Easy banter is a beautiful thing
CHATS WITH PEKING DUK COVER HITS, MISSES, GOOFS AND SPOOFS
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There aren’t many Australian bands better placed to create a podcast than Peking Duk. The globetrotting, ARIA-winning duo of Ruben Styles and Adam Hyde are as well known for their hilarious banter and bringing the party wherever they go as they are for their euphoric, high-energy dance music and string of hits including High, Take Me Over, Fake Magic and Let You Down.
The pair realised that not only had they had some pretty wild adventures since their humble beginnings DJing at a Canberra cocktail bar where their one brief was to make sure nobody got up to dance (they failed and got fired) to playing Coachella five years later, they had met some fascinating people from all around the world.
Their own recollections of “hilarious random shit happening along the way”, such as drinking snake blood in Vietnam and ending up in a “spooky situation” with a Mafia boss proved to be a goldmine of material for the podcast.
“Ruben and I have always loved talking absolute shit with each other and having a laugh and finding the fun wherever we can via conversation and jokes and gags and silly goofs and spoofs,” says Hyde. “And we thought we had been lucky enough to meet some pretty interesting people along this journey and some of those people we are lucky enough to call friends. So, we thought ‘why don’t we start having these conversations with people that we admire and literally just talk about anything and everything?’”
The result is the imaginatively titled The Peking Duk podcast, which drops today with weekly episodes featuring the likes of The Kooks, The Inspired Unemployed, Alex Lahey, Jack River and man of the moment, Tony Armstrong.
But Hyde and Styles didn’t just want to focus on the good times – and found that their guests were willing to be as open about their failures as their successes.
“The real anchor of each conversation is we talk about that person’s hits and misses – a high point in their life and a low point, what they learned from those things, how it shaped them,” says Styles. “It could be something as little as walking out on stage with your fly open but the thing that we found after recording so many episodes is we really enjoyed doing it. It’s been awesome to be able to chat with so many people, especially coming out of Covid you notice that people just really want to chat about everything and how they’re feeling and it’s a beautiful thing.
“Everyone has so many more stories to share than you would ever imagine and some of them are off the wall. And we have a lot of our own stories that we have never shared and I can’t wait to start trickling them into each episode.”
Peking Duk has just returned from a run of outdoor dates at wineries around the country on the Grapevine Gathering tour. And after a couple of years of cancelled or reduced gigs – or only one band member being able to play at a time – Hyde says the sense of joy and abandon in the crowds was palpable.
“1000 per cent,” he agrees. “It was just smiles as far as the eye could see and joy was in the air and I think it was a reminder that live music is that important to people. It was a really beautiful thing to be able to provide the music for those people to enjoy themselves to – it’s a blessing and a half. But it’s still got a fair bit to go – overall you see festivals are folding left, right and centre due to a lack of ticket sales or whatever but I think we are on track to have everything back.”
Styles and Hyde, who continue to eschew the album format, are also back with a new single Spend It, which features UK indie rock band Circa Waves. Styles says the song has a “Miike Snow kind of vibe” and whereas their previous release, Honest, was written deep in lockdown, Spend It came after the pair had had a taste of their live shows again with deep connection to their audiences front of mind.
“We finally got to start feeling the shows and the kind of music you write when you haven’t played a show for 18 months, you’re not really thinking about the crowd at all,” Styles says.
“You’re thinking about making songs that you want to listen to in lockdown and listen to perhaps while you have a beer at the park or something. But after playing shows, in the back of your mind now you have a better understanding of how music responds with a crowd and you know in your heart more or less what you want to be playing at live shows.”
Episodes 1 and 2 of The Peking Duk Podcast are available today through LiSTNR or wherever you get your podcasts. Spend It is released today