Craig Nicholls, singer/guitarist/songwriter for Aussie rockers the Vines is a true artist. Hailing from musically isolated — and sometimes musically challenged (Silverchair, anyone?) — Australia, Nicholls and his supporting cast of Patrick Matthews (bass/vocals), Ryan Griffiths (guitar) and Hamish Rosser (drums) could not be held down (under). From consisting of jam sessions in Patrick’s house to a life-altering demo, Nicholls and the rest of the Vines never thought they would be making records, much less doing it professionally. CMJ got to spend some quality time with an exhausted Nicholls at a Manhattan diner on the eve of the quartet’s first-ever New York gig, where he divulged the Vines’ deep, dark past and its bright future.

Where and how did your band get its start?

Patrick and I lived in the same suburb and worked at the McDonald’s up the street. That’s where we started talking about music and stuff; it’s a really boring job. We liked the same bands, and then I just started going to his house where we had a couple guitars. We would listen to music and mess around with the guitars, until one day we called up Patrick’s friend, Dave, who had a drum set. We played through some songs, very amateurish — we could hardly play instruments. We all loved music and listening to the same bands so we decided to play some Nirvana songs, some Kinks songs and a few others. We would just figure them out in a very simple way; we weren’t trying to start a band. We were just bored. It turned out to be really fun.

Eventually you started writing songs for you and your buds to play. 

Yeah, after a few months I started to write my own songs. I was just curious as to if I could do it. It wasn’t as hard as I thought it would be, and I would consciously try to make different types of arrangements in order to keep it exciting for me, to get better, and to exercise my mind. It was exciting to have all these possibilities. At the time, I was doing fine arts (drawing/sculpture/painting) and I really liked doing that but I wasn’t passionate about it, like I came to be about music. There was this vibe that I wasn’t going to be doing [fine arts] for a living, because I knew it was something that you had to be serious about. My sculpture teacher, he was obsessed, and was really great at it too, but he still had to teach classes. I thought that kind of sucked. Plus, we didn’t really know what we were doing in the beginning, only that we liked doing it. I just wanted to write good songs, we went out and played at pubs sometimes, but the focus became to build a catalog of good songs that we were happy and comfortable with.

Was there a specific moment you knew that you were passionate bout music enough to pursue it full-time?

We paid like a few hundred dollars and went into a little studio to record a couple of songs. A week later we mixed it ,and then when I heard it for the first time through the headphones, that’s when I quit McDonald’s. I thought, “Yeah, this is cool.”

What music — other than your own — are you passionate about? 

When Patrick and I were at McDonald’s, that’s when Nirvana’s In Utero came out, so that was one of the first albums we talked about. That was the first rock band I really got into; I thought it was the best thing. I didn’t listen to any other bands for like a year, and then Patrick, David and I went through a Beatles thing, a Kinks thing, Supergrass, Pavement, Beck and so on. A lot of English bands were huge inspirations for us. I am totally influenced by the confidence of e Beatles, the power of Nirvana and the sarcasm of the Kinks. Each were influenced by others but still did their own thing, and I respect that as well. Music rubs off on people and that’s the reason that people get into music: they hear something that they relate to, or is easy on the ears or both. We like so many different bands [and] have so many different influences that it’s hard to realize who influences what the most. Like in school, I didn’t understand why all these grownups were trying to teach me about these different subjects. I just thought it was kind of dumb. People like Kurt Cobain, John Lennon and Ray Davies were my teachers.

So how did Capitol land you guys?

We were lucky, actually, because we were in L.A. recording the record when Andy Slater [President of Capitol], who was working with another band at the time, heard one of our songs and liked it. Then we had money issues so Andy bought us some studio time to finish up. He was really excited by our finished product and wanted to put the record out. We felt we understood what he was saying and I was really glad that he liked what we had done. Andy kept coming down, liked the album, and didn’t want to change anything, so we signed with Capitol while mixing the album.

I heard you were somewhat of a loner while making this album. 

Yeah! I didn’t want to go out much. I just wanted to make the album because that was really important to me, to be serious about it. The making of our first album and the completion of it was the most important thing, because before I came to the America I had so many ideas; we had like 40 songs to choose from. I wasn’t interested in anything other than making album. I was either at the hotel or the studio. I wasn’t going out, seeing anything. I had my CD player in the hotel. I could smoke there. I mean, Hollywood is fucking crazy; I come from this little suburb in Sydney where it is totally green and peaceful, not busy at all. [The L.A.] kind of scene is not my personality.

Where are the Vines looking to go from here?

We are looking to go forward. I love making albums and I already have a whole batch of new songs in my head. It’s starting to drive me crazy. I am totally obsessed; I don’t want to be touring on these songs for the next two years or even at this time next year. That is not the nature of this band — we’re more about songs and recording. I am always going to look forward to getting back into the studio to start the process all over again. I don’t want to lose my hearing or my voice before I get an opportunity to put something down in the studio, because that’s what really counts. You can do an amazing show, and people will see it and that’s great, but after that moment it is gone. You can think back to it in your head, but when you record an album, that’s forever.