Shane Parsons and Simon Ridley, the founding members of the beast that is DZ Deathrays, zoom in from their respective homes on Dharug land (Blue Mountains) and Meanjin (Brisbane).
Excited about the prospect of their sixth album (‘R.I.F.F’) release the next day (earlier this month), they share the ethos of the Remember It’s For Fun (R.I.F.F) system, namesake for their new album and the events that led to making the new record.
R.I.F.F is etched into the fabric of this band; it’s an idea that reminds them to keep enjoying being in a band no matter how hard things might be. It’s a constant reminder as they each have R.I.F.F tattooed onto them as well; it’s something they share with other bands, and now the world.
Best mates since high school, Parsons (vocals, guitar) and Ridley (drums) have been talking about and making music ever since.
Well into the second decade of DZ Deathrays, fun has all always been at the forefront of why they make music.
Fun flows through everything DZ Deathrays do, and the community of bands they form part of. Something which Simon reflects on. “I think most people get into bands that way, or at least the ones that seem to survive.
“If you’re doing it for fun, you probably keep going. If you’re doing it to get rich or do whatever. Those bands never work out, they always seem to fall behind.”
Six albums in, longevity is a strength of DZ Deathrays, as Shane remembers the early days of the band. “We lived in a house together and we had a spare bedroom and we just started writing songs,” he says.
“We’d get home from work every day, and just jam and write songs. There was no future prospects of anything we were gonna do. When we started, we played a couple of house parties, for friends.
“We really liked music and we were in love with music. We would go see music. We just did it because we enjoyed it.
“I understand why people go maybe it’s time to hang up the guitar strap and focus on something else, and it’s not for everyone, but I always find great enjoyment in doing it and I actually feel like I learned a lot every time I write or record or go on tour; you do it because you love it.”
The early days of the band was centred around the Brisbane music scene, which saw themselves and similar hard-working bands like Violent Soho (Luke Henery from that band is now touring bass player for DZ Deathrays) starting out playing house parties and small bars. The idea of doing it for the love of it was an ethos that these bands all shared.
With a close friendship and sense of camaraderie, the band is now spread across three different areas: Brisbane, Sydney and Blue Mountains, which presents its challenges for the band combined with the implications of COVID lockdowns and other factors.
Shane opens about this. “None of us saw each other [during lockdowns]. It was hard as I think there’s a certain camaraderie that comes with when you’re in a band; actually going to see each other and being able to hang out.
“We were so used to doing that on tour. And then to have that stripped away from us. It was a little bit depressing.
“We were thinking, ‘are we gonna be able to keep going like this’ but there was light at the end of the tunnel and I knew that at some point, we’d get back together and now we’ve been doing shows together.
“It feels great because we’re back together, back as a unit. We can talk about stuff and get excited. We’re working on this project and releasing a record. There’s things happening.”
There’s plenty happening for DZ Deathrays coming off the back of a national tour supporting Regurgitator, their own upcoming extensive headline tour with Press Club as well as the release of ‘R.I.F.F’.
The concept for ‘R.I.F.F’ started back in a makeshift green room, when DZ Deathrays were playing at a university in Wagga Wagga, many years ago.
Shane recounts the story. “We were thinking to ourselves ‘don’t know if this show is going to be too good’. So we were just writing things on the whiteboard pretending to sort of be in a class and ended up writing ‘R.I.F.F – Remember It’s For Fun’, and started giving ourselves a pep talk.”
So much of what DZ Deathrays is about is just being mates hanging out and having fun. With that as the essence of what they do, it’s easy to pin them down as a party band.
However, as Shane shares the themes and ideas behind the songs on ‘R.I.F.F’ centred around modern anxieties, it’s hard to know when the party starts and ends for DZ Deathrays.
Shane speaks to how the “weird times” they’ve been through have influenced so much of the record explaining the songs were about “things that might have been happening then, but we didn’t want it to feel completely like a record that was all about a pandemic and being locked in your house and I wanted it to feel like a party song.
“Even like ‘King B’, that song is all about being able to see someone again, as a party anthem for that. It was kind of my way of saying that nothing will ever be as good as seeing another person in a room together.”
Modern anxieties seep through so much of the record; Shane and Simon both talk of how over-saturation of news has affected them.
“I was watching the news to the point where I kind of needed to just stop,” Shane explains. “I think it was messing people up a bit. It’s definitely creeped in there in terms of the content [on the album], and it was just a weird time.
“I think there’s still a hangover from it, because it’s still going on. There’s still issues happening all the time and people are taking a lot more notice now. I think maybe if you went back 10 years ago, 15 years ago, people could easily turn a blind eye to a lot of things.
“Now people have a lot more guilt in them and every time they see something that happens, they feel we should be doing something about it and they feel passionately about it.
“Whatever it is that they do, even if it’s talking to someone about it, then it means that people are moving maybe in the right direction.”
The R.I.F.F system has been an ethos for the band for so long that it’s now ingrained in how they go about things. “When it came to the time to name this record, that sort of popped into my head,” Shane says.
“We use this system all the time, and that’s why we’re doing [music]. We’re doing [music] because we enjoy it. And we can’t see ourselves doing anything else.”
DZ Deathrays 2023 Tour Dates
Fri 28 Jul – Finnians (Port Macquarie)
Sat 29 Jul – Newcastle Hotel (Newcastle)
Thu 3 Aug – Lion Arts Factory (Adelaide)
Fri 4 Aug – The River (Margaret River)
Sat 5 Aug – Rosemount Hotel (Perth)
Fri 11 Aug – Vinnies Dive (Gold Coast)
Sat 12 Aug – Princess Theatre (Brisbane)
Sun 13 Aug – Solbar (Sunshine Coast)
Thu 17 Aug – Sooki Lounge (Melbourne)
Fri 18 Aug – Torquay Hotel (Torquay)
Sat 19 Aug – Pelly Bar (Frankston)
Thu 24 Aug – Seabreeze Hotel (Mackay)
Fri 25 Aug – The Warehouse (Townsville)
Sat 26 Aug – Edge Hill Tavern (Cairns)
Thu 31 Aug – Volta (Ballarat)
Fri 1 Sep – The Corner Hotel (Melbourne)
Sat 2 Sep – Haba (Rye)
Thu 14 Sep – The Basement (Canberra)
Fri 15 Sep – Unibar (Wollongong)
Sat 16 Sep – Factory Theatre (Sydney)