Surf Music: An interview with Kyle Lionheart

CH: What was different about your life recording Eleven & Two compared to Keep In Mind?

KL: Haha… Keep In Mind was recorded in my spare bedroom with mattresses and homemade sound baffles balanced around the room in the middle of a Northern Rivers’ summer, with no airflow between the hours of 9pm to 5am with my good friend Garrett Kato. Eleven & Two was recorded in a professional studio in Melbourne, with a producer called John Castle and we had girls from the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra playing on my songs and s**t, haha.

CH: Any sharky tales from up north?

KL: I had a photographer taking photos of me about five years ago out at Tallow Beach. He went in and left me out in some pretty gloomy conditions with no one around, really, I didn’t think much of it and then he published the photos later that afternoon on Facebook with a photo of me sitting on my board, legs hanging down and a four-to five-metre (it gets bigger every time I tell this story) Great White directly underneath me; that’s probably my favourite story.

CH: What does ‘Surf Music’ mean to you?

KL: My “Surf Music” was Xavier Rudd, Jack Johnson, Donavon Frankenreiter sitting in the back of friends’ big brothers’ cars driving up and down the coast from Byron to Kirra listening to these guys on repeat; this was my introduction into acoustic music at about the age of 14, before that it was all hardcore and 90’s rap. These guys set the foundation for who I am musically today.

CH: Next show?

KL: At the Torquay Hotel on November 9.