Gaz Coombes On Touring With Robbie Williams…

We all know the Robbie Williams 25 Years Of Hits Australian tour is super huge but we are also genuinely excited to be seeing Supergrass front man Gaz Coombes on the bill as well which promises to be an awesome night including the VAILO Adelaide 500. Gaz Coombes has released his brand new studio album Turn The Car Around earlier this year.

Written and recorded in The Cabin, his gloriously ramshackle Oxfordshire outhouse studio, with Turn The Car Around Gaz has emerged with the best work of his illustrious career. It’s an album that both taps into the sonic palettes and lyrical themes of its predecessors and marks the third and final part of an informal trilogy of records alongside 2015’s Mercury and Ivor Novello nominated sophomore album Matador and 2018’s World’s Strongest Man. At the same time, it carves a bold new way forwards. It’s a record that captures where Gaz Coombes has been, and where he’s heading, a stunning listen and snapshot of an artist in the midst of a creative purple patch. Gaz talks to Hi Fi Way from hotel in Sydney about the tour and creatively what’s next.

It is fantastic that we finally get to see you on tour and you must be beyond excited to be playing these massive shows with Robbie Williams?
Yeah, it is great. We did some shows with him in the summer time through Europe in Luxembourg, Norway and there were a few others. We’ve got to know all the guys and I get on with Robbie really well. He is a really good guy, he wanted to get in touch three or four months ago and he reached out. There was a Zoom set up where we had a chat and had this mad hour Zoom with him chatting about all sorts of things. He is really warm and engaging and open guy. That led to us doing some shows together. It is really exciting and Robbie’s show is really insane, it is quite an experience.

Does that come with extra pressure being a Robbie Williams show and playing to his crowd?
You just never know what it is going to be like. The experience of doing those shows with him has been great. Once the stadium fills up there is a bit of who is this? Then as the set goes on they get more and more in to it. By the time we leave the stage it’s great vibes all round. It is a different way for me to do shows trying to win people over. I haven’t done much of that over recent years but have done plenty of support tours with big artists.

Has this year exceeded your wildest expectations?
It feels good, I have worked hard this last ten years on the solo stuff. Purposely I have been able to create a departure away from what I have done previously. I enjoy playing my solo records with this cool band but definitely over those ten years there has been some tough times. I stuck to my guns and I think it has started to pay off. I feel now that I am seen as an artist in my own right and that definitely means a lot. It was incredible to get to number six with this record in the UK charts, that was an amazing day when that came through. This year has gone brilliantly and maybe I have hit my stride over the last six or seven years.

Do you feel more comfortable knowing your path and where you’re going with your music?
I think that comes with added confidence and it probably started with Matador in 2015 where you could call it the breakthrough record in a way. That did so well it lifted my confidence to feel like what I am doing is working. That is a big help when you are out on your own to get that sort of validation of what you are doing.

Is it good to known not just as that guy from Supergrass?
I’m really proud of that history, I know I wouldn’t be here doing what I am doing if it hadn’t been for those years with Supergrass. There is definitely a feeling of pride in what I have done before but when you have done something new, it doesn’t make any sense to cloud it with legacy to put something new out and mix it with what I have done before whether that’s in a live performance or talking a lot about Supergrass in interviews. It just seems a bit weird really, why would I do that? When I have a new release of my own I get my teeth in to that and really live in that moment. Live in the present and that really works for me. Maybe I have got to that point where I have done all the hard work and now I can start recognising the legacy a little bit more and pop a few Supergrass tracks in to the live shows because I have gone so long without doing that.

After completing the trilogy do you feel like you can start album number five with a clean slate?
There is an element of no repetition and I’m conscious that these three records are similar in a way in the approach, conception, the method in the writing and recording like they are brothers. I feel like for the next one that I would like to try something different but keep the intent the same and go at it from a different route which is exciting to look around to see what I can do or who I can work with. I’m already excited at the prospect of album five and where I can take it and maybe do something different. Things are feeling good creatively.

Do you have to be off tour to get in to that creative mindset?
I do, ideas float around which is great with the travel and touring. Being out of the studio and in a different headspace definitely helps to trigger new ideas about how I could record or who I could record with. Until I get off the road and actually get back in to the studio it is hard to know musically where it is going to go. Once I’m done of this tour and I have another show to end the year in my hometown of Oxford it is like the end of the record. As soon as the new year hits I’ll get in to the studio and see what’s happening.

Do ideas come easily to you?
Having the confidence with these last three records and knowing that it has worked and that makes sense to people, being received as I had hoped that I can just go on my instincts. Obviously you need to push yourself and never get to complacent but at the same time to be spontaneous and instinctive with writing and recording. I think it taps in to what I am best at in a way working on my own. I just express whatever I want at that particular moment. Maybe when you are in a band sometimes you have to translate those thoughts to the other guys and it isn’t always the case that they will get it. Just to remove that element of win over who is in the band. Now I can just do what is coming out and edit later on. I look at it all afterwards and piece it together never censoring yourself to early or edit yourself to early on. My thing is to be really, really free with that expression and pick up whatever instrument you want. It is something for me that has always been really fun.

Are there any future plans for Supergrass or has everyone moved on now? Is the door slight ajar to do something?
I’d say it is pretty much that, the door is left slightly open. It is a case of the right thing at the right time rather than doing loads of touring and getting back in to that machine. That’s not so much of an interest for me. I’m always up for something mad that comes along where it feels right to play a couple of festivals or Dave Grohl gets in touch again if Foo Fighters are playing Wembley! There are no plans to go touring or make a record, it is not in my thinking.

Interview By Rob Lyon

Catch Gaz Coombes on the following dates…