Black Market Rhythm Co.

This month we catch up with Gold Coast’s Black Market Rhythm Co., have a chat and see whats been going on.

How did you come up with the name Black Market Rhythm Co. ?

Well we started out as the Christopher Ernst Band, but it sounded too similar to the John Butler Trio and we didn’t want to get pigeon-holed as ‘yet another roots artist’, so after a few different incarnations we ended up with The Black Market Rhythm Co. — it’s a little bit bad, a little bit cool like the Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, and it sums up what we do and where our inspiration comes from — it’s all about rhythm, in a non-bongo kind of way. Old school rhythm if you will — rhythm from the Motown region of the Chicago Delta.

Who is in BMRC and what do they play?

Christopher Ernst plays guitar and sings like a motherfucker, Matt Granfield plays bass and occasional guitars, Wayne Bennett is in charge of beats and Jake O’Brien, school captain of Robina High, lays down the trumpet lines and takes over on bass or guitars, depending on what else Matt is doing. We call him the prodigy.

I see you managed to get a touring grant and make it over to WA, how were the live shows over there ?

Well we got the grant, all $10,000 of it, but a week before we were due to fly out our manager at the time still hadn’t booked any shows, so rather than take our instruments on an expensive holiday, we stayed at home and drank west Australian beer.

You released a 4 track EP ‘Ain’t for Sale’ earlier this year, and I saw you recently got some distro, hows the release going?

The official ‘in stores’ release is set for mid-September, but the EP has been selling like hot-cakes at shows and in the local indy record stores around here. Graham from Head High Records in Burleigh says he’s sold more of our CDs than any artist, ever, which is rather cool.

So you’ve been getting a good play on JJJ lately through the home and hosed show, how’s the response been from new listerners?

There was a period for about three months there where Roots ‘n All were spinning couple of our tracks each week and presenter Sarah Howells even got us in to do an interview. We’ve also been getting some spot-rotation at all sorts of hours, so if you’re listening at 5.45am you’re likely to hear us. MySpace is the real litmus test for what the uninitiated think of our music and there’s been quite a few people we’ve never heard of making the comment that ‘I heard you on Roots ‘n All last night and loved that track’ etc. etc.

You have a show at the soundlounge on the 1st and the Great Northern (Byron) on the 9th, followed by the Rock 4 Rights festival at the Albert Waterways on the 23rd. Will you be touring later this year or doing some more local shows?

We’ve just completed a large run of shows in and around southeast Queensland and haven’t had a weekend off in about three months, so right now we’re about to pull back a little bit and finish writing songs for our debut album, which will be out early next year. There will be a national tour over summer before we release the album, and then another one in Autumn to follow up the release.

Its great to see local Gold Coast bands making it big and we’ve been seeing a lot of the BMRC around this year, will you be trying to get onto the Big Day Out festival in 07? or do you have bigger plans for the new year ?

The Big Day Out is a great entry on any band’s resume but as of now we’re more focussed on writing new material and making sure we’ve got a quiver of songs people don’t want to be without.

So when can we expect a full length album from BMRC ?

Anyone who’s seen us live knows we’ve got a great, diverse, rocking set — in fact we played for almost two hours straight the other night and the crowd was keeping up better than we were, but that doesn’t necessarily translate into a collection of songs to put on an album. We’ve purposely only released EPs up until this point (Ain’t For Sale was our third) because we didn’t want to burn the material out, but now we’re focussed on putting together an absolutely kick-arse album. A real album, rather than ‘we’ve written 15 songs together so far and here’s the best 12’. There’s nothing worse than a debut album that has that one song you like and a bunch of other unrelated crap — we really don’t want to do that, so we’ve been patient with ourselves so far.

Be sure to check out BMRC via
www.theblackmarketrhythmco.com
and their myspace at
www.myspace.com/theblackmarketrhythmco
or at one of their upcoming gigs,
Saturday September 9
The Great Northern Hotel
Byron Bay
With Marshall

Saturday September 23
Amnesty International rock4rights festival, Albert Waterways
Broadbeach