JANET PLANET of CONFIDENCE MAN: Doing It For Themselves.
An interview by Sarah Kidd.
They are the Australian indie-dance crew who are bringing synchronised moves back to the dance floor where they belong, and as per their name, they are confident that you will love it as much as they do.
Releasing the dangerously catchy ‘Boyfriend (Repeat)’ was like throwing a rock into the giant pond called the UK; the resulting ripples leading to a contract with Heavenly Recordings and the release of their debut single ‘Bubblegum’.
Comprising of members from such bands as The Belligerents, Moses Gunn Collective and The Jungle Giants, Confidence Man is an alumni of creative talent quite unlike anything else, their live performances an experience that will leave attendees taste buds tingling for days.
Having recently partied with both U2 and Noel Gallagher, I caught up with Janet Planet to discuss their upcoming support slot with New Order, laser boots and just what do you make for dinner when one of the biggest bands in the world visits you at home…
So, Janet Planet, does Confidence Man make you feel good? [chuckles]
[Laughs] “Yeah, yeah it does! Like we’ve been touring lots and doing lots of festivals, so it’s been really funny. We came back home and that was really like the first track that we wrote, since kinda touring for two years. So, it feels good to get back in the studio and be writing new stuff and planning next year.
So yeah, it does feel really good actually”
Yes, Confidence Man have been appearing at such festivals like Glastonbury and so forth; personally, I think your music is just perfect for such events.
“Well we particularly love doing our live show, all the costumes and stuff. My Mum makes all the outfits, so it’s really like a family affair a bit”
Your Mum makes your outfits?
“Yeah, poor Mum, she’s tied to the sewing machine…”
[Laughs] That’s fantastic! Does she come up with the design ideas or is it a bit of a collaboration?
“Mum and I kinda do them together, and then we go and source all the fabric and she makes them up. So, she has the hard job of actually making it a reality, and I just say, ‘Do this’. So, I feel bad for her”.
[laughs]
I love that though, as you said it brings a real family element to the whole project.
“Yeah, totally.”
The members of Confidence Man all met through the Brisbane music scene, and obviously you each came from a collection of bands – The Jungle Giants in particular, an act that has always been popular here in New Zealand…
“We were all living together, and we were all in a bunch of other bands and at the time it happened organically – somebody would be sitting next to you writing something and then someone else would come through while they were cooking breakfast, you know like bacon and eggs or whatever and then it just kinda happened naturally from there.
So, it wasn’t really like something that we planned to do, it was a happy accident.”
And obviously the bacon and eggs turning up in a certain song… [laughs]
“Yeah, someone was just sitting there eating bacon and eggs and you know the rest are vegetarians…”
Now I actually read something the other day and I thought it was a very cool way of describing you guys, it said ‘Confidence Man have been described as a vision of what is missing in dance music…’
“Yeah, well I feel like half of what we have done with the band has been things that I’ve wanted to go out and see when I got drunk, and it just didn’t exist. So, I feel like that is half the reason why we wanted to make all these things. You know, have like the dancing and all the costumes and stuff, because when I get drunk, this is what I wanted to see… and it didn’t exist!
So, I had to make it”
You have to admire that kind of dedication. It’s not there, so I am going to make it be there! I absolutely love that!
So, does everybody in the band follow your specific vision?
“Yeah, so all the boys have a bit of the same vision, but there have been a few times when Sugar [Bones] has been like ‘I am not doing that dance move’. I remember when there was this one dance move where I was down on all fours and doing this like hip thrusting…
And he really put his foot down on that”
[Laughs]
“I mean understandably it was a pretty terrible dance move. But a lot of the time the boys just kinda let me do whatever and only if they have a real problem with it will they say no.”
Nice! Yes, I was reading an interview with you only a few days ago and you were talking about synchronised dancing in clubs. That was something I used to love watching in all those terrible movies that were around when I was a teen, the club scenes were people would have dance-offs.
And I agree that is the sort of thing I want to see as well! Two groups having a dance-off! Everyone! Move off to the sides! It’s a dance-off!
[Laughs] “Yes, need more synchronised dancing as well I reckon!”
I also liked how you mentioned ‘shitty 90’s vocals’, as it immediately made me think of the Mark Morrison song ‘Return of the Mack’…
[laughs] “Oh yeah!”
I know you have mentioned Vengaboys and Aqua previously, but what other acts would you place in that same category?
“NSYNC and Backstreet Boys, all those kinds of things, where they are overly trashy and trying way too hard but in kind of a good way? The sort of thing I am into at the moment is just ridiculously over the top, it’s kinda of my angle right now” [laughs]
Obviously, the members of Confidence Man use pseudonyms, but where did you pick up the names Janet Planet and Sugar Bones from?
“Well those ones we just kinda made up, but Reggie Goodchild and Clarence McGuffie were actually names we found in a graveyard! We were out in the middle of Australia and we were just going through a cemetery, reading all these gravestones, and they had all these amazing names on them. So, they came from there…
And actually Reggie Goodchild’s great-granddaughter reached out to my family and said that he was a really cool guy and that he would have been really happy that his name was being used in the band! So that’s pretty cool”
That is very cool!
[Laughs] “Yeah! Apparently, he was like a really cool old butcher of this old country town and he was an old party dog, so he would have been stoked about it, so that’s good.
Janet Planet and Sugar Bones are just kind of ones – like I had known Janet Planet [Rigsbee] as being Van Morrison’s ex-wife, and I thought it was a really great name. And then Sugar Bones was just made up, because it was a silly name really.”
Of course live, both you and Sugar reportedly display some pretty killer dance moves; so who does it come to more naturally? You or Sugar?
“Ahhhh, he is not a natural mover which actually makes it awesome. It’s kinda funny, when we do the dance moves – like when I talk to my friends, they say they can see from me what the dance moves should look like and then they just see a terrible, discount like version of the dance moves being done on the other side of the stage, so they have a real comparison.
So in a way it’s awesome, because you don’t want to be too perfect, you want to be like, you know, shitty discount version of someone really good. That’s the aim. We don’t want to be too perfect anyways. Let the pop stars do that.”
Obviously, you and Sugar are both in different bands away from what you do in Confidence Man; do you find that sometimes helps when creating content for each? Are they completely separate entities or do they feed into eachother?
“When you’re writing sometimes, songs accidently happen for one project and then sometimes they happen for another one, and you can’t really pre-plan which act they will be for.
So then after you have written the song, it will sometimes be like ‘Oh this will fit this band, or this one’, so sometimes it’s not like you’re writing for one band or the other, and they’re completely separated…
They are kinda all in one in a way.”
Do you find that sometimes it’s a bit too much to be in separate bands? Although I must admit, a lot of musicians do indeed have side projects these days.
“Oh yeah, especially with the touring and stuff, it’s been kinda hard to keep up with the other one. So I have been kind of lazy and haven’t really done anything else [laughs] I think the boys are the same. You know it’s hard enough to write at all when you’re touring, like we did pretty much no writing at all last year, which is pretty stressful, because you see all these other bands going ‘We’re releasing albums’.
And then we’ll be like ‘Damn we’re on tour, in a crappy hotel room, I wanna write something!’”
Yes, I can imagine how frustrating that would be.
For other bands who are out there, starting out and doing the whole touring thing – because as we all know, with the music industry changing so dramatically and the money no longer being in album sales but in touring – what are some of your survival tips for being out on the road with the same people for long periods of time?
“Oh definitely – and I learnt this from like the first tour that we did overseas – choose your nights to party. Like when we first went over there, we were partying every night, and it just made the whole thing so depressing!
You would wake up in the morning, you would feel terrible and would be like ‘I don’t want to be here, I don’t want to play the show’; but now when I know I have a day off the next day that’s when I’ll party.
You can’t just go every day, or you do die”
[Laughs]
“I feel like we died on the first tour; I remember all of us coming home and like crying for a week.”
[laughs]
‘You just die’, it’s a statement. I can imagine you would have to carefully manage yourself in some ways. You see some bands and they are on tour for three or fours year in a row…
“You definitely have to treat it like a job in that kind of way.”
Yes! I also heard that you guys had – how should I put this – some dealings with a certain mega star band when they were in Australia. I believe their name is U2?
“They were just like fans and they reached out, so we went to the gig and hung out with them a whole bunch, then we had them over for dinner. It was just wild, it was crazy. We had our neighbour come over and he was yelling at us, and then we just brought Edge out and we were like ‘Look, Edge from U2 is here and he wants to play his demos…’
And then the neighbour like, pretty quickly, wanted to get photos and said he wouldn’t call the cops and we could party as long as we wanted …so…”
[Mutual raucous laughter]
Yes, I had the pleasure of spending a little time with them all when they were here for their Auckland shows and I must say, they were such humble and down to earth guys.
“Yeah! And then the show is pretty next level, like crazy, like production wise that screen is just amazing!”
I loved the screen and the accompanying visuals. It was funny as I saw a lot of complaints coming out of Australia from people stating that the screen should have been used to project the band itself. But they are kinda missing the whole point of what the show was about…
“Yeah, totally.”
It wasn’t about focussing in on them, it was about the images and the messages contained within them… I have to ask now – what did you make them for dinner?
“Yeah, they were coming to our house, and it was really funny, because we were all like ‘What do we cook them?!’ What do you cook for U2?!
And then we all decided on sausages…”
Sausages?!
“Yeah sausages! [laughs] And we were just giving them heaps of margaritas in tea cups, because that’s all we had; we didn’t have any wine glasses. I think they got a kick out of that. They were like ‘Oh, this is just like being back in Uni or something’.”
I think they would have loved that, because it must be hard when you are such highly recognised celebrities, everybody is running around trying to give you everything, the best of everything. And I can imagine that must become quite tiring when some nights you would just want to chill and have a bit of a laugh.
“The most baller thing I thought that came out of that night, I was like chatting to Bono and he had a margarita; he was deep in the middle of this story and he had finished his drink, and without missing a beat he just reached over his shoulder, and like poured himself a new one without me even noticing, still while telling his story!
I remember thinking that was the most bad ass thing I had ever seen in my life!”
It must be the Irish blood in him I think!
“Yeah it was gangsta…”
A lot of celebrities I think lose the ability to be able to connect with people on a day to day level, so the fact that you all got together for a dinner of sausages and margaritas absolutely makes my day!
“Totally. Even how interested they were in our music and that they were willing to help us, by setting us up with people to write with; I feel like they have deep roots in music and actually care about music so much, I think they want to help out in any way they can with young bands like us, so that’s been awesome.”
Yes, that is fantastic. Because that to me speaks to who a true musician is; a true musician and a fan of music keeps abreast of the music that is around them, the music that is from different countries and actually takes an interest in it. They don’t live in their own little bubble.
“That was really surprising, because I actually didn’t expect that of them, but even when I was talking to them about music and stuff they knew all the cool bands that I know and bands that I listen to. I feel like they have their finger more on the pulse than I do!” [chuckles]
Speaking of cool musicians, Andrew Weatherall, how did that relationship come about?
“So we’re on Heavenly Recordings, a label in the UK, and they’re all kind of rave dogs and they just like know everyone. And so Jasper the owner of the label is really good friends with Andrew and it kinda just happened really naturally.
We originally only had Andrew do a remix of ‘Bubblegum’, and then when he heard ‘Out the Window’ he was like ‘This sounds like old Primal Scream, I definitely want a hand in this as well’. So then he did a remix of that as well. So he’s done it a few times now; he’s like our resident remixer!”
And does he do that from overseas, or do you actually all get the chance to spend time with one another?
“Yeah, he does do it from overseas, and we’d see him a few times. He is such a cool guy, he used to work with our friend Jagwar Ma as well, they would have the same studio, so we have like a lot of friends in common and stuff like that.
But yeah, he just worked from the UK with the remixes.”
Nice!
[NB: Tragically, Andrew Weatherall passed away at the age of 56 on the 17th of February 2020 due to medical complications. Our sincere and heartfelt condolences to both his family and friends.]
Now Confidence Man will be – and this is rather exciting – be supporting New Order when they play in Australia next month!
“We are so excited about that! They are like one of our favourite bands. When we got asked to do the support slot for them we were all jumping up and down and hugging each other, it was awesome!”
Did it come as a big surprise? Or had your management been pursuing it? Or even better, did they come to you?
“Yeah, no, they came to us which was pretty exciting, and they would be like in our top five list of people in the world to support, so we we’re pretty excited about it.”
Woah! Hmmm I have to know now – who else is in your top five list of bands to play support for?
“Oooooo [laughs] Basement Jaxx, definitely. Grace Jones and David Byrne. I don’t know who else, that’s like our top three and then New Order is four… no offence to New Order!”
Obviously, your debut album came out last year – Confident Music for Confident People – just the title alone makes me love it. As it puts a stake in the ground which states ‘this is what we are, and this is what this music is for.’
But in the same breath, it doesn’t sound like it is alienating people either, it’s more like, ‘we are confident people, you are confident people, this is confident music’. Yes, let’s do this!
[mutual laughter]
There are some amazing tracks on the album, I love ‘Boyfriend (Repeat)’, ‘Better Sit Down Boy’ [chuckles] yeah you just can’t go past that track, or ‘Bubblegum’. If you had to pitch the album to someone, using only one song, what would it be?
“‘Try Your Luck’, just because it is so naughty, I love the opening lyrics; ‘I must confess/I’ve been sleeping with your ex/Cause I heard he was the best’.”
[mutual laughter]
“They’re just like the most gangsta lyrics of all time, but with the least gangsta context, I love it!”
So what can people expect from your live show then?
“Well I’ve got a whole bunch of new costumes in the works, which I am not going to tell you about, because it is a secret right now…”
[chuckles] Poor mum…
[laughs] “Yeah poor mum! We’ve got the laser boots coming out, we have a whole new set, I think it’s going to be pretty pumpin, it’s going to be pretty crazy stuff!”
Confidence Man are in the middle of their NZ tour, with one more show at The Electric Avenue Music Festival in Christchurch tomorrow (22nd February 2020). Tickets are still available from the Electric Avenue website.
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