Interview with Melton FM 97.9

Show: “Show Us Your Indies”
Inter­viewer: Steve “Leg­man” Legg
Inter­vie­wees: Kym Huynh, Cameron Driessen and Clay­ton Driessen.
Date: 23/06/05

Steve: Wel­come back to the show. Pro­gram is ‘Show Us Your Indies’. You’re here with, let me say, Kym and Cam.
Cam: How are you man.
Kym: How are you.
Steve: And a lit­tle extra on the side there, is that right?
Cam: My brother.
Steve: Whoa micro­phone flies out the air, that’s how excited I am. Alright what was that? Maybe If? Is that what it was called?
Kym: Back Where I Begun.
Steve: And what’s all that about?
Kym: It’s about a girl, like my other songs.
Steve: Aren’t they all?
Cam: Isn’t it about your mom?
Kym: … No!
Steve: What about this girl?
Kym: It’s pretty indie punk rock. She’s with another guy but you want her to be with you so, write a song about her.
Steve: And then did she come to you after that?
Kym: No, she ran away fur­ther.
Steve: Keep writ­ing there Kym, you’ll get there. What you been up to since last you were in here? Was it about a year ago was it?
Kym: I think months ago actu­ally.
Steve: Yep
Kym: Pretty busy with the song writ­ing. Still per­form­ing a lot. Gig­ging a lot now.
Steve: Where at?
Kym: Frost­bites, just around the area, South Yarra.
Steve: What sort of mate­r­ial are you per­form­ing?
Kym: Mostly RnB but I’m doing a lot of rocky bal­lads now so it’s inter­est­ing.
Steve: Are you get­ting a chance to do your orig­i­nal stuff?
Kym: Yep, all orig­i­nals now.
Steve: All orig­i­nals?
Kym: Yep.
Steve: That’s good. How’s it com­ing across to the audi­ence?
Kym: Pretty good reac­tion, but every­one sup­ports us any­way so it’s good.
Steve: So you have your own crowd that comes along and screams.
Kym: Yep!
Steve: All the girls?
Kym: Ahh… I’d like to think so!
Cam: They’re all guys!
Steve: How did you hook up with these two lads?
Kym: They walked into my house one day.
Steve: Right.
Clayt: We were debat­ing what we were orig­i­nally going to do. We decided to sorta sing together.
Kym: I’m like, “Yo let’s wring a song instead!”, and they’re like, “Yo ok!“
Cam: No orig­i­nally we were…
Steve: We got some seri­ous­ness here. This is what I like.
Cam: Seri­ous!
Clayt: Seri­ous faces!
Cam: Yeah we started off being in the same singing class, work­ing in the same genre so even­tu­ally decided to write stuff together.
Steve: Have you done stuff prior to doing stuff with Kym? Have you done stuff on your own?
Cam: Yeah. Me and my brother have started singing before we went to singing school and since then have been writ­ing stuff own our own and get­ting it pro­duced, cause like Kym’s pretty good at song writ­ing and every­thing.
Kym: Awww thanks.
Cam: You are man.
Clayt: Tal­ented in the music area.
Kym: Awww… I’m touched!
Steve: Do you guys play any instru­ments at all with your song­writ­ing?
Clayt: I play gui­tar and drums.
Cam: I play bass and drums.
Steve: So you do the record­ings your­self?
Clayt: Yeah we got a lit­tle stu­dio at home to do demos.
Kym: They’re hot tracks.
Clayt: Yeah they’re fli!
Kym: So fli!
Steve: What sort of style are you guys into in terms of your record­ing?
Clayt: We do a lot of RnB and pop.
Cam: Our RnB stuff has a more hip hop back­ing to it though but we sing RnB with it and do a lot of pop stuff as well.
Steve: And you two sing together?
Clayt: Yep.
Cam: Yeah we do but we do solo stuff as well.
Steve: Does some­one take the lead more than oth­ers?
Clayt: When we sing together we try to divide it up evenly,
Steve: Do you get into fights?
Kym: All the time!
Steve: C’mon give me some dirt here! You can’t be com­pletely per­fect!
Clayt: The word on the street is…
Steve: That’s what I want to hear! Any plans to bring your musi­cal part into it as well and form a band where the three of yous go out and do it in a live sit­u­a­tion?
Cam: We do things where we can have our stuff pro­duced and per­formed in pub­lic together. Not so much with instru­ments but I pre­fer to have it all put down in the stu­dio rather than play live.
Steve: How are you find­ing you’re get­ting your music out to peo­ple? How are they get­ting access to it?
Cam: A lot of live venue stuff like what we did here, send­ing it out to you guys and send­ing it out to other peo­ple.
Steve: Get­ting much of a response?
Cam: With the live stuff we are.
Clayt: Yeah. Big response with the live per­form­ing.
Cam: It’s huge.
Steve: Where abouts are you play­ing. You’re say­ing Frost­bites?
Kym: Yeah. At venues around South Yarra. Chapel off Chapel, Frost­bites, Mostquito, Caramel.
Cam: South Yarra, south Mel­bourne area.
Steve: Who does the run­ning around and book­ing for you? Is it some­thing you guys do or do they just ring you up and know how tal­ented you are so they say, “Come and play with us?“
Kym: It just hap­pens, it just all falls into our laps pretty much.
Clayt: Some of it we orga­nize our­selves.
Kym: Or like this one, we talked with you guys. It all depends. You just gotta be there at the right time. You gotta per­form a lot. It’s like the snow­ball effect. The more you per­form, the more peo­ple notice.
Cam: Yeah build a big­ger fan base.
Steve: Do they have bands that back you or do you take in tracks?
Cam: I’ve been given the option… myself, and me and my brother to have a band back­ing with us. I’m think­ing of trail­ing them to see what they’re like with us.
Steve: Would that involve a degree of rehearsals or do you just throw in some charts and say, “this is what I want to do”?
Clayt: Def­i­nitely a lot of rehearsals.
Cam: We do a lot of rehearsals non-stop every week, every day.
Clayt: With the band it’ll be more intense. It’s a dif­fer­ent sit­u­a­tion work­ing with a band rather than back­ing.
Steve: What’s the plan with you guys? Where to from here?
Kym: Hmmm…
Clayt: To the movies!
Kym: To the movies! We’re going to gig a lot. At the moment, we’re just look­ing at gig­ging. Play a lot of shows. Keep writ­ing, of course.
Cam: Always writ­ing.
Kym: Always writ­ing, and we’ll see where it goes from there.
Steve: You got enough to write about? Other than girls?
Kym: Girls seem to be a big crux of what we write about.
Cam: You’re obsessed man. You need ther­apy!
Steve: It’s not a bad sub­ject though, really.
Kym: No no, it’s not too bad.
Cam: It’s always easy to write songs about chicks.
Kym: For sure!
Clayt: Or par­ties. Par­ties and chicks are the eas­i­est things to write about.
Kym: Or cars.
Cam: Expe­ri­ence. Expe­ri­ence!
Steve: Alright we’re going to put on another track off your CD.
Kym: Sweet.
Steve: Track 4 was it?
Kym: Yep.
Steve: What one this one called?
Kym: Moth­er­land. This was writ­ten by Adam Tsen and I. Adam Tsen was in here last time but he’s not here today because he got through to Aus­tralian Idol.
Steve: Is that right? How far into it is he?
Kym: I think he goes to Syd­ney.
Clayt: Yep!
Cam: I think he’s in the top 100. Do he’s done really well with that.
Steve: Did you guys go into it?
Kym: Nope.
Cam: Nope.
Clayt: Nope.
Cam: Not really the direc­tion I want to take.
Steve: What about the expo­sure and all of that?
Clayt: We sort of want to do it on our own.
Kym: They want to put in the hard yards.
Steve: That’s cer­tainly admirable. A lot of the indie sorta rock bands are say­ing the same sorta thing but I think from the style you guys are head­ing in, I would’ve thought it would’ve been a great leg up.
Kym: We’ll see in the future.
Cam: Yeah it’s def­i­nitely an option if we need it there.
Steve: So you think at the moment, you’ll do it your own way?
Cam: Yeah we’re happy doing it our own way. It’s flow­ing the way we want it to.
Clayt: We got pro­duc­ers from New York who want to meet up, work with us…
Steve: So you got your con­tacts there any­way.
Kym: Yeah it’s flow­ing along the way we want it too so we’re not too fussed.
Cam: I think I’ll save that as a last resort any­way.
Kym: Any­way this song was writ­ten about the hap­pen­ings in Bali. We sang it last time as well but this is the actual track.

<Applause>

Kym: Thank-you! Thank-you!
Steve: Ah yes. Big reac­tion there from the 9–7.9 FM audi­ence.
Cam: Thanks guys!
Steve: Oh wait, that wasn’t live was it! Hold back crowd! All right we’re going to get you in to do a live one. Before we do, is there any upcom­ing gigs or any­thing you want to pro­mote?
Kym: We’ve got mid-year con­certs com­ing up at Chapel off Chapel.
Cam: That’s the one we’re doing with singing school. It will be on 1st, 2nd or 3rd, any one of those dates. To see me and Kym…
Kym: We’ve got an orig­i­nal show case com­ing up three weeks after that.
Steve: Cool.
Kym: If you want infor­ma­tion, visist my web­site kymhuynh.com. That’s K-Y-M-H-U-Y-N-H.COM. And it’s got gig infor­ma­tion.
Steve: Thanks for clar­i­fy­ing that for us.
Kym: Haha yeah. No one knows how to spell my name.
Clayt: Hyundai!
Steve: I actu­ally gave it to the host before hand because he was ask­ing who was on the show and I gave him the CD and he goes, “… Kym! Is on the show!“
Cam: Kym Hun!
Clayt: Kym Huu­uynnnh!
Cam: Huh– huh­hhh
Kym: Ok Kym!
Steve: Actu­ally what is on your web­site? You got some down­load­able tracks?
Kym: Yep a few sam­ple tracks. Gig infor­ma­tion.
Steve: Yep.
Kym: Basic infor­ma­tion.
Steve: Few pic­tures?
Clayt: Nude gallery.
Kym: My pri­vate gallery.
Clayt: But that’s $4.90 a month by the way, you gotta pay for that!
Steve: Call now!
Kym: But wait, there’s more, these are not actors.
Steve: Alright so when you per­form, the two of you together, it will be this song that you’re about to do?
Kym: Yep. It’s a new song. It’s called Dirty Ways. It’s about a girl.
Clayt: Fun­nily enough!
Kym: What’s inter­est­ing is that she’s a preg­nant pros­ti­tute… so… yeah.
Cam: Not any­one we know by the way!
Kym: Not any­one we know.
Clayt: It’s a made up story.
Steve: Does she exist?
Clayt: No.
Kym: It’s a made up story… but it’s a good story.
Steve: Ah you gotta make them up some­times.
Clayt: It’s a good eye opener for things that actu­ally hap­pen out there.
Steve: Well make your way out there! Thanks for com­ing in! Send us your stuff as soon as you can and we’ll put you on the show!
Clayt: Thanks!
Cam: Thanks!
Kym: Thanks!
Steve: Cheers!

On This Day

• The PPT Show 52: Adam Pow­ell and Donna Williams (The Real Story) — 2008
• My Life as a Snow­man — 2007
• Kym and X-Cape: X-Cape Con­cert 2005 — 2007
• Inter­view with Melton FM 97.9 — 2007
• The Offi­cial Web­site Updated for 2007 — 2007