Mary Wyer. Courtesy Mary Wyer
She was a charming girl who sometimes sang in her room, but on one occasion, when she went out to dinner with the members of Even As We Speak, she began to hum a song, that unconscious daring made that from that night she became the voice of the band. In these times, marked by the rules of Covid-19, we talked with that girl and she shared passages – from the eighties to the present – of what she experienced with Even As We Speak, but also about her work in the medical fields and jobs musicals in which he has been involved without that reference of pop that we met through Sarah Records. Mary Wyer is still lovely and we too look forward to seeing her in person soon. Here, first hand, this part of the story.
Lee la entrevista en español aquí.
Let’s travel back in time, how did Mary Wyer get to Even As We Speak?
Well, actually I was going out with the drummer, Neil, at the time, in the very early days of Even As We Speak. I went out to dinner one night with the band I was just humming to myself and Matthew said to me, “Oh. You can sing OK. We’re recording next week. Do you want to come and record with us?” And so, I recorded with the band and then I just kind of kept hanging around.
-Had you made music before joining the band?
I had always done musicals at school …. always sung. I learned guitar when I was young. I’m not very good at it – never really kept at it, but I tried to write my own songs and things like that so. I guess just in my bedroom I’ve done music, but Even As We Speak was the first band that I was ever in.
-Which bands, Australian bands influences on EAWS
I would have to say it was Australian and New Zealand bands, in particular the Flying Nun bands. Whenever they came across to Sydney, we tried to support them. We did support the Clean, the Bats, The Chills & we were lucky enough to support the Chills again at the New York Pop Fest in 2016. The Verlaines. In terms of Australian bands, for me the Triffids the Go-Betweens & all the Australian bands we were seeing at the time… it was such an exciting time in Sydney with the DIY scene.
-Which women on stage were a direct influence on you?
Well my first love is Kate Bush. I love the way she is a such a performer as well as a composer and singer. And then Jill Birt from the Triffids was a big influence. I remember seeing them in Sydney at the Southern Cross and when I saw her on stage and just thought. “Wow, you know I. I should really get up and do this.” I remember seeing her afterwards in the bathroom, just telling her how much I loved seeing her on stage. But the Sydney DIY scene around that 80s… there were just so many more women on stage playing all sorts of instruments it was so inspiring. I actually wrote my Honours thesis about some of the women who had inspired me, so people like Judy McGee from Pell Mell, Ingrid from the tactics, Astrid from the Particles, Angie Pepper, Julie Mostyn from the Flaming Hands.
-Did Australia know about Sarah Records?
We didn’t know about Sarah Records. The UK was so far away – this was pre-Internet. Pre anything really, just even getting the NME or Melody Maker would come months after being released and they were expensive so we didn’t always get them so we weren’t really that aware of Sarah Records until such time as some friends in the UK approached them about signing us. So, we’re very glad we did get to know about Sarah!
-How was your experience with Sarah Records?
I guess that most of our experiences – up until we went over to live in the UK in 1993 = was very remote like through letters. We were just sending music and getting mail correspondence back. So the correspondence was very, very remote. So we didn’t really get to know Claire and Matt and till we went to live over there. That was really great to get to know them once we were there. They would come to our gigs. We only really got to know the other bands on Sarah when we played with them. So Boyracer were the main band that we did shows with so we got to know them very well. But I would say we didn’t really get to know many of the other bands very well at all. So in 2018, when we toured with Secret Shine and Action Painting! (and Boyracer again), it was so lovely to get to know to get to know these bands better. It would be great if in the future we could get to know more of them. I’ve had a bit of correspondence with Beth Arzy over the last few years and along with Julian from EAWS we have a Monkees cover coming out very soon under the name Tapioca Tundra (released on Spinout Nuggets). A lock down project really.
-Do you feel part of the music that this label represented?
Yeah, because they put us out. Look, we all know that people try to label and box Sarah records as one sort of music and it’s so not. The documentary really showed that… just how different the bands on the label were.
-How was Even As We Speak’s relationship with John Peel?
Yeah, we were very lucky to have been noticed by John Peel. Unlikely we would have been picked up by Sarah had John Peel not played our music on his show. He was very much champion of our music and played us a lot. We did 3 PEEL sessions with him which was amazing. We did actually get to meet him and we all had lunch at his house at Peel Acres with him and his family. But the first time we met him – well Julian and Paul and I met him – was at the Phoenix Festival when we went and gave him the Blue Eyes Deceiving me CD (just as it was coming out). John was DJing on the mainstage, so between Sonic Youth and Julian Cope he played ‘Blue Eyes Deceiving’ me on stage and talked about us saying that we were distinguished guests in the audience and should have been playing on stage. That was pretty exciting for us.
-They left everything in Australia to try it in the United Kingdom. How are the days from that place in England until the end of the band?
Up and down. It was really hard to leave things behind in Australia … people, family. You know the aim had been to try and get a bigger record label so that we might be able to make a living from music, and that didn’t happen, so it was a tough time. There was all of us living in a small flat in Hove. You know we got on each others nerves. Some of us weren’t talking to each other. Sometimes it felt that the only fun time was the hour on stage and meeting the people at the gig & the rest of it was just awful. We didn’t have much money, but looking back on it….with hindsight… it was a great time and I wouldn’t trade it. I would go back and do it all again. It was great. It was hard, but fun.
-How was it like to resume your life after the phase in the United Kingdom?
Well, I can’t talk for the others, but it was pretty hard for me. Even though I was glad to be back with my family, I felt like I’d lost everything with music. Yeah, it was pretty sad period of life for a little bit. I did my honours thesis on women in punk post punk music in Sydney in my 70s early 80s and that helped me kind of sort through a little bit about what I’d experienced being in a band. That was kind of good and what came out of that was that I wanted to release an album of my own songs. And then I met my now husband and we asked Simon Holmes from the Hummingbirds and Allison Galloway from Smudge if they would help make the album under Her Name In Lights. And so it was largely my songs, but there are a few songs by Almond and by other people, one being Richard Newell who was from Big Home Orchestra & who actually put out the original Blue Suburban Skies/ Bizarre Love Triangle single. So I would say it was cathartic for me. That was 2004. Yeah, after that I went lived in the Middle East for a little bit so, my life was very different, but while I was living in the Middle East, I went across and played some songs at the Brixton Jam in 2008… EAWS songs and that was fun. Yeah, so it was kind of a period of just doing different things with music still in there rather than music being the main thing and doing other things around that.
Voyeur Records, Big Home Productions, Phantom Records, Shelflife Records, Gifted Records and Emotional Response also have Even As We Speak in their catalogs, how was the band’s passage through these labels?
Well Voyeur Records was Neil, the original drummer’s, label. He made that label to put it that very first record so it was never actually a functioning label.
Big Home Productions was attached to Big Home Orchestra, a band that Richard Newell and Thomas Tallis were in and at the time. Richard was doing the sound for Even As We Speak. So Richard and Thomas put out those two singles for us – I Won’t have to think about you and Blue Suburban Skies.
That was great, but then that’s when Matt & I were going overseas and Neil and Bjarn didn’t come. So Matt and I did some recording over in the UK and when we came back Phantom Records were quite a thriving indie label who’d sold those earlier singles on consignment in the shop. And Jules, who ran Phantom Records, was putting out some bands by then, so he offered to put out Goes so slow and then the EP Outgrown this town.
So yeah, and then of course we got onto Sarah records from there.
After we came home from the UK in 1993, at one point, Chris Wu contacted and said that he wanted to put out a split single with us on his label Gifted Records, so we used one of the tracks that hadn’t been used by Sarah ‘Let it shine’. It had been recorded while we were in England. But then most of us got together in Australia to record ‘Makes No Sense’ as well. I can’t even remember what year that was.
Stew from Emotional Response has always been a friend. Like you know, right back from the very first days of our time with Sarah Records. We love Stew. And he just contacted to say he could put out the Peel Sessions on his new label. So we kind of got that together and then he said, “OK, have you got anything else you want to put out?” and we ended up putting up Black Forest with him and then …and then when it came to Adelphi, Emotional Response wasn’t able to put that out at the particular time.
So I contacted Ed at Shelflife who has been a friend for a really long time as well. I actually stayed with Ed in 2001 when I toured with The Cannanes. I supported them playing some Even As We Speak songs by myself. Stewart played some with me too. Ed was happy to put out Adelphi on Shelflife which was very exciting, especially for me.
-What was it like to be back on stage with Even as We Speak?
Yeah, well it was serendipitous really…it was just after the NME voted Sarah the #2 indie label of all time. People were kind of looking out for the bands on Sarah who might still be playing. We had just had a party for Matt’s and my significant birthday and so we were asked to play NYC Popfest, which we did in 2016 and that was just so much fun and I think as a band travelling together again… playing a gig together after all that time… only this time we were all friends were all talking …you know we had grown up and it was just wonderful. And then we went on tour with Boyracer, Action Painting! & Secret Shine in 2018 and that was just a hoot. The people who came to see us were just great and it was heaps of fun to go and visit places that we’d lived in 1993.
-What differences did you find when re-creating music with Even As We Speak and how have the forms of distribution and promotion been transformed?
The technical stuff I don’t pay much attention to, I guess. But the biggest difference about creating music that I see now is so much more of it is done remotely because we live in different cities. We’ve got a lot more things happening in our life too, so a lot of the initial part of creating music is done over the Internet. And then we get together we can to rehearse and record. I remember being quite difficult at first in terms of understanding new ways of promotion as well. Because we’d been so used to just sending it into radio or to newspapers and all of a sudden it was more about what blog sites you needed to be involved with. Luckily, Emotional Response and Shelflife have got publishers to do a lot of that work in the Northern hemisphere, but you know, we want to do a bit of leg work too. Trying to keep up with all the social media -Twitter and Instagram and Facebook and the Website and multiple email addresses – as well as doing your day job – that’s pretty overwhelming. I’d probably enjoy doing all the social media stuff if it was my full time job but trying to fit in around a full time job and family. It’s not easy.
–Adelphi was one of the most important comebacks for the pop world, what led you to come back and want to re-release an album together?
That’s very nice of you to say. I think I answered that earlier before, you know, travelling to the New York Popfest reminded us first of all how much we liked each other and our history together. Second, Matt’s songs are timeless and Matt is just prolific. He has written so many songs. I guess we’d already put out Black Forest and then when we heard the songs for Adelphi we were pretty amazed and pretty excited about creating them. We knew it was going to be a great album right from the beginning. In terms of putting a sparkle in all of those songs, Julian also did an enormous amount of work. We all put a lot of work into creating the uniqueness of each song.
-What is the response that Adelphi has had?
It has had a great response from the people who know and love us, and a few more past that. Feral Pop Frenzy was clearly an album that was dearly loved, and so they were waiting for Adelphi, I think. The general responses been that it’s a great second album in that it is still full of great songs but does not replicate FPF; we have matured musically. And it can appeal to an audience that has also matured – especially lyrically, because the album is about the difficult topic of middle age.
But you know, there are lots of great albums out there, so it’s very hard to get heard outside of the of the circle of fans who know you. Actually, I’m quite happy with that. I’m happy to make music for the people who love Even As We Speak. I can’t speak for the rest of the band, but I’m really happy with it.
-The fourth track of Adelphi was accompanied by a video starring you, tell us how was this? Did you undergo trapeze training to achieve the ‘Leaves’ video?
I love Leaves and I’m proud of it in that it was the one song on the album that I just sang once really -it was the guide track that we actually used and it didn’t have to be re-recorded and it didn’t have to have anything special done to it. It’s just my voice. So it’s beautiful song and I’m proud of the way I sing it. And I’ve gotta say, I don’t always feel like that about the way I sing songs. So at the time I decided I was going to start trapeze because I’d been watching my daughter do trapeze for many years and I just thought, you know, I’ll give it a go. And then I thought I could do a film clip with me doing a routine. At first it was just going to be me doing trapeze. That was it. But Bonnie Elliott – an amazing Australian cinematographer who has done a lot of amazing work (Stateless, The Hunting, These Final Hours etc) – is good friend of mine and when I asked her for advice on camera angles she said she would make the clip. She brought Matias Bolla – a young director on board and the amazing Nick Meyers (The Dry, The Boys, Paper Planes), did editing. He’s also the ringmaster in the film clip. We made that film clip on at the Sydney Trapeze school on a really boiling hot day. It was 40 degrees, we were sweating, makeup was dripping off our faces. I’d done about three terms of trapeze I think to get to that . I’ve got better since. And I just think that Matias had a great vision for that film clip, just the whole circus feel you know, band people have been together a really long time and it’s a little bit nostalgic, but also proud; we’ve still got our passion. Yes, so it’s a great film clip.
I should also say Planet Puppets has just made the film clip, with Infinity Alexander as director, for the song Child. it’s a beautiful film clip so have a look at that one if you can get a chance as well. All with puppets.
-Is there a band you would like to collaborate with?
Well, you know I can’t talk about what the other people in this band would like. Anita and I would love to collaborate with Kate Bush. That’s all I can say. Or maybe with First Aid Kit – I’d do that too. Julian and I have a song coming out on Spinout Nuggets soon that we did with Beth Arzy – it’s a Monkees cover. That was fun to do and sounds amazing. Get onto their site and buy that!
-Did the pandemic ruin plans contemplated for this album?
Yeah, it did because we couldn’t do the tour to promote it. So that was really sad, because we were keen to get back over to play Cologne popfest and that just was shaping up to be so much fun. Yeah, so really disappointed we missed that. I was going to sing with Red Sleeping Beauty too. (see the song we have recently done together).
-You work in the health sector but you are also making music with Even As We Speak, what is the difference between the Mary Wyer on stage and the one at the hospital?
Well, the biggest differences are I don’t really brush my hair and put on makeup or wear nice clothes at work. With even as we speak onstage, I love to dress up. I love to try and glam up a bit
My work is fairly serious – working with high consequence infectious diseases and Biocontainment. I have seen first hand the effects of COVID-19. It’s intense. Music is a beautiful, creative release from that.
-How did the appearance of Covid-19 change your life?
Again – I can only speak for me as everyone experiences it differently. I’m doing OK- we’ve been so lucky in Australia, even though we’re in a lot of lockdowns, you know, Australia really hasn’t had a difficult time of it like in other parts of the world.
I still get to go to work most days – so I don’t feel locked in. My work life is probably changed a lot because I work in infectious diseases, so you know I’ve had to be involved in responses COVID-19. Apart from not touring overseas we can’t play here either. And I’ll be looking forward to us getting back into rehearsals and recording.
-In the first years of the century Her Name in Lights was born, tell us how this band emerged and what has happened to it since its debut album in 2004
I think I told you about that earlier on. Although I didn’t say what happened since … nothing has happened . Which is fine by me. You know it was an album that I made for me. It’s nothing like an Even As We Speak album but I love it and I’m proud of it. Laughing Outlaw put it out and I don’t know what they’ve done with it since. Listen if you want. I just found it on Spotify
-In 2020 they had some dates in the United Kingdom and Germany but Covid-19 modified everything, what plans do you have for those shows?
Well, we’re supposed to play with Red Sleeping Beauty at Cologne Pop Fest. And I was going to sing three songs with them, which I was really excited about. And then it fell through. So then they asked me would I sing Second time. I really enjoyed doing that kind of different style. It was challenging for me I’ve got to say. Yeah, I enjoyed it. A great, great song and what a great band. I hope I can do some more stuff with them sometime, or at least play on stage with them.
-What can you see in the future for Even As We Speak and for Mary Wyer?
Well I do hope we get to play Cologne popfest again in the future. Paris Popfest … any Popfest . We’d like to play in the UK again and we would love to play Indietracks again too. There’s lots of places we like to play. I mean, we’d love to play in Singapore and the Philippines as well, but you know, it’s quite expensive for us to get anywhere, and we need to have the guaranteed audiences so that we can at least break even. And it’s not always easy everywhere. Whereas the UK is quite easy because we’ve got a lot of people we can stay with that doesn’t cost too much. We’d like to get to the USA again as well sometime, especially seeing as we have label in Shelflife. But our government is telling us that we probably won’t be going anywhere until at least 2004, so might be a while yet. And we’re not getting any younger haha. What do I see in the future? Well EAWS has got another album in the pipeline. For me I don’t know. I just took whatever life throws at me really recently. A casting agent contacted me about doing an audition for the voice in Australia, but I don’t think that’s going to go anywhere. But, you know, I thought at the time this could be awful, but why not just give anything a shot? I’m just going to keep doing trapeze. I hope to keep making music with EAWS for a long time. Yeah. That’s what I see. And hope that I get to see everyone out there reading this in person sometime soon.
