How are Big Orange travelling during covid-19?

Big Orange is a cool name, can you tell us the inspiration?

 (Daniel) Thank you. Well I don’t know how interesting it is, but it’s connected to Emma, Tom and I’s home town. We grew up in a small town a couple hours south of Perth called Harvey - it’s home to The Big Orange (one of those attraction type things). At the time we were coming up with names for the band I was driving down to see my mum, I went past the road sign for The Big Orange and the words just kinda flashed in my mind and I thought - that might be cool? Everyone agreed, so yeah.  

How are you travelling during covid-19?  

(Daniel) I’ve been fine. It’s not that different to my normal life. I just spend my life hidden in the music room anyway, writing and playing and recording songs. 

(Emma) We had been in the studio pre lockdown finishing up our first album so there was obviously some readjusting of our release schedule and shows ect. We are pretty lucky here in Western Australia though, we got out and play our first post-lockdown show to a full room a few weeks ago, with our good friends The Floors, so that was really nice. The live music scene over here is vibrant at the moment, everyone is just grateful they can get out amongst it. We also welcomed a new drummer at the start of the year - Jamie Gallacher (also in New Talk, Pat Chow) so it was a good opportunity to take some time to get comfortable as a band. 

Has your process changed from your 2019 single ‘In the Shadows’, if so how? 

(Daniel) Not at all. I work in my music room every day and play until something comes out of nowhere and then I go to work on that. I usually try to make sure the framework and structure of the song is in place i.e. arrangement, melody, lyrics before I start work on the production side. Though sometimes i'm a little eager to see what it'll sound like with bells and whistles. (I put bells and whistles on all my songs). As with ‘In the Shadows’, once pre-production was done in my home studio we went back into Blackbird Studios and let engineer Dave Parkin really bring out the best in it. For the live part I’ll take the song to the band and we do our best to execute it the way it’s been recorded. Sometimes it shifts in style once the band gets hold of it. 

What does this single mean to you?  

(Daniel) Nothing in particular, it was a moment in time. I like the song. But I’m not overly attached to it now or anything. 

(Emma) This is one of my favourite songs to play live,  I was pretty excited to get this one out so people can hear it before seeing our shows. This is the first song we started playing live with drum samples so that’s been pretty fun. 

How would you describe the growth from your previous music to this single?

(Daniel) Well I think we’re getting better at getting the songs sounding as close to how they should sound as possible. It’s a learning process and also having a good working relationship in the studio helps and Dave Parkin who we’ve worked with the last few singles has been a big factor in that. 

What should we look forward to with your future projects?

 (Daniel) Something different. I’ve got a computer full of songs in all sorts of genres and styles. I’m always flitting about musically. So it might be a completely different direction. 

(Emma) For now we are just looking forward to getting our album out, we have a bit of an idea of the direction we will take with the next one, but yeah as Daniel said we have a few options!