Powder Monkeys : 1991-

Interviews/Articles
'Powder Monkeys - The Life and ramblings of Tim Hemensley', 1996, Almost Human, Issue 1,
pp. 8, 19-22, 24-25.
[This interview was done in February 1996, a couple of days before the release of the album Time Wounds All Heels. Interview by Jo]

Jo: Tell me about the origins of the band.
Tim: Basically the origins of the band is that me & John played in Bored! together. Bored! didn't really end up on the best of terms so we kind of left the band. I still felt there was unfinished business, that me & John had to keep playing together. I'd never played with a musician before that I'd clicked with. His ideas of playing music, even the way he plays guitar is a lot like the way I play bass, he really attacks the instrument so it was a partnership that couldn't just end with the band. So it was always kind of unspoken between us that we knew we would form a band together again.
    1991 was a terrible year, we left Bored! in October 1990, in early '91 Shane and Sash from the Dirty Lovers got killed in a car crash, basically to me that was the end of the Geelong scene. It was very symbolic when they died it was like 'that's it' Geelong was finished. Everyone I knew from Geelong pretty much moved to Melbourne around that time, and those guys dying ... they were the last great Geelong band, the Dirty Lovers were the real thing. So it was a real hard year 1991, but by the middle of the year I had really itchy feet and I wanted to play in a band again.
    By the time I actually rang John he had joined Hoss but it didn't take much to convince him to leave Hoss and join a band with me. Which was good cos Hoss were an established band and we weren't and it was wonderful that he decided to do that. So basically I started the band to be an outlet for me and John to play together. I had a whole bunch of songs written.
I'd seen the Philisteins a lot of times and I thought Aydn Hibbert was great cos he looked like Keith Richards, that was the only reason cos looking back it wasn't as good as I thought it was. I think he was great in the Philisteins, in a sort of 60's garage band context he's excellent, but it didn't really translate. But anyway we got Aydn in  the band, an old friend of mine Jed, that I went to high school with, who played harp and had been in a band called 'Morbid Dread' with me, and that was the original band. Timmy Jack appeared on the scene because he lived in a house where we jamming at that point. He just turned up one day and said 'I've been visiting my dad, and it's ended up a bit early. So I've got the rest of the afternoon off, if you need a drummer I'll jam with you.' and he's been with us ever since.
    The only reason that it's become a three piece rather than a five piece is musical reasons. Aydn was not compatible with the Powder Monkeys and towards the end I don't think Jed was either, I think in fact that they were detracting from the band and it's sad but they had to go. I don't think Aydn was very serious about music. A big scene went down very early on after we'd done about five gigs he said 'I'm going away for three months' and we said 'Well, we wanna keep playing', and he put an ad in the paper of his own design saying, 'Last gig for three months'. And we kept playing while he was gone, and he figured out that  we kept playing and he came back ahead of time and wanted to start playing with us again, and it was like 'Well, we've got this set together without you'. When he did rejoin we did about three gigs and they were the worst gigs we've ever played in our lives. This one at the Bridge Mall Inn at Ballarat was the loudest gig I've ever played but it was really, really awful. And with Jed, I think I felt we weren't able to carry someone around the country who only played about three or four songs a night.

Jo: It seemed you were writing less songs that suited a harp.
Tim: Exactly. The direction we were going in changed completely just through playing, which I think is important in bands. Like the Silver Surfers were a space rock band, the Martians aren't really that at all. They learnt that through playing. Red Shift are different from what they were when they started, you figure out what works and what doesn't work.
    When the Powder Monkeys first started I did want to be a more boogie based, R & B, blues based rock band and in time it didn't really turn out that way. I think that's still a part of us, I think there are still blues elements in our music, but it has changed.
    And the other thing was Jed was only three of four songs a night, me, John and Timmy Jack were playing together every song and we felt really good playing together and we were getting into the really full-on stuff, that's what made us feel good and it was a pain in the ass to get Jed up on stage to do this thing that we had kind of abandoned. We moved on and we still had Jed along for the ride doing this thing that we didn't get into anymore. I still like the harmonica a hell of a lot.
    We recorded a song with Dave Hogan from the Paramount Trio, 'The Wizard' by Black Sabbath, I don't think it was such a good version but it was great to play with him. I'd love to, in the future, have a harp player again for certain songs but not as a permanent member. So basically that's how it all started and that was the original goals and everything and for the last two and a half years it's been just the three of us and the band at the moment is probably playing better than ever live.

Jo: How did you feel playing with Wayne Kramer and Radio Birdman?
Tim: Jo it was the greatest night of my life. I've been fortunate in the last few years to meet some idols of mine. I met Richard Hell who played with Richard Hell and the Voidoids, and he was in the Heartbreakers and Television. He's a great writer in his own right, pardon the pun, I met him a couple of years ago. I met Scott Asheton from the Stooges, I didn't meet Ron unfortunately, however those guys haven't really stuck with it, so it was great to meet them but only for old times sake.
    Whereas to play with Wayne Kramer, is just such a fantastic feeling, but also to meet him. We had correspondence with Wayne Kramer before he came out here. Dave Laing, who runs Dogmeat Records, had written to Wayne Kramer when the Hard Stuff had came out. Listening to the Hard Stuff, its all those Epitaph bands playing on it and Dave thought 'Well maybe he doesn't have a band', so he wrote to Wayne 'Do you want to come over and get the Powder Monkeys to be your band?' and he was like 'Oh no man, I've got my own band now. We do our own thing.' But he heard the Powder Monkeys and thought it was great and for a while there was talk of us getting him to come over and support him on a tour, and luckily this Birdman thing came up and he came over anyway.