Often described as Brisbane’s surfer-pop-rock, four-piece band, Major Leagues has been making waves in the music scene. The band have recently performed across the east coast on their three-show tour supported by FLOWERTRUCK. I was able to catch up with the up and coming musicians during their show at The Foundry last weekend. With a casual mix of saccharine vocals, hazy guitar riffs and catchy-as-hell tunes, it’s easy to see how the band has come to be such a success. This local quartet is set for a huge year, with the release of their latest EP, ‘Dream States’ and talk of an upcoming album. 

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How's the tour going so far? 

Anna: Fun, Sydney was really good! We didn’t know what to expect. We hadn’t played there since our tour with Alvvays and that wasn’t our own show. 

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In the last year you’ve toured with quite a few big names including Alvvays, Girlpool and San Cisco, which would be the highlight for your band? 

Anna: The San Cisco tour was really fun because it was a regional tour. We drove everywhere. Speaking for everyone, I think San Cisco were our favourite band out of the three to play with. But Girlpool were the sweetest.

Jaimee: Girlpool were completely high on life and they’d never done a national tour before. 

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How did Major Leagues begin? 

Jake: There’s a public story and there’s a private story. 

Let’s hear the private. 

Vlada: Well Anna and I went to uni together and then all of us played in this other band together. I won’t say the name of the band because it was so bad.

Jaimee: Let’s just say it was gypsy music, the singer was into casting spells in her songs.

Vlada: She was basically a wiccan.

Jake: We are doing everything we can to erase it from social media.

Anna: She got brought into it because she was dating BC from the Dune Rats and he was like, ‘Hey Anna, do you want to play in a band with my girlfriend.’

Vlada: She was a psycho but he didn’t say tell us that. Anyway we all met a day before we went on tour together and that’s how it started. 

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Favourite bands you’ve grown up listening to. 

Vlada: Celine Deon, Shania twain, The Whitlams, Paul Kelly.

Anna: Silverchair

Jake: I think one of the first bands I really liked out of school was Pavement but I also grew up listening to Alice Cooper, Kiss and Afi. I work at a venue that still has like My Chemical Romance party music. I work in the kitchen at the Brightside and it’s just a fucking cess pool of my old life. 

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So Jake works at the Brightside and Vlada has her own bookstore called Junky Comics, do you guys have any other creative side projects you’re working on at the moment? 

Jake: Everybody does something.

Anna: Jaimee has a solo project called ‘Pool Shop’ and she paints dogs as well and does pet portraits. If you know anyone with a dog, you should commission Jaimee and she’ll paint them.

Well, I have two dogs so I’ll get on board. 

Jake: I play in a band called Tempura Nights and play in an Iggy Pop cover band with Aimon and Gabe from the Creases and Andrew Dooris from The Jungle Giants. It’s just like a horrendous shit-fight of a cover band.

Anna: I just never want to see it.

Jake: I never want to see it… I want to un-see every show we’ve played. At our last show, because Prince had just died, we played a cover of ‘Cream’ and it was Gabe with a whip cream can streaming into Liam Campbell’s mouth. Anna also plays in a band called Pansy with her husband, Fergus Miller from ‘Bored Nothing.’ 

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Is it hard to balance it all?

Jake: I think we’ve decided over the last year or so that we want Major Leagues to last for long term rather than be this crazy, hype band that spends bucket loads of money trying to be popular right now. People that we want to appreciate our music, appreciate it. We have our side projects but I think it’s more important to the four of us that we get to be creative all the time and like fuck all of our friends and go on tour for eight months and spend all of our money.

Anna: Major Leagues is priority, it’s everyone’s priority.

Vlada: It’s definitely a reprieve from the fucking daily grind.

Jake: If I wasn’t in Major Leagues, I would never take a fucking holiday or take a few days off. If we have a Major Leagues tour… I’m away and we get to have a holiday. 

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Brisbane, Sydney or Melbourne? 

Anna: It’s different every time.

Jake: We’ve had shit shows in every city and we’ve had really fun shows in every city.

Anna: I really enjoy playing in Sydney.

Vlada: I think it’s because Sydney’s the place we go to the least.

Jake: Anna lives in Melbourne, we live in Brisbane, so we do more Melbourne shows and a lot more Brisbane shows and miss out on Sydney quite a bit. 

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How do you find the song writing process with Anna living in Melbourne?

Anna: It’s the same process we use anyway, even when I lived here.

Jake: Over the last year Anna’s been writing a lot of the songs. Jaimee’s been writing a lot of songs as well and we get the voice demos from each other. About a month ago we were able to put four days aside together which was like a lot of time for the four of us. We got 26 songs done that had been building up over the space of a year. 

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Thoughts on the lock out laws? 

Jake: It’s going to crush Brisbane.

Vlada: It sucks, we have lots of friends that own bars and venues.

Jake: You could argue that people will start coming out earlier but it’s complete fucking bullshit. I think the reason for the lockout laws is a complete fallacy. The last king hit that happened in China town two months ago happened at 8pm at night and he was just a sober lunatic and he shouldn’t be a cause for the government to turn lockout laws into a thing. Owners of our venue and owners from other venues and really big players have come together over the past two months to meet with the government and 

look at the intricacies of these laws. They’ve actually gotten a little further than Sydney’s gotten.

Anna: So basically it’s bullshit.

Vlada: The whole thing’s fucked. 

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What's your plan for the rest of the year? Will there be more tours for your latest EP? 

Anna: We’re going to put out an album this year.

Jaimee: We’re actually doing it tomorrow. Anna- We are also playing two shows next month.

Jake: We’ve got some exciting shows in the next few months like the one at GoMA and the exhibition.