the AU’s Aidan Hogg caught up with Perth's resident overachiever Cam Avery - a part of The Growl, Pond and Tame Impala. Because, everyone has time to be in three successful bands, right!? How does he do it... Well, we try to find out as we chat about his upcoming solo tour, the band he fronts, The Growl, and his incredible amount of side-projects.

You’re in Iceland at the moment Cam, what actually brings you there?

I’m working on this record, I’m producing, kind of. His name is Tom Cohen, it’s his first solo record. He used to play in a band called “S.C.U.M”.

So this Australian solo tour in November is showcasing an upcoming album from The Growl in solo format. When should we expect to see this album released?

It’s hard to tell! Those label people hold up stuff, I’m guessing with delays, late this year or early next year. You’ll hear a song from it probably around November.

Is there something about the new album begging for it to be played in solo format, or is the tour just something new you wanted to try?

The songs are a lot more… songy, if you know what I mean? On this new album there’s a lot more verses and choruses, I guess. Definitely a few more ballads on the album. It was just like: I played a couple of solo shows in LA, and I played a couple of solo shows in Perth, and some in Texas and my manager said I should do a solo tour. And I just thought that’d be really good, a good way to sort of show the new album. But it was just a suggestion and it went from there.

Playing solo, you supported Jake Bugg, played SXSW, and have the tour coming up, are there any plans for The Growl to tour as a 5 piece again?

Yes, actually I’ve spent the last 2 weeks before I came to Iceland recording the rest of The Growl album and doing post-production. So I’ve just been getting all that stuff together. The band is actually expanding, it’s a 6 piece now, maybe more. But yeah, towards the end of the year.

Between tour Tame Impala and Pond and recording for all these other projects, have you really had much time to slow down recently?

No! I don’t think I’ve had any time off in around a year and a half. But that’s alright, I haven’t had much downtime but I kinda get bored when I’m on holiday anyway. So this is kinda like a working holiday, I get to hang out with my friends and make records.

The Allbrook/Avery album that was recorded with The Horrors, has that just been filed away for a while, so you and Nick (Allbrook) can focus on other things?

It’s actually getting mixed now. Nick started doing his “Nicholas Allbrook” solo thing and there was Pond, but yeah, that album is being mixed right at the moment, and it will come out whenever there’s time. Jay (Watson, Tame Impala) is working on a new record with the same engineer actually. Jay’s in London doing the second Gum album and he’s been doing it with the same guy we did the Allbrook/Avery thing with, which is going to be pretty cool.

Can you tell us anything about AAA Aardvark Getdown Services (Cam’s duo with Kevin Parker of Tame Impala), will we hear any more of you guys in that duo format?

I don’t know, that stuff is sort of like done on a whim. We started it because Felicity Groom got her car stolen, so we wanted to replace her car with the money from our gig. But yeah, we’ll probably do it whenever Kev and I are in the same place. I’m going back to Perth two weeks after this tour and then maybe we could do a show. I don’t know if we could do a record, or if Kevin is using any of the songs for Tame Impala. He also writes for other people, so he might be giving them to other people, I don’t know.

Cool, so maybe there will be more than just shitty youtube videos of your live shows in the future?

Yeah maybe! I dunno, Kev’s doing his Tame album now, I’m doing my Growl album now.

Pond allegedly has a new album on the way, what can you tell us about “Man, It Feels Like Space Again”?

It’s the best thing they’ve ever done. I actually only played on one song because I was off doing The Growl’s album. It’s so good, it’s like, quote me on this, it’s so fucking delicious.

You’ve been involved with so many projects, how do you decide which song goes where? Or is The Growl your main songwriting endeavour?

Yeah that’s exactly it! All the songs go towards The Growl stuff now. There is some other stuff, doing some film scores, writing some songs for female vocalists, so I’ve been doing bits and pieces of that. So a few of the songs I’ve been writing have been going towards that but it’s mostly stuff for The Growl.

Shiny Joe Ryan is supporting on your solo Australian tour, you guys are in so many projects together, are there any plans to do some songs together?

Yeah! I think so, we’ve been scheming on a couple of things. Shiny Joe and I, collectively, our favourite movie ever is Top Gun, and we both really love the soundtrack. We’re scheming one day to do an entire gig, maybe not on this tour, where we play the entire soundtrack, start to finish. Maybe we’ll play something from Top Gun. I fly straight from Iceland to Sydney for the first show, so it’s all a bit disorganised at the moment. Maybe we’ll get it in at one of the later shows on the tour!

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Cam Avery’s solo tour travels to Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and Perth in early September with Shiny Joe Ryan as support. Tickets and more details at www.facebook.com/events/596113897176696/