By Jim Barber
If you’ve seen Australian rockers The Lazys in concert, it’s unlikely you’ve ever forgotten the experience as they’ve left many a proverbial roof blown off. Like their elder brothers from Down Under, AC/DC and Airbourne, the band is all energy, all the time, with raucousness, ribaldry and really good rock and roll.
And Canada has been a particularly potent touring ground for the brilliantly badass quintet, as a special appearance at the largest music industry conference in the nation, Canadian Music Week back in 2014 led to the band becoming a ‘homegrown’ sensation, eventually moving to the Great White North for a few years to revel in the acclaim from fans and sow seeds for future invasions south of the U.S. border and across the pond to Europe.
Understanding full well that you never know who is in the audience on a given night, The Lazys played three brilliant and incendiary shows during that Canadian Music Week, serendipitously capturing the attention of one of the most prominent booking agents in the music industry – Ralph James, best known for his work with Nickelback and Deep Purple. During the same set of shows, Billy Talent co-founder, lead guitarist and noted producer Ian D’Sa also found himself pulled in by the band’s obvious charisma, coterie of powerhouse tunes, musicality and that mysterious ‘it factor’ that only a few artists have, and which cannot be faked.
“Ian saw us at the Bovine Sex Club [a well-known Toronto music venue] at like two in the morning and we were to go on at three in the morning. We had finished our show at The Horseshoe Tavern at one in the afternoon, so we had two performances that one day and we were all super tired and probably a little drunk. Ian just happened to be in the crowd. It was a big deal for us to make some noise at those shows because we threw all of our money into those plane tickets. We’d never been overseas apart from recording in New York for the first album [Prison Earth in 2010], so we threw everything we had into Canadian Music Week. We just went for it, man. And, you know, before that we’d been a band for nearly 10 years and didn’t have any kind of mainstream success,” said Morris.
“We’d been a band for eight years in Australia doing the hard yards and playing to like two people. It’s just that the rock scene in Australia, sadly, is not there anymore. And I know it’s crazy to imagine that because we had bands like AC/DC and all of that coming out of Australia. But there’s not the following or the support for rock there. So, we knew we had to get out of there. We just needed some way to do it. It just happened that we had that amazing opportunity of meeting Ian. Then we signed Ralph James as our agent, and from there we went on to sign with Warner Music and all of this stuff happened around that time. And it was just this huge lift for the band. I will forever be grateful for that. That’s why the cliché about never knowing who you’re playing in front of is true. As a young band, you get told just go hard every night, just give it every night, night after night, and that’s what we did for eight years. And now we’ve been a band for almost 20 years.”
That band is going out on tour this summer, including a number of dates in Ontario in support of their new single, ‘Hot Under The Collar,’ which comes out on all streaming platforms on Friday, June 27. The tour stops include Summer in the Parking Lot on July 17 in Thunder Bay, at The Biltmore in Oshawa on July 18, the Sonic Hall in Guelph the next evening followed by an engagement at The 27 Club in Ottawa July 24, then at Lee’s Palace in Toronto July 27. After a break of three weeks, they’re off to the United Kingdom for a run, leading to shows in Germany, Denmark, Sweden, Czechia, before returning to the UK for a few more concerts.
‘Hot Under the Collar’ is pretty much what you’d expect from the band that’s produced party rock anthems like ‘Shake It Like You Mean It’, songs of being footloose and fancy free (‘Black Rebel’), and every manner of romantic entanglement, good, bad and somewhere in between such as ‘Little Miss Crazy’.
“Last summer we released a couple of rockers, ‘Rattle Them Bones,’ and ‘Ripper Of A Night.’ We’re focusing on singles right now because the way the music world works these days, it’s tough to release a whole album. We would love to, but it’s really a singles market and it’s really expensive to record a whole album at once. So, yeah, we are just putting out singles, but we’re having a great time doing that because we can make a big deal out of each one. We’ve thought about bringing all the singles together on an album, but we haven’t put those plans in place yet,” Morris said, adding that they brought in a pretty heavyweight producer to work on ‘Hot Under the Collar.’
“This newest single was recorded and produced and mixed by a fellow named Dave Schiffman. He’s out of L.A. and he’s done the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Tom Petty, System of a Down, Adele, a whole bunch of stuff. And he used to work under [legendary American Recordings producer] Rick Rubin as well. He’s got a lot of experience. We actually recorded the tracks between Australia and Canada and he put it all together. The drums were done in Australia and all the guitars were done here in Toronto. And then once those tracks were done, the vocals were done back in Australia. So, it’s cool how it came together.
“And the coolest thing about it is was that our fans fully funded it. We did a Kickstarter campaign and we were honestly surprised how many people got involved, which is a real blessing and it makes it feel really special because the fans want the product, they pay for the product to get done and now they get the product itself. The whole thing was really organic. The information shared was very transparent between the band and the fans all the way along.”
The new single is typical of how the band’s songs are composed, with singer Harrison working closely with Morris and D’Sa, who has acted as a professional and creative mentor since his first encounter with The Lazys back in 2014, including putting them in touch with Schiffman.
“The three of us, we often co-write and collab, and we have always had a great time working with D’Sa. He is such a talented guy. And he’s really cool, like a really awesome guy and an awesome writer. He’s really taught us a lot since we’ve been working with him. He’s done so much to improve our songwriting process and we have learned so much. ‘Hot Under the Collar’ was written with him, but it’s really a super old song. It’s been sitting there on the shelf probably since the pandemic,” Morris said, as he talked about the genesis for the song’s story.
“I was travelling across America with my then fiancé in a trailer and I was having Skype calls with the boys when we were penning the lyrics. We had the title of ‘Hot Under the Collar’ and when I heard it I thought it’s really cool. And the story is about a guy who’s stressing out about this new hot co-worker and he’s really kind of boiling up over her. We came up with the words and had a few calls back and forth, and that was it.
Comprised of vocalist/frontman/Energizer Bunny with an Aussie accent, Leon Harrison, the twin guitar attack of Matty Morris and Liam Shearer, and the booming rhythm section of bassist TJ Smith and drummer Andy Nielsen, The Lazys formed in New South Wales in 2006 subsequently releasing two albums and a number of singles in their home country – 2010s Prison Earth, and a self-titled LP in 2014. Their most recent full album, Tropical Hazards was written, recorded and released in Canada in 2018, garnering positive critical commentary, and some chart success.
It was not long after that the band packed their bags and began hitting the club and festival circuit in Europe and the United Kingdom. That Canadian Music Week appearance led to so many positive developments career-wise for The Lazys including their first opportunities in the music mad continent of Europe.
“Europe’s next level, man. We’ve been going there since 2017 and before the pandemic we were playing a lot of the major festivals over there, like Wacken Open Air, Bloodstock and all of these huge heavy metal events. The pandemic really hit us, but I’m not going to talk about it because we all lost shit, but I can say we really lost the wind from our sails. So, we’ve had to rebuild our audience in Europe again since the last time we went over which was 2019. Last year was the first time back, so we’re really looking forward to building up some momentum again. And I kid you not, when we went back last time, there were even more people out to see us than before, so they stick with you. They stick with the band and to have that support has been amazing,” Morris said.
“The UK has been a little slower, but we’re starting to pick up some traction there again. Germany is really an amazing market for us. They just love rock music, they love putting on a denim jacket, having a beer and just going for it.”
The U.S. has been a bit of a different story post-COVID and especially with the amount of confusion and discombobulation surrounding the current administration in Washington and its ever-changing immigration and tariff policies. Not to mention, it’s bloody expensive to get the paperwork done in order to even try to tour America.
“Online we get a lot of comments asking for us to come down. People are saying, ‘we’re here, we’re here, and we want to see you,’ so we know there’s a following down there, and it’s slowly building with each single we release. But we just haven’t wanted to hit that market yet because it’s so expensive. But it’s something we all want to do, but right now going there is such a huge financial risk. I think if we can keep building our audience there we can make something happen,” he said, adding that there are also parts of Canada that The Lazys would still like to conquer first.
“We’ve traveled across Canada a lot. We play a lot here in Ontario, but we’d love to improve the West Coast market, especially Vancouver. But going out west that far, it’s one of the challenges of touring in Canada because you want to make sure it’s going to work before you go all the way out there. Being an independent band, it’s too hard to financially facilitate big tours if you’re not sure there’s going to be the ticket sales and stuff. Especially now because we’ve all got families and stuff to think about. You don’t want to make the trek and only play for 10 people.”
Once the trek is made, the formula is very Julius Caesar-like – they go and they conquer, each audience, club by club, festival by festival, night after night. The live show has been integral to the band’s identity since they were teenagers slogging it out in New South Wales. Much of it is because in order to make headway in a country with long distances and small populations in many communities, you gotta be good. In that sense, Canada and Australia are very much alike. Music lovers remember good and ask for you to come back. The Lazys determined that they would be unforgettable on stage from the outset.
“We gave it a thousand per cent right out of the gates when we were like 16 years old. That was the approach. At the time we thought we had good songs, but looking back we probably didn’t have great songs, but we knew we had a great rock show. And that was the way to rise above. We were obviously fans of AC/DC and later the Foo Fighters and all the bands that put on these amazing live shows, so that was always important to the band and to each of us individually. The biggest thing, I think, is it should be treated like you’re entertaining people. It’s a circus. People pay their money; they want to be entertained and we’re going to give it to them. And, hey man, it’s worked out. People love coming to our live shows and we absolutely pride ourselves on giving it all on stage. The energy you get back from the audience feeds you, and then you give it back to them. That vibe is something you just can’t recreate anywhere else. It’s like a drug that’s only available in certain places. People want to go out and have some bevvies and have a great time and what better way to do it than at a rock show,” Morris said.
For more information on some of those upcoming rock shows, done Lazys style, visit https://thelazysband.com, where you can also pre-order ‘Hot Under the Collar.’
Jim Barber is a veteran award-winning journalist and author based in Napanee, Ontario, Canada, who has been writing about music and musicians for more than 30 years. Besides his journalistic endeavors, he works as a communications and marketing specialist and is an avid volunteer in his community. Contact him at jimbarberwritingservices@gmail.com.
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