Sun, Salt, Surf and Sand: An Interview with Nick and Eric from Flaxxies

Photo provided by the Flaxxies boys. Full credit to them!

A couple of Tuesdays ago, I sat down and had a great chat with two of the five members of Flaxxies, Nick and Eric, we chatted about everything from their rehearsal space, what animals each of them would be and what life is looking like post-red light restrictions.

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Eric: Good evening!

Nick: Hey!

Hello! How are you guys?

Nick: Yeah, good! We’ve been away in the Coro for the weekend, so we’re always pretty happy to get away. A bit of salt, a bit of sun.

So, thank you guys for chatting with me! I’ve been wanting to do an interview with you guys for ages.

Nick: Sorry we’re not all here, we can probably fill in what the other boys would say. It should be an accurate representation, hopefully. We will be as unbiased as possible.

Eric: We’re a bit split up at the moment. Don’t know where our bassist is.

Nick: Chris, our bassist, just disappears sometimes.

Eric: He’s all good, it’s just radio silence sometimes.

Well, at least you know he’s okay! So, I have a list of questions for you both.

What are your goals as a band for 2022, apart from being able to gig again?

Eric: You really caught us off guard.

Nick: As gigs are off the table, it’s going to be a lot of behind the scenes stuff.

Eric: Parachute music was going to be the biggest one.

Nick: We’re spending a bit of time with those guys over the year. A lot of behind the scenes recording. Getting our set ready for next summer, if we can use it then. Use the year to get ready for the summer, whatever that will be. Make songs, get recordings done… The whole nine yards.

Eric: I think it’s been a pretty common theme for us, as soon as summer dies down, how do we ramp back into [next] summer and festivals because we always like building up towards those two things.

Nick: To reiterate, it’s the end of summer now and the end of the holidays, so gig season is pretty much finished up and everyone gets a couple weeks off to do their own thing and then we all come back together and make a plan. The whole year we will be working on stuff behind the scenes, real calm and getting it ready for next summer, which is what we are always planning for. Everything is like a lead up. We’re pretty much working around that at the moment.

Eric: Gigs, we sort of want to be doing about one a month to keep in practise and to have something to look forward to. We’re a big fan of having little goals sprinkled throughout the year and tick off as we go. Then, once we get to the end of the year, it’s like “oh my goodness, we’ve done so much and made a load of progress!”

Nick: This year will be a lot less gigging than we have before, a bit more quiet sort of work. Obviously with Parachute, it’s a little more behind the scenes what we’re doing with them.

At least you’ve still got goals even under the current circumstances. That will see you through!

Do you get to practise much together? How do you do it when you’re in different locations?

Nick: We’re all down in Auckland and Benji is currently living up in the Coromandel for the month. He will normally come back for a couple days every couple of weeks. Throughout the year, we’re all normally based here. Because we are practising so regularly, 3 or 4 times a week, building up over the years, we can afford to kind of all disappear for a month or so and then come back.

What do you do outside of Flaxxies? Obviously, music is a huge part of what you do, but, what else do you do?

Eric: I’ve just started my sparky apprenticeship, so I’m doing that, working full-time now. It’s really good for music though, it’s logical thinking and it’s nice to be able to be an efficient engineer in our studio. So, if we want to record something, I’m always the guy that gets up first and is like “I’ll run the cable here.”

Nick: It pays to have someone who knows how to do things like that. So, Benji, he’s studying a property degree at Uni, I’m doing the same as him this coming year. Jayden, our drummer, he works for a panel store, like doing sales and stuff. Bit of this, bit of that. Chris is at Uni doing liberal arts, like philosophy and economics and stuff like that. There’s a bit of a spread, whatever makes everyone tick.

Eric: Really into my skateboarding, been doing that since I was really young. Just picked up some decks, like DJ controller decks, so I’ve been going hard on that.

That’s so cool! I didn’t realise that you guys did so many different things.

Eric: I’m a big fan of when it comes to music, you can put more into it if you’re exploring heaps of different avenues of it. Sort of like, dipping your toes into everything. Throwing yourself into something you haven’t done before.

Nick: It’s like giving a keyboard to a set of guitarists, you know what you want to do… But don’t known how to do it yet.

This is a random one and it’s going to be a pun, so I apologise in advance because I love puns. What would you dream day - or dream days - to be really technical?

Eric: That’s an awesome question!

Nick: Probably a day that involves not having to do a hell of a lot.

Eric: I would say that dream days would be like festivals, back-to-back. That would be mean. We always have moments where we’re on our way to gigs and back, where we’re always discussing how much we love what we do and how much we’d love to keep doing that. I’d say the vibes are always up in those moments, so when we have back-to-back, we always look forward to those.

Nick: True. When we go away from home for music, for like two weeks or something. That’s what it’s all about, life on the road.

Eric: Being around your mates, having a bit of fun… Doing your job at the same time.

Do you feel different or a lot more independent when you’re away from home?

Eric: I certainly don’t feel as independent as I know I’m eating really badly.

Nick: In terms of the domestic affairs like washing and laundry, not very good. In the context that we’re on our way and finding our life just from a couple guitars is pretty cool.

Eric: It’s very satisfying when you get little perks like when you play at a restaurant and then you get to have a feed and you’re actually hungry and then you realise, “oh, I just did what I love doing and now I’m not hungry anymore.” We have a lot of moments of self reflection which is really good because we always take time to appreciate what we are doing and where we are. We take the time to be around each other and be like “ah, we’ve come so far, man!”

It’s good to have that though, you go from point A to point B and so on and then it’s like, “holy sh*t, I achieved that” and in such a short time sometimes as well.

Eric: It keeps the fire burning as well. Once you can see that you have improved and can see you’re improving, it sort of sees itself out.

Nick: That’s the motivating factor, right?

So, I’ve got some random questions that aren’t about music… Which animal would you say represents each of you and why?

Nick: I reckon Benji’s a little puppy dog, eh.

Eric: Nah, I think there’s something better. What’s something that trots around and does whatever it wants?

A cat!

Nick: Benji would be happy to be a cat. He loves cats. He’s got his cat at home, she’s like 17 years old and loves her to bits. Benji’s a cat. What about the others? Hmm… I reckon Chris would be like a little puppy, a little dog. Like a poodle cross something eh, because he’s got real curly hair and is a happy little dude.

Eric: Yeah, he’s happy being himself.

Nick: I always think of Jayden as a shark or something, eh. He brings in the pain when he needs to.

Eric: Yeah, I’d say that Jayden is definitely the most honest in terms of criticism and we value it.

Nick: I reckon Eric is a lizard, just because.

Eric: I was about to call us lizards because when we’re charged up, we will just do everything, but we definitely need that time to sit in the sun and do nothing.

It’s funny to hear how different you’d be if you were animals.

If you guys had to relocate as a band, where would you go and why?

Eric: Ah, the UK. We’ve been thinking about that for quite a while now, just because life is very similar to here. The roads, the culture…I think there’s a couple “isms” that would transfer over going over there, so you wouldn’t be like a complete alien.

Nick: Yeah, true. Also, there’s a lot more people there. A lot more people to come to shows. Australia would be the other option. That would sort of be us, but bigger again.

Eric: I’ve definitely romanticised living in Europe and meeting all these foreign people.

Nick: There’s a lot of big names over there, compared to here.

Recently, you released your latest track, King of the Reef, what was the inspiration behind that song?

Nick: Benji has a little bit of a story behind that. The title, King of the Reef, that’s a title that one of our friends in the Coromandel has just from being the best surfer at the reef, so he’s the King of the Reef. It’s written about some of the stuff that those people get up to, what you do when you’re living down there.

Eric: Sort of like the beach bum lifestyle.

Nick: Bit of an ode to the beach bum, eh.

Eric: Where Benji is working is Luke’s Kitchen (apparently a pretty amazing place! Hit it up if you go to the Coromandel) and they take in a lot of beachy dudes and dudettes. That was sort of like the culture and the aura of the people around him and it encapsulated into a very surf-y and rock-y song. I think it paired very well with the riff.

Nick: We made the riff and we were like, “damn, this is a surf-rock song.”

When I heard that the first time, I was like “yeah, this is definitely a surf-rock, Flaxxies song.” In the review, I wrote that it seemed so you guys, it fits so well.

Have you got any merch coming out at all?

Nick: I think the step in our next couple of things to move onto is we’re going to sort out a bit of that to go around throughout the year, just when we’re playing shows and stuff.

Eric: We’re just milling around with designs mostly. It’s a bit hard, you know.

Nick: Settling on a couple of things, trying to encapsulate what everyone wants. We’re in very early stages, but I reckon that’s something that is coming pretty soon.

Eric: Yeah, deciding on something you’re happy to see other people wear and if you saw it on the street, you’d be like “that’s my band and that’s what my band represents” that kind of thing. We don’t want to just slap our name on a t-shirt and sell them for $40 a piece, we want to put in a bit more effort and I think we’re really into wearing our hearts on our sleeves and just sort of putting pride into our work in the ways we can.

Nick: If you’re going to do it, do it properly.

Would you go back and revamp the EP in any way, if you could?

Eric: Definitely, just because there tracks on there that are not cohesive.

Nick: Yeah, exactly. They didn’t really come out as that.

Eric: That’s not to say they shouldn’t have been released, it’s just to say that it wasn’t their time. Albums and EPs should be cohesive to a sound or a feeling.

Nick: Absolutely, yeah. It’s a bit of a jarring thing. It was pretty much what we had coming out of High School. We were like, “we need to put something out online.”

I found out about you through your song, Take Me Home, I’d really like to know what that song is about if there’s a meaning behind that one, also.

Nick: That’s Benji’s little love song. He was in a bit of a soft spot when he wrote that song.

Eric: About a Sheila that he was very keen on and she was not reciprocating. That was his journey of acceptance. That would be the best way to say it.

Poor Benji, I feel bad for him now!

Nick: Get him to do a full three page write-up for you on it. I’m sure he will!

I know that it’s off the cards at this stage, however, will you come and play in Christchurch at any point, or would you like to?

Eric: We’re keen to get down.

Nick: We’re making plans for Dunedin and stuff at the moment, so obviously once we can do that, we’re pretty keen at looking to play Christchurch as well, logistics-wise.

Eric: Yeah, so keen to see the South Island.

Nick: I’ve got family in Christchurch, so we can head down there pretty easily.

Well, I’ve got a couple more questions… Have you got any dream places you’d like to play? Obviously, you mentioned about Europe, are there any venues or festivals you haven’t played that you’d like to play?

Eric: We’ve had this thing that we’ve talked about a lot, have you seen Coldplay play live in São Paulo, Brazil?

No, but I’ve heard how good it is.

Eric: It’s like this big YouTube video and Chris Martin is sort of lying down and it’s Fix You and there’s all of this confetti, then he runs up this huge stage that sticks out in the middle and he runs all the way up and we were thinking about that, if you were playing in São Paulo on this sold out football stadium [we’d love that]. We were just saying that if we sold out there and Madison Square Garden, that’s definitely another one. If you’ve played at Madison Square, you’ve made it.

Nick: Yeah, that São Paulo one is definitely a dream. It’s just the biggest one, heaps of people. It would be crazy. That’s an end goal.

That would be crazy! Imagine if you made it to that point and you look back on this interview in years to come and it actually happened.

What’s a random fact about each of you that your fans should know about you?

Eric: There is no ‘the’ at the start of Flaxxies. We’re not THE Flaxxies. We are just Flaxxies. That is a very important piece of knowledge to us.

Nick: This is Eric’s pet peeve and mine a little bit.

Eric: We sort of scrunch our noses when people call us The Flaxxies. Don’t like that.

It doesn’t sound right!

Nick: Being used to it being one way and then hearing it the other way is very jarring.
What are some funny facts that we can share? Benji hasn’t washed his hair in six months.

Eric: I’d say that would be over a year.

Nick: He goes in the sea everyday.

Eric: He washes it with water and salt, he doesn’t just leave it.

Nick: Chris and Benji are pretty hearty op-shoppers. They’re probably some of the biggest veterans.

Eric: We love our op-shops.

Nick: We also have this thing where we say someone’s name and then when we get their attention and shout “sucks!”, so I’ll go “Eric” and he’ll look at me and I’ll go “sucks!”

Eric: If we have people around us that don’t know us, we like, call out to each other and so, Nick will be like “Eric” and I’ll go “nah…”

Nick: You can’t fall for the sucks. So, when people don’t know us and they overhear us, they’re like “these guys hate each other.”

Eric: Benji will yell out from above where we are and shout “Nick!” and you’ll just hear this “F*CK YOU!”

Nick: Nobody responds to their name anymore. That’s probably the biggest quirk of our weird little relationship. It’s a lot of weird sh*t like that. Another thing you should know about our band is that we always pay our taxes. Always.

I will make sure I include that.

Eric: Flaxxies will not be done for tax fraud. You can put this right at the top.

Welcome to the Gig x Flaxxies: Flaxxies are not Fraudsters.

Eric: That’s the fine print at the start. Another thing is, we have a lot of love for each other. Definitely love and enjoy spending time together. I think most of our band is just us being mates and just enjoying doing things together.

Nick: I feel like that’s a lot of what it is. It really comes across, as well.

Eric: That would be our only advice to young bands. Spend time with your bandmates and make sure they’re actually your friends. The closer you are with someone, the better you can come together and discuss things creatively. When you’re doing something creative based, you need to have that comfort with each other.

Nick: You’ve got to understand each other and it’s hard to do stuff with strangers.

I think even though you guys are younger, you have a lot more wisdom and knowledge than people I actually know that are older than you guys.

Have you got anything else you want to add before I leave you to your night?

Eric: Shoutout to all of the musicians that are going through this whole red light system. I know it’s really hard. Keep on going, there are a lot of people who are going through it with you, you’re not alone.

Nick: When you’re going through hell, just keep going. That’s a King Krule quote there for you. Keep trucking on. Now is the worst time to give up. Don’t give up. Now is the time they want you to give up.

Eric: Don’t do it.

Nick: I guess that’s our summative wisdom, keep going don’t give up.

Love it, that’s the best advice that you could give I reckon. Awesome.

Thank you so much for letting me interview you guys!

Nick: Thank you for wanting to talk to us!

Hopefully see you down South sometime soon.

Nick: It’s just a case of when.

Eric: Thanks for having us! See ya later!

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Flaxxies Feature Friday
King of the Reef Review