Interview: Elana Stone from All Our Exes Live In Texas
Sydney-based quartet All Our Exes Live In Texas have been mesmerising audiences with their gorgeous vocals and killer songwriting skills over the past three years. Now we’re preparing to fall even more in love with them (if that’s even possible!) with the upcoming release of their highly anticipated debut album ‘When We Fall’.
The all-lady folk group have worked with some pretty major artists including The Backstreet Boys, Passenger, and Kate Miller-Heidke, and are set to tour with Australian indie folk-rock band Boy & Bear later this year. We caught up with one of their multi-instrumentalists Elana Stone to chat about their recent success in the UK and their upcoming national tours!
Congratulations on your new single The Devil’s Part! We love the slightly darker vocals on the track. What was the inspiration behind the song?
Hannah, our ukulele player, wrote the song while she was having a series of crappy relationships. She met an English guy with a really bad back tattoo and I think she ended up feeling a bit used by him. Also at that time we were really interested in cults and what goes on and how situations like that start to generate I guess. So we kind of took that idea of a cult involving small girls and what kind of weird stuff goes on, which sort of plays on what the band is anyway, not entirely a cult, but we spend a lot of time together.
We also love the music video for The Devil’s Part, what was the creative process behind the music video like?
We had a really great director who helped create all the animations like the plane crashes and explosions and stuff, and like I said we were kind of obsessed with cults and those kinds of ‘90s movies like ‘Heavenly Creatures’ and ‘The Virgin Suicides’, so we wanted to make something that resembled that time and followed that kind of cult story. We wanted to make something kind of dark to link in with the name of the song The Devil’s Part and our last video was kind of funny and really silly, so this project felt more serious in a way.
You guys just finished the UK part of your ‘The Devils Part’ tour, what has been your favourite UK experience?
It’s definitely been Ireland! I mean, the whole thing’s been really, really, really magical! London was incredible and it’s always incredible to be able to cross to the other side of the world and have people love your music and listen to you and you’re kind of like “how did this happen!?”. Ever since we got to Ireland we’ve fallen in love the locals, Irish people are just incredibly welcoming. We ended up down in the south part of Ireland and we just kind of stumbled across this bohemian town where we met people who are just super lovely and super like-minded. There’s just something really special going on here.
You guys are obviously so close being a girl band, do you spend as much time together when you’re not working on music?
Yeah, well Georgia, Katie, and I all lived in the same street so we’ve spent a lot of time together. We all have similar jobs in a way. Hannah’s in the music industry, she’s a manager so she’s been working 9 to 5, but Georgia, Katie, and I all teach music so we’ve got kind of similar lives in a way and we use each other a lot for support. We really are best mates – I mean, the band was really founded on our close relationship rather than on our abilities, so the idea was that we always wanted to hang out a lot and now we’re hanging out basically 24/7. It’s like being on school camp all the time!
You must be super excited to release your debut album ‘When We Fall’ next year!
Yes! It’s been a long time coming, we’ve had the album all prepared and ready to go for a while now but we just wanted to confirm a few things and make sure we had the support before we actually released it, so we’re really pumped to get it out and into the world!
What can we expect to hear on the new album?
It’s quite different in that we’ve got a full band, so we’ve got drums, bass, electric guitar, and even some strings and horns, so it’s more of an orchestral thing in the vein of the Father John Misty stuff that we really like. We’re all very influenced by the likes of Rufus Wainwright and we love that instrumentation and fusion instead of straight-up folk. So it’s an epic album!
You must be excited to tour with Boy & Bear later on this year!
Yes! We went and saw their concert earlier this year and we were totally blown away by them. They’ve been around for so long, I remember following them when they were just starting out and always thought they were magic! We have their drummer Tim Hart playing banjo on our new album and we have bassist Dave Hosking on our album too, so we’re really connected to them musically.
Lastly, we’re in love with your name ‘All Our Exes Live In Texas’! How did you guys come up with the band name?
When we first started the band we thought we were only going to do one gig, that was the initial idea, so we weren’t taking the band name search very seriously (which I think is possibly the key to a good band name decision!). In our throwaway attitude we just googled “worst country song titles of all time”. We found Drop Kick Me Jesus Through The Goal Post Of Life, You’re The Reason Our Kids Are Ugly, and Her Teeth Were Stained But Her Heart Was Pure, but we settled on George Strait’s song All My Exes Live In Texas and it just felt so right to us so we changed it to All Our Exes Live In Texas!
Watch The Devil’s Part music video below and grab a ticket to see All Our Exes Live In Texas live below!
All Our Exes Live In Texas ‘The Devil’s Part’ Tour
SAT 1 OCT
Beyond Festival, Canberra
SUN 9 OCT
The Metropole, Katoomba
WED 12 OCT
Lizottes, Newcastle
THURS 13 OCT
Oxford Art Factory, Sydney
FRI 14 OCT
Milton Theatre, Milton
SAT 15 OCT
Out On The Weekend, Melbourne
THURS 20 OCT
The Odd Fellow, Fremantle
FRI 21 OCT
Jimmy’s Den, Perth
SAT 22 OCT
Voyage Of Discovery, Shark Bay
FRI 28 OCT
Princess Theatre, Brisbane
SAT 29 OCT
Imperial Hotel, Eumundi
THURS 3 NOV
Caravan Music Club, Oakleigh
FRI 4 NOV
Music On The Hill, Red Hill
SAT 5 NOV
Northcote Social Club, Melbourne
SUN 6 NOV
Wheatsheaf Hotel, Adelaide
Get Tickets HERE
Boy & Bear National Tour
Supported All Our Exes Live In Texas
WED 9 NOV
Regent Theatre, Ballarat
THURS 10 NOV
Ulumbarra Theatre, Bendigo
FRI 11 NOV
Costa Hill, Geelong
SAT 12 NOV
The Cube, Wodonga
WED 16 NOV
C. Ex Coffs, Coffs Habour
THURS 17 NOV
Miami Marketta, Gold Coast
FRI 18 NOV
Beach Hotel, Byron Bay
SAT 19 NOV
Lake Kawana Community Centre, Sunshine Coast
SUN 20 NOV
The Mills Precinct, Toowoomba
WED 23 NOV
Pilbeam Theatre, Rockhampton
THURS 24 NOV
Mecc, Mackay
FRI 25 NOV
Tanks Art Centre, Cairns
SUN 27 NOV
The Venue, Townsville
FRI 2 DEC
Entertainment Centre, Albany
SAT 3 Dec
3 Oceans, Margaret River
SUN 4 DEC
Fremantle Prison, Fremantle
WED 7 DEC
Orange Ex-Services Club, Orange
THURS 8 DEC
Anu, Canberra
FRI 9 DEC
Waves, Wollongong
SAT 1 DEC
Wests City, Newcastle
Get Tickets HERE
