By Colleen Edwards
Scene Magazine

Just over 12 months ago the pressures of being in a band got the better of Jake Grigg, and he suffered a meltdown that left some people wondering if he would play in a band again. But now he and his band, Something With Numbers, are back enjoying the rigours of being on the road with a new album to show off.

“It is great to be back out on the road, it has been so good,” Grigg says of the band's 20-date tour. “More people seem to be coming and I feel like I have been rejuvenated.
“After the tour with we did with Grinspoon last year I thought 'I never want to do this again', and after a few weeks off, all I wanted to do was get back out on tour again! But now, everything seems to be in its place, we have our spirit back.” Some of this newfound spring in his step can be attributed to the band’s new album, 'Engineering the Soul', the third record from the Central Coast act.“We feel that this exceeds all our other work,” the big-haired frontman says. “It challenged us mentally - we spent three months living in a shack together 'in the hood' while making the record - and I think we came out as better people and better friends.

The 'hood' was New York, where the band went to work with producer Tim O'Heir (All American Rejects, Say Anything, Dinosaur Jr.) for nine weeks, recording at the Mission Sound Studios in Brooklyn. “We had a few months set aside to write, but we had a bit written acoustically even as early as three years ago,” Grigg says of the writing and recording process. “We wrote about 20 songs and took them to New York. We took them into the studio and took them apart until we had an album.”
And as can be the case for many bands, nurturing a healthy batch of songs for an album was not the difficult factor, but rather it was pruning them back.
“It is always hard, you'd be like 'this one is heaps good',” Grigg laughs. “But after a while you can see the stand-outs.

This album has seen the boys expand their previously rock-limited musical horizons, with tracks that feature jazz, swing, Motown, balladry and pop influences.
“We are into different stuff now and I think we are much better musicians. We never want to be the band that does the same thing twice. We want to feel uncomfortable (playing music), we want to keep pushing (the boundaries).”

Some of the changing styles were helped along by some special guests who dropped by the studio, including brass band of the moment The Dap Kings.
“We got to work with some great musicians like The Dap Kings and John Deley. The Dap Kings were friends with our producer and so that happened from there,” Grigg says.

Deley features on piano on the album's closing track 'I'll Be There', a song and experience that Grigg is most keen to talk about.
“There was a special one, 'I'll Be There', and it was me on the acoustic and John on the piano and he said, 'just give it a go', and I said 'I have never rehearsed it', and the producer said, 'let's just do it' and we started doing it,” Grigg explains breathlessly.

“I had never sung to just a piano before and the feeling was amazing… and that's the take on the album, we only played it once.”
But with his mind now back on touring, and even though the Queensland leg is at the very end of their tour, Grigg and the band are looking forward to the trek north.
“Where else but Queensland?” Grigg laughs, taking on the role of a spokesman for our state tourism body. “It's great coming north - all that sun and blonde hair. We love it! We can wear a bikini… I look pretty good. We also like to get in a blow-up canoe and float around in the pool.”

Colleen Edwards