Johnny Took: The DMA's Musician Speaks to PurCulture

Alex Matthew

PurCulture had the privilege of sitting down backstage with DMA’s acoustic guitarist, Johnny Took, before he played the first of two riotous sold out shows at Glasgow Barrowlands earlier this month!

The Aussie Brit-pop esque band came to rise in 2016 after the release of their acclaimed debut album, “Hill’s End”, which was followed by a worthy successor this year in the form of the maturer “For Now” which reached five in the Scottish Album’s chart.

Took was on good form as he discussed their sold out tour, songwriting and what he’s been most proud of since the band’s success!

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You’re here on a sold out UK tour. How’s it been going so far and do British crowds differ to other countries?

Yeah, the tour’s been good so far. It always helps when it’s been sold out because you don’t have to worry about whether people are gonna be there or not.

The crowds do change everywhere you go. I’ve heard a lot of people talk about Glaswegian crowds being some of the best cause they do get a bit rowdy. So yeah, it should be a good couple of nights here at the Barrowlands.

Your music is always compared to Brit-pop but what are you influenced by other than that?

Well I’m a big Jeff Tweedy fan, who’s from Wilco. Springsteen as well, kinda growing up on country music and that kinda vibe. The Go Betweens, I know they’re one of Mason’s favourite bands. Mason’s also a big Pavement, Dinosaur Junior, Sonic Youth kinda guy. Y’know those American big guitar bands. Yeah, kinda a bit of everything. It’s pretty easy to listen to everything these days. Especially when you’re thinking about production it’s nice to bring a whole bunch of vibes from different genres to the mix.

You’ve grown a lot as a band over the last few years, has it become harder to make music as you’ve gotten bigger?

I dunno, I wouldn’t say it’s more difficult. I think the only thing would be is that when you’re younger you haven’t released much. If you’ve just put out one EP then you have more songs. But if you’ve released a couple records you start going through quite a few of your songs. Songwriting is one of those things where sometimes you’ll have a really good couple weeks or whatever and then you might not write anything for a couple of months. Personally, I tend to try and push through that. Try and do just a little bit everyday.

Do you write on the road as well?

Yeah but not crazy amounts. It’s a lot harder. It’s completely different cause you’re on a bus and you’re with fourteen people. You’re not in a set up studio or whatever. But I know lots of bands and we've done it before, where you work on ideas in soundcheck. That can work well. Also, cause I’m living in Scotland now and haven’t really been in Sydney, even though you can email ideas but we spend enough time together that all three of us can have different ideas. Then we can kinda work on them together and ricochet off each other a bit. And you can have an idea that you would never have had unless that person had given you that initial stimulus. That’s the cool shit I reckon!

Do you ever struggle playing songs on stage because people they were written about might not be in your life anymore?

Not really, except for with “Step Up The Morphine” because that was written about my grandmother who’s passed away now. That’s what the song was about.

I think the meaning of a song kinda takes a bit of a different meaning when you start playing it live. You’re not gonna start crying because you’re thinking about how sad or happy or whatever you were when you wrote it. You just appreciate that people have gotten something out of it, if they’re singing along and stuff like that. Yeah, I think you’re just stoked that people are singing along and getting something out of it. Not the initial reason why you wrote it.

After everything the band has achieved over the last couple years, what are you most proud of?

Maybe just like the crew and the team we have around us now, all the guys that play with us when we’re on stage. We’re all just really good mates.

And you get to meet a lot of cool people touring and a lot of really nice people around the world. That’s pretty cool!

I mean it’s a hard game playing music, we’re not making tremendous amounts of money by any stretch of the imagination. But I feel privileged that I can call music job. Tell you what, I don’t think I could do anything else now!

What’s next for you guys? Any word on the second album?

Yeah, yeah, yeah! We’re working on stuff! I feel like this part of the album has been out since like what? February? I kinda like it when your album has been out for eight months or so. It’s kinda weird when you’re touring the week the album came out because people haven’t really had that much time to get to know the songs. When you come round to this kinda time it’s really nice because people have come to understand the album a lot better, they know the songs.

It’s also summer in Australia, so festival season right now. So we’re gonna get over there and do that stuff!