Adventures at (and mostly before) the IF Awards, by Beth (with some interjections from Robin)

I’m sitting at home with mum and dad, and yes, we are settling in to watch the 2009 IF Awards on SBS that we had the pleasure of attending only 24 hours ago in Sydney.

It was the shortest jet setting trip we’ve ever done (Wrong! We once flew to Canberra for a festival and flew home the same day! – Robin). This is how the day flowed: I woke with just enough time to race up to the shopping centre to buy some skin coloured stockings to wear with my prepared attire that I had packed the night before. Three pairs of stockings/tights (some for Byll as well) and $40 later (oh my goodness, stockings are such a rip off!), I got back just in time to pick Byll up and to catch our flight with our favourite airline, Tiger (I hope that was sarcastic – you know they’re the ones who smashed my guitar, right?! – Robin). I had packed minimal, one dress, one pair of shoes and make up. Byll on the other hand, looked like she had packed for a week.

We arrived at the hotel, that Byll had boasted was only a 10 min walk from Luna Park, where the ceremony was being held, and it couldn’t have turned out to be a more stressful afternoon. I was super excited about the evening and getting to dress up. I hadn’t dressed up like this since my year 12 formal. Only three days before I was convinced that my chosen retro style black and white checked dress was perfect and that I looked sensational as I strutted around the lounge room giving mum and dad a fashion parade. But as I watched my big sister get into her outfit, I got that feeling that you never grow out of as a younger sibling, which was a mixture of admiration, jealousy and disappointment, because she looked absolutely amazing, and I wanted to look just as good. I quickly realised that my only retro black and white checked dress that I had brought needed to be immediately tossed.

This is when the stress kicked in. Their were a few tears when I went to put my never before worn stockings on and immediately pulled a ladder from my ankle to my knee in literally a second, and then to realise that because I couldn’t wear my wrecked stockings I would reveal my atrocious freshly painted grape fruit toe nails, that for some weird reason I thought looked good the night before. So Byll came to my rescue, wiped those tears away and offered her numerous other dresses to me as an alternative that she had come prepared with. I went for the classic black number, and thank the lord all was peachy again.

We met the rest of ‘team Sunshower’ (Robin, Stew and Lorin) by the red carpet. We watched closely while the celebs rolled out of the circling cars doing the drop offs. After chickening out of approaching the red carpet ourselves, we strolled down along side the red carpet to pick up our tickets. It went something like “Hi, we are The Little Stevies, we’re nominated for Best Video Clip tonight”. To our absolute delight and surprise the woman responsible for the tickets immediately responded with “The Little Stevies? Why aren’t you in a car?” Wow, we were meant to be in one of those cars that drop you off at the red carpet and then you get your picture taken! Well we weren’t going to miss out on that! In true Stevie style, ‘team Sunshower’ turned straight around, trekked all the way back to the beginning of the red carpet, embarrassingly found ourselves being the very last group, but walked that carpet like it was only ours.

The ceremony began and our award was second up. We try not to be a competitive band when it comes to these things, but damn we wanted to win. Unfortunately, we didn’t get to take to the stage in the following minutes, but we watched a grab of our clip up on the big screens and I have to say that I was particularly thrilled and proud to see our clip up there for all to watch.

We hit the after party, drank more champagne, danced a little and fed ourselves. I had such a great time and would do it all again in a second…… but I’m never again in my life wearing high heels!!!

Over and Out,

Beth

Check out this video!

The Little Stevies - Dink You: A Musical Journey

The Little Stevies | MySpace Video

'Dink You' has landed

The new video accompanying our new single 'Dink You' has arrived on YouTube!!
It's kind of half music video, half short film, and it's all about The Little Stevies becoming the first band to circumnavigate the globe by bike.
You can find the long version here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sn_jIvcDkF8
and a shorter version here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FdGrtemecgA

If you like it, please spread the word! Post it on a blog, on your Facebook, Tweet it, email it! We want EVERYONE to see it!

Take care,

Robin

Our IF Nomination Thank You List (just in case we don't win)

So it’s with heartfelt thanks that we receive the Inside Film Awards nomination for Best Music Video. How did we get this far? Well, there’s a hell of a lot of luck involved, let me tell you. But wait, I’m not saying it’s the kind of random luck where we got picked out of obscurity from all the other bands - I mean let’s face it, it’s not a bad lookin’ video. No, I’m talking about the luck of knowing and being supported by some of the most amazing people in the solar system. For that, we’re INCREDIBLY lucky. So now it’s time to thank them.

First of all, the star of the show, without whom there would be no video at all, Australia’s hottest Auslan interpreter, the one, the only, Simone Ellen. A round of applause please. What a champ. Need I say any more?

Equally ‘hot’, but in a cinematographic (as well as aesthetic) sense, is Stewart Thorn, who was the director of photography on the shoot. Not only has Stew donated his amazing skills to the band on numerous occasions, but he’s also the band’s unofficial publicist, constantly harassing people both digitally and randomly in the street with his strong views about the band. What a way to make us feel loved. L E G E N D.

We should also thank Lorin for lending him out so often, and for being another L E G E N D.

Anyone know what grading is? No, it doesn’t happen at schools, it happens in big computers, and it can make your movie look dull and overcast one minute and gloriously sunny the next. And it’s damn hard! So we were incredibly lucky to have Cail Young and Pete Wells at Inspiration Studios, fast becoming THE production house in Melbourne, making the clip look fantastic. Is there anything they CAN’T do? Call them and find out…

When you’re co-ordinating a tricky shoot like this was, you need a great beard on-hand, just to keep everything under control, and this was provided for us by the chin of Cam Matheson. Cam’s skills on a film set are so great that it’s rumoured he once 1st AD’d two shoots SIMULTANEOUSLY, IN DIFFERENT STATES, WITHOUT ANYONE NOTICING! Luckily, we had his full attention for this shoot, and would no doubt have been up the creek without him.

General legend Thom Holt was on-hand to carry the blow-up boat up and down the pier. Thom’s skills extend far beyond this though, and you can see has amazing handiwork on YouTube in our live Toff In Town clips, which he shot with his very cool mate Shelley. My debts to Thom go far beyond this video – it’s just another great example of his work.

So obviously Stew had to be walking backwards in order to film us all walking up the pier, right? Well the reason he didn’t end up in the water was that my dad, Steve, was marching behind him, guiding him along and out of the way of passer bys, poles and dog shit. Unglamorous, but absolutely vital. Thanks Dad!

Also marching up and down the pier was my mum, Ingrid, who is about the most reliable and dedicated person on the planet. “Hey Mum, come and march up and down St Kilda pier in the freezing cold for two hours!” “OK”. “Oh, and learn this sign-language” “Sure thing”. Where would I be without her? Nowhere. Literally. Thanks Mum.

Mitchell Ward, aka Mitch Paxton, aka M.Pax was on-hand to weave his suave and debonair aura into the video. As well as being an incredibly faithful supporter of the band, Mitch is also an amazing singer, guitarist and songwriter and you should get along to one of his gigs if you can.

Also Auslaning it up was my sister, Hannah, another invaluable supporter of the band, and general all-round cool person. Still dragging you along to be in my silly movies, hey? Nothing ever changes.

Then of course there was the OTHER Hannah, whose contributions to the band also go far beyond marching up and down the pier in the cold. Hannah can also be credited with getting us some of our first gigs and, most importantly, with introducing us to our first manager, Orvo, who is next on the list.

Orvo’s hard-work and dedication to the band was awesome and The Little Stevies are incredibly lucky to have had, and still have, his amazing support. Without him, we’d never have been in the position to be making music videos, or touring around the country, or dinking each-other home from the Queenscliff Pub. But that’s another story...

We shot this video while Josh Barber was still easing his way into being a Little Stevie – a damn shame, although he still made an amazing contribution to the video by suggesting, right after we’d met him, that we contact Cameron Louis-Gleeson (another massive thank you), who put us in touch with Simone. And now we’ve come full circle.

I’ve probably forgotten someone, although hopefully I’ll remember and get to update it before they notice. Now it’s time to start putting a list of thank yous together for our new video for Dink You, which comes out NEXT TUESDAY, PEOPLE!!! Mark it in the diary! No, don’t bother, you’ll probably get spammed about it.

Lastly, I’d like to thank Dog.

Goodbye!

-Robin

Musical memories from a generation past...

It’s funny how certain music can become the soundtrack to your life without you even realising it until years later.....

It is a Sunday night in September and I am sitting in my room, doing some band work on my bed, and my mum decides to re-discover the pile of old cassette tapes which have made a comfortable life for as long as I can remember next to the half broken CD player in the lounge room. They are all recordings of mum and dad in the band they had for so long before we were born and then grew into toddlers. There’s ‘Jimmy Mac’, ‘Afternoon Delight’ and then comes ‘Message to my Girl’, all songs that I know all the words to - not because I’ve sung them before, but because I’ve heard them sung by mum and dad so many times at band rehearsals over the course of my life from the next room. They called it the ‘Thursday Night Social’, and damn it was fun! I mean, I didn’t understand at that age why it was so fun for all the adults, and what all the jokes were about. But it was fun as a kid watching a whole lot of people laughing and having live amplified music in the house that I could dance to in my PJ’s. ....

These songs; ‘Blame it on the Boogie’, ‘Ride Like the Wind’, ‘Ticket to Ride’, ‘Boy From New York City’, I will always remember fondly. They represent a time in my parents’ lives that is closer than ever to what stage I am at in my own journey now. Call me daggy, but I’ve decided it’s kind of nice to get an insight into what your parents were like at your age. All of a sudden, there is an explanation for why we are the way we are…..and never before quite known why.