The Rubens have had what guitarist and lead vocalist, Sam Margin, describes as "a dream run". After hearing their home recorded demos from a friend of the band, Grammy Award winning producer David Kahne took an interest in the quartet and ultimately agreed to produce their debut album in New York City. More impressive is that this all happened before The Rubens had received any exposure in Australia and didn't even have a record label. But just as Kahne put his faith in them, the three Margin brothers and their friend, Scott Baldwin, likewise put their faith in him, and the result is one that we're all familiar with by now.
The Rubens' self-titled debut album has yielded the band a great deal of radio play around the country, the Triple J Unearthed Album of the Year Award, an ARIA nomination for Best Video for "My Gun", as well as spots on the Splendour in the Grass bill and the upcoming Laneway Festival. Sam Margin spoke to us about working with David Kahne on their album, and the band's life-changing year.
Your bio reads a bit like a musical fairytale, I can imagine that probably doesn’t happen in Menangle too much!
Yeah I don’t think so. There’s no other bands in Menangle so I don’t think it’s ever happened before. We’re pretty lucky in general I reckon, it doesn’t really happen outside Menangle either.
A lot of talented musicians do seem to have grown up in the country - perhaps because there's not as much to do as in the cities, and more time to practise. Do you feel that that was the case for you?
I wouldn’t say that necessarily, there was a lot of stuff to do and we’re not as isolated as a lot of other country towns. It wasn’t from a lack of stuff to do but the style of music we create was probably more influenced by the fact that we weren’t involved in the whole hipster city thing so we didn’t end up writing triphop or using 16 beats and synths ‘cause that’s a real scene thing. Not saying that there’s not great bands doing it but there’s also a lot of bands doing it and I think that’s as a result of the scene when you grow up in the city. So I think the fact that we grew up in the country allowed us to make a sort of unbiased choice of our style of music.
What had been your plans for the demos that you’d already recorded at home before David got on board?
When we first started, we put up a Rubens facebook, and I just wrote a thing on the Rubens’ timeline saying that our goal for 2012 was to get played on Triple J and that was at the very start of the year. So I guess our first ambitious goal was to try and get Triple J to notice us and that was as far as we’d thought. That was a massive long shot in our minds as well. So when that actually happened, that was crazy for us. We didn’t have any plans other than that.
Triple J ended up giving you a lot of support – how pivotal do you think that was to the success you had in 2012?
It was definitely one of the biggest things that had ever happened to us, getting the Triple J play. Most people don’t realise though that we actually booked David Kahne to do our record two months before we ever got played on Triple J. We are absolutely so indebted to Triple J for how much support they’ve given us, we all know that, but we also have to remind ourselves that we must’ve been doing something right back then to get David’s attention as well.
I think the main thing that Triple J did was to pick up that first single, "Lay It Down", I think that song kick started things for us. As soon as that happened, our whole lives changed. There’s that one pivotal point I think.
And with David Kahne taking an interest in your music even before then, how were you feeling when you got off the plane to meet him in the States? Were there any moments while you were there that you thought things wouldn’t come together?
Yeah, loads! I was really really excited and had a certain amount of apprehension when we first arrived just because it was all unknown and it all seemed a bit too good to be true. But as soon as we started working with David, we realised he was just a chill dude and he was just really passionate about music and really liked our music. I felt a bit more safe at that point but there were loads of times where we sort of had our disagreements and differences of opinion or taste. It's how records are made but for me, because I’d never done anything like that before, I wasn’t sure how we were going to get through certain parts. It was just about working out how to communicate our ideas to each other and get past certain problems that we had.
Overall it was an awesome experience from start to finish, and I guess the main thing was that at the end of the recording process, both the band and David loved what we’d produced. It would’ve really sucked for one of us to come to the end and feel like we’d worked our arses off and didn’t really get what we wanted. It was a really hard process but loads of fun too.
You had a lot of huge moments in 2012 – are you feeling any pressure to make 2013 even bigger?
Yeah there’s pressure! I don’t know if there’s pressure from other people or just me putting pressure on myself. I’m learning to just be really happy with what’s happening right now rather than getting too worried about what’s going to happen in six months time. 2012 was pretty much just a dream run. Everything was brand new. Playing Splendour was one of the most exciting things that we did I think, it was the most people that we’d played to and we really weren’t expecting many people but we had a full tent. That was a huge moment for us because even though you get played on Triple J, which was really exciting at the time, doesn’t mean that you’re going to have lots of fans. It doesn’t mean that people are going to want to see you live so we can never be sure that people are going to come and see us at the shows so that was really amazing.
As far as 2013 goes, we’ve got to continue working on Australia. You know, we worked our arses off in 2012 promoting the album in Australia and in 2013 we’re going to start trying to branch out a little bit and spend a little bit of time over in the UK and Europe and America because the record’s going to come out over there in the next few months as well. I think a lot of bands make the mistake of having a bit of success in Australia and then bailing because they’ve romanticised the idea of being a musician in New York or going to live in the UK and I think because of how much good music people can get their hands on in Australia, it’s almost a fickle market. I think the fans are so good to you here and they’re so loyal, probably thanks to Triple J and a hell of a lot of good music media, that if you bail on them then you pretty much have to come back and start from square one again. So I think we’ll work on overseas but we’ll definitely do a lot of back and forth playing shows in Australia and all that kind of stuff.
What are you most looking forward to about the Laneway Festival?
I haven’t been before but when we were choosing which festivals we wanted to go for, everyone in the industry was saying that Laneway’s really amazing so I’m really excited. But what I’m really looking forward to other than the actual playing is just hanging out with other bands, hanging out with like-minded people and people who are doing similar things with their lives as you. There’s a lot of bands on the bill that I’ve never seen live and some that I’ve never even heard of so I think it’ll also be about discovering some good stuff as well.
Any acts in particular that you’re really keen to check out?
I’ve seen Alt-J briefly but I still want to see Alt-J again. I think Bat for Lashes is definitely another one. Then there’s obviously Alpine that are always great to catch live. I don’t know, I have to look at the line up again!
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The Rubens are playing St Jerome's Laneway Festival 2013!
February Dates
1 - RNA Showgrounds, Brisbane
2 - Sydney College of the Arts, Sydney
3 - Footscray Community Arts Centre, Melbourne
8 - Fowler’s Live and UniSA City West Courtyards, Adelaide
9 - Perth Cultural Centre, Perth
http://www.lanewayfestival.com.au/