lot of beer. And dad was always in a band down there as well, like a cover band, which was fun.
What’s your current ear worm?
That’s a great question. What have I been putting on? Definitely the ear worm for me at the moment is ‘Australian Dream’ by The Pretty Littles. It’s just a really cool sort of ballad, but it’s a long song. It goes for eight minutes – such a good song, super, sort of catchy. It’s got a really cool story to it.
Ed – I had a listen – I recommend it.
How do you go with your double-banger name?
I quite dislike it, severely, to be honest. I can’t stand it, and it’s not even for good reason. It was just because my grandpa was a bit fancy, and he didn’t like just having Jones as his last name. It’s got nothing to do with mum’s side of the family. One day I might shave it back a bit.
Are you having enough fun?
Yeah, bloody oath! You know that’s the main part about it – it’s like, you don’t want to be doing it if you’re not having fun or not enjoying certain parts of it. And we both love it for the for the most part. It can be challenging at times, but it’s something that we love. We love releasing music. We love seeing people react to stuff. We love playing live – that’s one massive part we really enjoy. We love selling merch to people and them liking the merch and wanting to be sort of a part of the whole ride. So, yeah, we love it.
We’re having a lot of fun. And, you know, you wake up some mornings and you’re absolutely hung over and exhausted and then you have to be on a plane, that’s the best part – haha supposedly, no! It’s good we’re absolutely frothing, and we love it. And you know, what a cool thing to be able to do?
Were either of you destined to be farmers?
We’re both definitely going to be farmers, for sure. I definitely was – Dave wasn’t as interested at times. I definitely would have been a sheep farmer, sheep and cropping. Today I’m going back to work just for a few days. We both still go and work on the farm and do the harvest and stuff when we can, if we’re around. I love it, and I’ll definitely go back one day.
Have you been to Byron before?
Yeah, a few times, we recorded the whole first album over there and have spent a fair bit of time in Byron – we love it over there. Such a cool spot, great surf. We’re quite into sort of that style of surfing, a bit more traditional style of surfing, as opposed to big wave short-boarding over here, which is a bit more hectic and less relaxing. So it’s nice. We just love going over there, because it’s just super different. Like, we’ll take the boards over for this festival and stuff and just have, like, a fun sort of few days over there surfing, hopefully, if there’s waves. So, yeah, no, we love it. Great part of the world.
What’s going to be good about the Festival of the Stone?
It’s going to be a super fun festival. I am looking forward to it big time. It’ll be really cool to play a festival on that side of the country and in that area as well, but it’s obviously a cool thing, because Josh Pike’s playing and there’s some other bands that we haven’t played with and that’s a really exciting part of it – getting to hang out with some other bands, and meet other bands, is super fun.
Tell me about the name…
So, we were trying to think of a name, and we had some terrible names, and we were talking about my old dog, who’d died years before. It was my childhood dog, he was a cocker spaniel cross old English sheep dog. His name was Mervyn, and we’re talking at the table. And Dave said something like, ‘oh yeah, good old Merv,’ and I was like, old Merv, old Mervs, Old Mervs. And then we just looked at each other, shook hands, and were like, deal done.
The Festival of the Stone is on June 14 at the Stone & Wood Brewery in Byron Bay.
Find out more on the Stone & Wood website.
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