Q+A with The Holidays: Jagermeister Independent Music Awards nominee

The band's guitarist and keyboard player Will Magnus took some time out of his busy schedule to chat to us about the group's nomination.

Will Magnus: We were ecstatic with the news, particularly as our album which came out a year ago, I guess we must still be in peoples' consciences! The JIMAs are one of the more credible awards in Australian music, so being nominated for Breakthrough Artist of the Year is a huge compliment to us and everyone who's been involved in our incredibly busy but fun year.

A: Fight over who gets to keep the trophy and as such receive praise and glory from family and friends forever.

A: We're really nice.

A: The sporadic and spontaneous lives we lead. One minute we can be sitting at home with a guitar and some ideas, the next we could be playing in front of 1000 crazy festival goers on the other side of the world! We're currently in writing mode for LP2, but we've been asked to play at the JIMAs so we'll have to switch into performance mode for that night, then back into writing mode the next day.

A: Our favourite food individually and communally are Peking Duck Pancakes.

A: Independent music is a monumentally large, and growing industry, with the accessibility of home recordings, and how easy it is becoming to release music. I think it’s important to have one credible body sifting through this music and presenting to the public who they believe are the best in all these different categories. Every independent artist has struggled at some stage in their career, usually financially, but also attempting to publicise themselves, so acknowledging and helping independent music with a big publicised event like the JIMAs is another great reason why it is so important.

 

A: Cheese, ice and Powerade.

A: Mine was recently lost but before then it had a plethora of awesome/embarrassing albums! Boys II Men's album II (for the intricate a cappella harmonies of course) and Tina Turner's Private Dancer are both incredible. Between the four of us we have a remarkably diverse taste in music.

A: There was a festival we once played where everything seemed to go wrong. Simon, Alex and myself had all eaten some very precarious looking chorizo beforehand, ending up in the bathroom five minutes before we were supposed to be on stage. Andrew our drummer had not yet arrived and there was no phone reception. I had his ticket to get into the festival whilst being immobile in the bathroom. We somehow all ended up on stage, and played a set where Simon smashed his guitar into the drums and broke a chunk off his headstock and Will spilt a beer all over his amp.

A: I can be a bit pathological at times, but when people mix up simple grammar like your and you're absolutely does my head in! I'm a bit old school but I think with emails and text messages we're losing the art of the English language.