Simon London + The Spirits are seasoned performers and their stage presence and performance shows just that.

As a professional band Simon London + The Spirits have seen a lot and done a lot with many national and regional WA tours under their belts they know how to impress an audience.

Offering music that could be defined to the roots-rock genre Simon London + The Spirits offered an easy listening style to the performance we witnessed.

The lyrics were easily understood and each instrument could be singled out as they were played with style.

Simon London + The Spirits currently have their music in both CD and DVD formats available from their website. Check it out today and add some more local WA music to your collection... you won't be dissappointed.

Website: www.simonlondon.com

(Darryl Westrup)

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Tell us about Simon London + the Spirits.

Simon London + the Spirits are a Freo-based outfit that fall roughly into the roots-rock genre.

We've been gigging in our current form since mid 2003. It's really the rock end of 'roots-rock's The band's music is based around the songs I write but the band has a lot of latitude in terms of how these songs get interpreted and brought to life. Our core band is a 3 piece - Tim Keady (bass), Tim Stacey (drums/percussion) and me (vox, guitars etc), but we do play with a floating line-up of other musicians. This has included Chris Edmondson (guitars) and Clem (on keys).

Typically when we tour we go on the road as a 4 piece.

All of us have our various histories... Chris and I were in the seminal 90's act Ochre that toured extensively through the US and both have toured through the US and Europe subsequently. Tim Keady played with the acclaimed No Flowers No Wedding Dress for many years including tours to Europe and elsewhere whilst Tim Stacey has come from playing with Purephase and Four Feet Away. I'm very lucky to be able to play with these guys as they're all at the top level of what they do.

Currently we've been pretty busy on the road and promoting our debut through MGM.

We gig a lot - the live thing is very important to us. We'd clock up around 60-70 shows a year. I've toured the east coast 5 times in the last 12 months which is great.

The debut album's been getting some strong airplay and some good press so we've been hitting the road to capitalise on that.

Your self titled album was released last May, what were the inspirations that helped make up this album?

The album was very much a starting point for us in terms of a definable sound and feel. It's come to be a lot mellower than our live shows though, despite the fact that many of the songs still appear in our live set.

The inspirations are very broad. Relationships, finding your place in the world, meeting the challenges of life. I guess it all stems from a time when I was making some very hard decisions about what was going on in my life and what was and wasn't working. There can be so many pressures in life that try to force you away from whom you really are.

Kicking against them can be difficult sometimes, but giving in means giving up a part of who you are. No-one should sell themselves short like that.

Singer-Songwriter, musician and producer, which hat do you like to wear the most and why?

I love playing with the band. First love. I occasionally do solo stuff which has a different set of artistic challenges but it's much more intimate. And I've been doing a few duo shows where Clem plays some amazing guitar alongside. We'll be releasing another recording based around that too, sometime soon. But song-writing is an on-going thing. I think most songwriters would agree that it's more of a predisposition than something you actively 'do'. Production? Haven't had time to do any of that for a long time except with our own recordings. Maybe when I'm old and crusty I'll hang up the boots and put on the 'producers' hat full time, if anyone will have me.

We hear rumours that you have already started recording for your 2nd album, when and what can we expect from this?

Yeah, we've just released a double DVD thing - a live DVD of a set we did last October at Mojos from the first album and a live-in-the-studio DVD of the new album stuff. The DVD's will be available from the website very soon if people haven't been able to make it down to a show.

As for the second album, it'll come out next year. We tracked about 20 songs and have whittled that down to the final 10... I'm happy with the way it shows the new stuff. Definitely a little more rocky but not without the occasional quiet moment. So the final 10 tracks are having a few minor tweaks made to the mixes and then it's mastering and then getting ready for release.

We record live in the studio and then I overdub the vocals. I much prefer the feel of that kind of recording process and it's much quicker.

What do you think about WA's live music scene and how do you think it could be improved?

Great level of talent at the moment. Heaps of good bands. I think that it's less 'clicky' than it used to be and there are some good things and good people who are helping the younger bands to be a bit more clued up about how to go about things.

I'd like to see some more collaboration between bands, a stronger community feel because the more people work together the more everybody wins. What Perth doesn't have, when compared to other cities, is a really strong culture of the general public going to see bands. Melbourne has it. People who aren't musicians and don't know any are actually going out and seeing bands. The whole clubbing culture has affected that here, eroding it somehow.

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