The Trippin’ The Light Fantastic tour has officially kicked off, bringing Ball Park Music live and in 3D. Guitarist Dean Hanson, speaks with AARON BRYANS ahead of the band’s show at the Astor Theatre on Friday, October 24.
Ball Park Music have long been Aussie favourites, ever since releasing their debut EP, Rolling On The Floor, Laughing Ourselves To Sleep in 2009.
Fast-forward five years and the band have taken the next step into their career with the release of their third studio album, Puddinghead.
“It’s been really good, so far it’s awesome,” guitarist, DeanHanson, says. “We put out three albums over the last three-and-a-half years, so on this one we were hoping people weren’t going to get sick of hearing our stuff. triple j have played three of the singles now a lot and when we are playing those songs live people are screaming the lyrics back and really enjoying it so I think it’s gone well.”
Ball Park Music are constantly finding ways to express themselves with their recent release once again defying expectations and pushing the boundaries of musical creativity. Lyrically, the album is a rollercoaster switching between quirkier, random tracks and other more emotive ones.
“Sam (Cromack, vocals/guitar) writes most of the lyrics and it’s sort of interesting to have my own opinion on what the lyrics are,” Hanson reveals. “We had a chat about what we all felt the lyrics meant on the record or the themes that were occurring before we did the artwork for the album. There are a lot of religious lyrics that allude to religion, which is funny because none of us are overly religious at all; and then there are lots of lyrics that allude to space and the universe. Most of the lyrics I put a blanket meaning over it for me. There’s a lot of self-doubting and thinking that the universe is a really big place and that there’s heaps more to it then your own personal bubble.”
Life as a travelling musician isn’t doesn’t always revolve around life on the road, and for the Brisbane-based band; home life has been a nice change following the release of Puddinghead.
“Paul (Furness, keyboards), Daniel (Hanson, drums) and I play in a cricket team together and it seems weird when we don’t see the other guys for more then a couple of days it feels really strange. Normally I think a lot of bands go out on tour and spend a lot of time together and then when they’re off tour they think ‘yes I get to have a break from my bandmates for a while’ but it’s not really like that for us.”
“We just had an off period over the last month or two where we didn’t have much on, we were going to Sam’s place, he just moved house a couple of months ago and he’s got a little dedicated studio room now so we were going over there a few days a week and just writing new material and working on some other stuff just in the effort to get the ball rolling a bit. We don’t have any plans on when a future release is due or what we want it to sound like, but I guess that’s what we were doing over the last couple of months just experimenting and thinking about how we want to go about our next release.”
