Still Rockin' It - Cheryl Lee
Still Rockin' It - Cheryl Lee
What has Regurgitator's Quan Yeomans been up to lately? OR From Piano Lessons to Rock Guitar - Do you have to beep a lot of beep to get where you are?
Join Cheryl Lee - That Radio Chick on STILL ROCKIN' IT for news, reviews, music and interviews with some of our favourite Australian musicians.
What if you could trace the fascinating journey of a rock star from a non-musical household to leading one of Australia's most iconic bands?
Join us as we chat with Quan Yeomans, the charismatic frontman of Regurgitator, who shares his unique path to musical fame. From his initial resistance to piano lessons to discovering his passion for the guitar through the sounds of Led Zeppelin, Quan's story is one of serendipity and self-discovery. Hear about the mythicized origins of Regurgitator, including a memorable encounter with bandmate Ben Ely, and how Quan's supportive family played an unexpected role in his rise to stardom.
Take a nostalgic journey with us back to the 90s, reminiscing about the era's iconic bands like Little Birdie and Jebediah, and listen to Quan's excitement about the forthcoming Hotter Than Hell tour.
We explore the evolution of music consumption and how Quan's children influence his own listening habits, spanning from hip-hop to pop, featuring artists like Ivan Ooze and Olivia Rodrigo.
This episode promises engaging stories and insights, reminding us of the enduring appeal of 90s music and the importance of meaningful conversations in the music world.
What has Quan Yeomans been up to lately? Let's find out!!
Get out when you can, support local music and I'll see you down the front!!
Visit: ThatRadioChick.com.au
That Radio Cheek Cheryl Lee here. Welcome to the Still Rocking it podcast where we'll have music news, reviews and interviews with some of our favourite Australian musicians and artists. Today we're speaking to Australian musician best known as the front man of Regurgitator, Qan Yeomans. Born in Sydney to fifth generation Australian father, neville and his mother Leen, a well-known Vietnamese Australian chef and author. Along with regurgitators bassist and co-vocalist Ben Eli, they wrote most of the punk songs that made the 90s band famous, and they're out on the road again. To catch up on podcasts from other favorite artists, simply go to that radio chickcomau. You're with cheryl lead and I'd like to welcome into the zoom room today kwan yeomans, front man of regurgitator.
Speaker 1:Thank you so much for joining us today pleasure, absolute pleasure because I know you've got a busy workload coming up, so really appreciate your time with us. I was going to ask you do you come from a musical family clan? Your parents musical no, not really.
Speaker 2:I would say my father played the clarinet when he was very young, but I have no evidence of that, apart from the old clarinet that I found of his in the attic of the terrace that we used to live in in Sydney. I've never heard him play. He's a bit of a whistler, but that's about it. I don't think it really covers my mother's interested in music but was never particularly good at it, so no, I don't.
Speaker 2:She was the one that organized your lessons as a child, didn't she? Piano lessons, yes, which I really really pushed back against. I really didn't like learning the piano when I was younger, so took to the guitar because I found the instrument myself and wanted to learn, and wanted to learn off just listening to Led Zeppelin records and Jimi Hendrix records, and that's really how I developed as a guitar player when did you first pick up the guitar?
Speaker 1:Until I was 13 or 14, I think. In high school.
Speaker 2:Yes, there were some just acoustic instruments around and I think there was an acoustic guitar at home which I played. But my mother was really kind and she did buy me my first guitar on a visit to LA, because a lot of her Vietnamese family are based in the US. So she went to the guitar centre, I believe, and bought back a Gibson an S1, which is a kind of a Stratocaster version of a Gibson guitar which had three single coils in it. Quite a nice guitar actually, and reasonable neck on it. So I think I had a good guitar to start with, that's for sure.
Speaker 1:When did you realise that music was going to be your destiny? It was your passion, and was there ever any plan B in there if it didn't pan out?
Speaker 2:My family, my mother's side, particularly not great at plan Bs. We just go with whatever seems to fall in our laps and, just, you know, point the ship forward and go for it. But she did secretly want I think she really wanted me to be an architect or an industrial engineer. So there was a little bit of that like residue wanted to have the child live her dreams that she couldn't fulfil. But it was quickly like put a stop to.
Speaker 1:She wanted to live vicariously through you, but you weren't into architecture.
Speaker 2:I wasn't into architecture. My dad was a psychiatrist as well, and there was certainly no way that I was going to do that. So the one thing that my mother did do was put up with the noise and encourage me they were both very encouraging of whatever I wanted to do.
Speaker 1:Well, lucky you did pan out, then yeah exactly.
Speaker 2:Well, it's debatable, isn't it?
Speaker 1:How do you meet someone, a stranger, on a bus and find out you both play guitar, you both like the same music and form a band?
Speaker 2:Well, there's a bit of mythology there, a little bit of legend making. Actually, we had met before that, not formally I don't think, but we played together in venues around Bristol. Then I was in a band called Pengae who was doing quite well in the local scene, and I was in a kind of weird punk fusion band called zorastia at the time, so we had supported them on a couple occasions. He had seen the band, said I really like the guitar player and he was. He's a real connecting people person. Uh, he loves jamming.
Speaker 2:I'm very shy, introverted in lots of ways, so I don't really get into it, but he convinced me to have a jam with him. The way that we really met was because he was hanging out with the lead singer from my band and they wanted to score weed and my mother was notorious. My singer knew that my mother smoked a shit ton of weed and had some always in the house. She said come over, we can get some from Kwan's mum's place, then you can say a quick hello to him. I was in the basement, he got blown out with my mum, came down, heard me mucking around on a four track and then we, you know, we spoke then and the rest is history.
Speaker 2:We live in a very similar area, so we would catch the bus and we would see each other occasionally. So he probably said a couple of times on the bus as well.
Speaker 1:But I love that story got stoned out of his mind with your mother. Yeah, that's right. But also I really liked the urban myth bus story that you just met on a bus and became a band. There's more to it than that.
Speaker 2:Well, brisbane was a pretty small city back then, so most of the musicians were probably able to be contained on the bus at that point. You are listening to Still Rocking it. The podcast with Cheryl Lee.
Speaker 1:Let's have a quick break and listen to Immigrant Song by Led Zeppelin from the Mothership album from 1970, which Kwan played to on his brand new guitar. And then we're back to speak to Klan straight after this. You are the major songwriter of Regurgitator, one of two. It's a pretty unique sort of genre of songs, I guess. Where do you find your inspiration for your songs? Inspiration?
Speaker 2:Generally I will take from the world around me. So like everyone else I guess I don't have. I've had a very, very easy life. I don't have a lot of trauma in my life. Fortunately, somehow, even though my mother lived through like a French war and my father lived through depression, they somehow managed to protect me from that kind of traumatic experience which they could have quite easily passed down intergenerationally. So I live a very middle class existence.
Speaker 2:I was taken overseas by my father and I've traveled quite extensively as a mid-30s kind of character, lived overseas as well. But the first trip my dad took me on was to the third world and I'd never really experienced that. It was the mid-90s, so around 93, I think, and I went to Rio de Janeiro and I kind of saw the world, the way that it worked and the incredible disparity between the third world and the first and east and the west and all that sort of thing. So I got an idea of the balance and what was going on and I've always been interested in capitalism and the way we live and the way we function as a society and the bigger pictures.
Speaker 2:I like bigger pictures. So I talk about bigger pictures a lot thematically through my music, but often hidden by tongue, in cheekness. You know profanity, comedy because I have that luxury. I have the luxury of living a very comfortable life. So I see life as a comedy rather than a tragedy. That is the true luxury of my life. I approach music and lyrical writing with that in mind.
Speaker 1:Apart from being, you know, a great musician and a talented songwriter, you are also a very talented animator and animated several of Regurgitator's music videos.
Speaker 2:When did you realise you?
Speaker 1:had a talent for that art form.
Speaker 2:I think using the word talent a little bit liberally there, I mean I dabble, I dabble, all those things that you've mentioned that I can do I still feel like I'm a hobbyist in lots of ways. I don't think of myself as a I mean I don't know if there's many people who do there are but some people really embrace the artist's lifestyle, embrace that whole notion of the artist and really embody it, and I feel like I've always been a dabbler in things and I never take things seriously enough to be called that or treated that. So talent is a word that I'm a little bit uncomfortable with. I'm definitely. I love doing stuff. I love making music and I love doing animation when I've got the time, but there's so much to learn and so you need to practice these things like every day for hours and hours, and hours.
Speaker 2:I'm at an age where obviously I haven't got that kind of youthful energy that I used to, but I still love doing those things. I feel like if I wanted to be really great at something, I would have to do it every day for 10 hours a day for the next 15 years to really say that I was accomplished at anything in particular. So when you say that I'm a musician, it doesn't really sit that well with me, because there are so many musicians out there who play their instruments with far more finesse and far more skill than I do. I get up there and I make a racket and I have a good time. I say what I want to say. If that makes me a musician, then you know I think you're very modest, but it's lovely yeah, okay, thanks, I'll take that still rocking the podcast with that radio chick, cheryl lee.
Speaker 1:Let's have one of those songs now. How about Exclamation Point, the song formerly known as, released as a double A-sided single with Modern Life in 1988 as the fourth and final single from the band's second studio album, Unit. Back to speak some more to Kwan shortly. I don't go to parties. Baby Got to talk about the tour Hotter Than Hell tour. You guys are doing the whole five dates. Some of the bands are coming in and out, but you guys are doing every date of the tour. Yes, the headlining, including Little Old Adelaide here at Jepps Cross. Adelaideans, get onto the Googlometer hotterthanhellcomau and get your tickets. Don't leave it to the last minute, like you usually do, because Jepps Cross isn't a huge venue, so it will sell out. I'm telling you now have you toured with many of these other bands on the bill before?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean Jebadiah is a band that we've toured with very extensively and we're touring a bit with lately as well, just in the last couple of years, which is really lovely because we haven't seen them for a long spate and you just get to connect with them as an older, as an adult, as an older adult, and it's just really lovely to see how people have matured and kind of lived over the last 20 years, because we've been doing this for 30 years and the bands that we're playing with now from the 90s have been doing it for the same. They've survived and they've gone through the same sort of stuff that we have. So it's really lovely to reconnect and also to realize how great live bands they are. You know, there's a reason why these bands were really popular. It's because they're really great at what they do and I've got a sort of newer like appreciation for that, because I can see it with older eyes and see it out of the competitive arena of when you're coming up as a young band with these bands around you. So that's been really lovely.
Speaker 2:I cannot recall whether we played with any of the American bands on this. We must have done big day outs with them from time to time, but I'm really interested in seeing them as well because they come from the same sort of era. So it is really cool. Little Birdie we played with a couple of times as well. So, yeah, it's just the audience gets that nostalgic kick from seeing the music that they grew up with, but we also share that nostalgic thing with the bands that we played with as well, so that's quite different.
Speaker 1:So many great bands came out of the 90s. It's pretty much all their favourites from the 90s. How can that possibly be that that was 30 years ago, like we're only 21, right?
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's right, it's weird, it's tough. I remember when people started talking about the 90s as an era like the 70s or like the 60s, it was a really weird mind mess with me. I couldn't really deal with it. But yeah, I mean, it's a thing, it's definitely a thing it's hard to believe it was that long ago.
Speaker 1:It's that you know. If you say the 90s, the last decade yeah, exactly feels like that so hotter than hell, headliners, regurgitator from the us, less than Than Jake and Unwritten Law. Also appearing Jebediah, little Birdie, adelita, the Bennies and the Kick-Ons. Not all bands playing in all venues, so get on to hotterthanhellcomau and check out who's playing in your town.
Speaker 2:You are listening to Still Rocking it. The podcast with Cheryl Lee.
Speaker 1:Let's have one from Jebediah, shall we? Leaving home? And then we're back to speak some more to regurgitators. Quan Yeomans, leaving home, life was never good today. Leaving home, you guys have got two children. Are they musical? Are they following in Dad's family business footsteps?
Speaker 2:Not mine. I know Ben's a little bit more talented. He's got three girls now, but two ones that are over 19, almost 20, 22. The elder one is playing in bands Definitely Anouk is playing in bands. They're both in Melbourne now. So they're both either in Melbourne Ben's actually up in Brisbane but they're both quite musically talented. I think Dee's got a great voice and she's more into making and art and stuff like that, but they're both very creative. My boys are younger, they're only seven and ten. I don't know how their creativity will actually form at this point. I can't quite see it.
Speaker 1:Might be a little bit too early to tell.
Speaker 2:Yeah, they seem to be reasonably intelligent and they're open and I think they're cheeky, so there might be something interesting going on, but I would never force them to do what.
Speaker 1:I want to do.
Speaker 2:I think it would be a waste of energy.
Speaker 1:I know we haven't got much longer, so I'd better be quick. I'm going to ask you if they're is a question that you've always wanted an interviewer to ask you.
Speaker 2:I think the kinds of interviews I love are the conversational ones, where you're just sitting with a friend almost, or with an acquaintance that you've just met and you're kind of getting to know them. So I'm going to be really boring and say there's no particular question that I could ask anyone to ask me. I would more like sometimes to flip it. You know, sometimes an interview doesn't go particularly well because the person's not particularly interested in your music, and that's fair enough. There's sometimes they don't know anything about you.
Speaker 2:If I find myself in that situation, it's usually a younger interviewer who's like, not from your era or whatever, and has no particular interest. What are you saying? I would rather ask them about themselves or find out about them. So that's the kind of thing that I would like an interview when it goes astray.
Speaker 1:That's a good idea. Last question, because I think our time might be nearly up what is on your playlist? If you're in the car or in the shower and can listen to whatever you like, what are you listening to?
Speaker 2:I usually get caught on like occasional songs that are like just random singles, because you know, I listen to a lot of streaming music. I don't actually have a record player set up on regular so I don't listen to music the way I used to. I don't have a cd player anymore either. So I'm, like, you know, most young people and most people around the world. So I really really like this track by Ivan Ooze called Snack at the moment, which I kind of listen to over and over. I've been listening to it because my kids go to school and I did a bit of a band class at school their primary school so I had to learn about Taylor Swift and listen to the songs so I could teach them how to play them. So I listened to a bit of Taylor Swift over the last. So that got me into mainstream pop stuff, which I've avoided for years and years, and I really got hooked on Olivia Rodriguez's last record Great pop songwriting.
Speaker 2:But you know, for pleasure I might listen to hip-hop. Mostly. I really enjoy listening to hip-hop, even though I hate a lot of it. A lot of the modern stuff makes no sense to me at all, but occasionally the songs will stick out to me. I really like the song by mike, which is quite old now, called swish, just about him being a baller and like he's an ex-baseball player who became like a, a big, reasonably large rapper. Just a weird career change and there's a yeah, there's a couple of his songs that I appreciate. But yeah, I do I do like Danny Brown, I like clipping, I like the more weirder hip-hop acts. I love Tyler the creator. Yeah, anything that's got a little bit of spark or a little bit of a backstory, that's a little bit interesting. I like to listen to it If it's just pure relaxing classical music Vivaldi is always my favourite, bach, bach and Vivaldi, Nice.
Speaker 1:I. Classical music, Vivaldi is always my favourite Bach, Bach and Vivaldi Nice. I've got three daughters, so I've heard enough Taylor Swift to last me the rest of my life. But Olivia Rodriguez I was actually chatting to Kevin the other day from Jebediah, he's got two girls. They're off to see Olivia Rodriguez when she comes. Lucky ducks.
Speaker 2:There you go. Yeah, I was due to go, but I found out that it was a Ticketek thing or a Live Nation thing and my manager was like you can't go to that. I was like, yeah, I know I can't go to that. I really it sucks.
Speaker 1:We wish you all the best as you embark on the Hotter Than Hell tour. We shall see you down the front.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much. Thanks so much for your time. I'm really looking forward to playing in adelaide. We always have a ball in adelaide, so it should be a hoot no, thank you for your time.
Speaker 1:I really appreciate you sitting down and having a quick chat with us absolute pleasure, thank you still rocking the podcast with that radio chick, cheryl lee. Let's go out with one of they're probably more well-known hits in the mainstream from 1997 regurgitators, polyester Girl, my polyester girl, so strong Polyester girl. You're with Cheryl Lee, that radio chick. Thank you so much for joining me on the Still Rocking it podcast. Hope to catch you again next time. Get out when you can support Aussie music and I'll see you down the front.