Gabriel's Day - The Band with a Plan
When you ‘Google’ the name "Gabriel's Day" you come up with some 9/11 conspiracy theories, but apparently there is no connection between them and the band, or is there? The meaning behind the band's name according to Scott is mysterious, with the band planning to 'reveal secrets' about the moniker throughout their time together. Perhaps one day it will all make sense. They have a plan, and like all good bands these days it's a business plan.
Gabriel's Day describe their music as serious, but this doesn’t mean they take themselves seriously. They have been compared to the Finn Brothers and Paul Kelly, a lot to live up to.
”Well that’s amazing and it's early days for those sort of things, but being compared to those guys is a bit unnerving,” Scott says.
The band started in 2001, with the arrival in Australia of Dan Simmons (Guitar and Vocals) while he was backpacking, the other two met at music college, left after a couple of months, because it wasn’t going in the direction they wanted. But don’t worry fans, Dan has his residency, so won’t be getting deported any time soon.
While touring the U.K. they received a fan email from the head of Radio One (UK), after doing a radio interview.
“It was a late night interview and we were a bit delirious at the time , we drove from the gig in Liverpool, to Manchester, which is over an hour away, he’d only just started there and was listening to all the shows and he sent over an email afterwards saying, "who the fuck were those guys we gotta get them back on!”
The trip to the UK was an eye opener and put Australian venues in perspective.
“Don’t even get me going on Pokies,” Scott says.
So why the move?
“We looked at quite high level Australian bands like Powderfinger, looked at their path and what they’d done. We are quite responsible and business minded when we first got together, we wrote a business plan, some fans of the band invested in the band, in terms of recording, in terms of other bands they’d built up a good reputation in Australia, but when they went overseas it was like starting from scratch, so we recorded over there to start ourselves in that market at the same time as in Australia.”
But it's not all business plans for the band, they are passionate about politics as well. I asked them to decode this section of their biography.
“Lights Out with it's cry ‘Hail the Liars and the Cheats!’ chorus is a clarion, a war cry for those tired by big business, the rhetoric of politicians, Simon Cowell on Idol, the bank manager – who sit behind the walls of power and ask for us to believe in them.”
”It’s not so much political, as about people who have a voice and power and don’t use it,” he says.
Despite all this, the "mystery" and the plan, it's the fans that are most important to the band.
“If you have a good relationship with them (the audience) then they’ll be there forever. You should be a fan of your audience, not the other way around”
